Belgian JPK 120 tank destroyer

Lower hull, still without suspension arms and idler wheel mounts. Light grey parts (mounts for return rollers and drive sprockets) are from a Leopard 2. 

Kit front plate and crew hatches. These need to change because they don’t look like what you would want to have on an actual operational vehicle. 

So I went and cut up a perfectly good, brand-new kit 🙂 

Edges of hole in upper hull cleaned up, inner side walls added and the whole dry-fitted onto the lower hull. 

Replacement glacis plate, with Takom details. More bits will be added later. 

New roof cut from 0.75 mm plastic card, with Hobby Boss Leopard 2 hatch and Takom commander’s hatch that will now be for the driver. 

Roof in place on hull, as well as Hobby Boss ice cleats in racks from a few thicknesses of plastic strip. 

Reinforcements/supports on the inside of the roof to give something to glue the Takom hatch to, and have it at the right depth. 

Moved the idler wheel arms and hydraulic cylinders forward, because the idler wheels hardly reached the bow plate with the original idlers, never mind the smaller Leopard 2 ones. 

Panel lines and bolt heads on hull side filled. 

Section cut from left roof so it can be rebuilt as a mirror image of on the right 

1 mm plastic card glued in place to form new roof. 

Commander’s cupola made from Hobby Boss Leopard 2 parts, periscope heads from Asuka Shermans and plastic card and strip. 

Handles on engine deck replaced by copper wire, and basics for hatch for autoloader built on left-hand side. 

Upper and lower hull halves glued together. 

Gun pods modified by cutting off the bit of pipe on the inside and then sawing a slot on both sides (very slightly narrower than the hole). This will let the pods click into place after painting, rather than having to be fitted before painting. I glued the pipe on the pivot on the hull instead, just far enough that it will be up against the gun pod. 

Hull sides on, after painting under the roof overhang. 

New left rear section, from plastic card and seams puttied shut. Obviously, that still needs sanding. 

Axles of drive sprocket and return rollers lengthened by 0.5 mm with punched discs of plastic card. This is necessary because the Hobby Boss roadwheels and idler sit 0.5 mm further out than the kit’s wheels. 

To fit the Leopard 2 wheels, I wrapped 0.5 mm copper wire around the Takom axles, which allows the Hobby Boss poly caps to grip the axles. The wire will be superglued in place, of course, to make sure the wheels won’t just come off. 

And that’s all the axles with a copper-wire wrap. 

Overview of the model as it is now. The gun pods, gun barrel and drive sprockets are still loose. At this point, I still need to fin a second Leopard 2 barrel … 

Exhausts replaced by spares from a Dragon Kampfpanzer 70, because I don’t like the VT 1-2 ones and these are at least plausible. The tow hooks are from the Leopard 2A4 kit. 

Bolt heads and lifting eyes on the crew compartment roof. 

Tools from an Italeri Leopard 1 kit on the engine deck, and areas around autoloader hatches finished with panel lines and bolt heads. 

Parts for tow cables: Hobby Boss eyes and copper wire (from an electrical cable) twisted together with a hand drill. 

Cables cut to 13 cm long and eyes glued on. 

Hooks and post installed on engine deck, for holding tow cables. 

Gap between exhausts filled with a T-34 air intake grating and some plastic strip. The night-driving shield is from the Dragon KPz 70. 

The gunner’s sight received optics from the etched fret in the Hobby Boss Leopard 2A4 kit (they’re not even used in that) plus a roof from plastic card with punched bolts. 

Doors for the gunner’s optics added. 

Tow cables installed on rear hull. I had to add an extra hook on the rear plate to keep them in place. 

Doors and muzzles added to gun pods, to suggest coaxial machine guns. 

Corrected direction of four of the tow cable hooks, because they weren’t working as I had envisioned they would. Now they look like they retain the cable much better. 

Gun from the Hobby Boss Leopard 2A4 kit (front) and from another, donated by a fellow modeller. 

Unfortunately, the second barrel is clearly thicker than the first 🙁 

Compare this photo with the previous and it’s obvious that the barrel on the right-hand side of the vehicle is thicker than that on the left. 

Solution: rebuild the part in front of the fume extractor from 5.5 mm and 4.8 mm plastic tube. The rear end of the donated barrel was also replaced by part of an Italeri Leopard 2 barrel (I only had that bit in my spares box, sawn off from the rest, else I would of course just have used the whole barrel). 

… and the difference between the two is much less noticeable. 

Smoke launchers on the front plate, from the Italeri Leopard 1 kit with a scratchbuilt base. 

One track complete (73 links, which gives the same length as the kit tracks), and parts for the other. 

Leopard Workshop MAG machine gun for the commander’s hatch. 

The (nearly) complete model. I forgot to add the rearview mirrors before taking the photo, but other than that, construction is done. 

Model sprayed the wrong colour, caused by Vallejo labelling a bottle “yellow olive RAL6015” when YELLOW olive (the right colour for German post-war AFVs) is 6014 … 

Now in a better colour, Mr. Aqueous Olive Drab (1). 

Panel highlights sprayed with Mig Gelboliv lightened with some Hataka MRG Stone. 

Black rectangles for unit markings masked off and hand-painted. I still need to apply suitable numbers. 

16 Armoured Division decals from the Italeri M108 kit have a black-and-white shield, but it should be red-and-white. I painted out the black with sand and then put red over that — completed on the left, still sand only on the right. The sand is necessary because red alone won’t cover the black: you’ll be hard-pressed to see you’ve painted anything at all. 

Wheels and tracks painted. 

Tow cables painted on the rear, with GW Boltgun Metal and Tankya Sm 

Part of the markings applied. The registration number is from the old Italeri M108 but cut up to give 97559 instead of 59597. The 16 Armoured Division shield is from the same kit, but with red paint added to correct the part of the badge that was erroneously printed in black. The bridge classification of 44 is from the Italeri Leopard 1A2 kit 

Markings on the hull rear, much the same as on the front. I had to put matt varnish over all of them after taking these photos because they don’t really want to stick well to the model. 

Markings now finished with 024 made (four times) using numbers cut from a very old decal sheet from the Italeri 1:35 Willys jeep kit. 

The figure is from Hobby Fan, intended for the Belgian AIFV kit. My painting skills do not stand up well to close photography 🙂 

Model given a wash of thinned-down Revell dark earth acrylic paint. 

The wheels won’t fit over the axles I thickened with copper wire 🙁 It needs to be replaced with thinner, as shown in the photo: original on the left, thinner on the right (not as neatly wound because there’s hardly any room to work). 

I had moved the idler mounts forward, but did that too far, so there’s no room for the track between idler and mudguard 🙁 

I drilled through the idler arm and hull side, then sawed through the piston rod and carefully broke off the arm from the hull. 

I could then glue brass rod into the arms so I can reposition them slightly more angled down. 

Wheels and tracks installed, which was a bit of a struggle but they’re on now. 

The tracks had to be shortened by a link because they were too loose. Luckily, this is easy enough to do with workable tracks. 

I replaced the mirror stays with 0.5 mm brass rod, glued into holes drilled front to back through the brackets. This was mostly because the plastic parts had broken off, but they’re also closer to scale. 

… and we’re done!