1/72 Revell M60A2 "Starship", USA, 1975, Germany
Modell Trans Modellbau turret conversion

Blaž Vrecko
A lucky find in a local toy store, as the Revell kit is out of circulation for some time now. Ordered a Starship conversion, will paint it in MERDC winter verdand variant.

Tom B.
Interesting project... the potential alternative would be sourcing the ESCI M60A2 from somewhere and upgrading the suspension with the OKB kit and doing other upgrades. The Revell kit will likely be a better base, then 👍

Blaž Vrecko
I have the finished Italeri M60 kit, that is essentialy ESCI descendant and it's not really interchangeable with the revell kit, the esci kit being out of scale even visibly by few milimeters (internet says closer to 1/69), so the modell trans conversion doesn't really fit, being specifically made for revell. Will see about the other upgrades, I haven't really researched anything yet 🙂

Hajo Lippke
You guys are aware that Italeri announced in their 2023 news the release of the M60A2? It will be extremely likely the older ESCI-kit....

Tom B.
@ Blaz: With the ESCI kit being out of scale, I better chase down a Revell kit too and snag myself one of these resin conversions from Modelltrans, too 🙂

@Hajo: I had not in fact realized that, thanks for pointing it out 👍 I just hoped to see the 1/72 M8 Greyhound re-released and kind of closed the catalogue in disappointment after not seeing it...

Blaž Vrecko
So this is finished. Absolutely love the MERDC camo, got to do the grey desert one on something (probably 551 Sheridan).
Kit went on fine baring the one side link&lenght track that, somehow, was half a link to long, so I had to cut a single one in half. It's barelly visible, but I have no idea how that happened, as there were no gaps elsewhere on the track.
Resin turret was fine this time, definitely better than on merkava conversion. Very little "flash". I had some work with mold "marks" on the downside of the turrets, which are rather large and hard to remove, and I had to miliput a tiny bit of basket rail, but thats it. Turret itself and upper side of baskets were really nice. I added some turret handles, hooks, tow cables and searchlight cable for details.
Also, the little gun on top seemed to be broken and missing, but I can't rule out that happening during initial unboxing. I replaced it with revell original, so no loss there.

One thing I would to different if starting over is using a more grayish filter. The mig 3 tone camo(brown/orange) filter might have blended the sand and brown camo colors a bit to close for my liking.