Trumpeter's C1 Ariete just recently arrived at our shores AFAIK and having won a bet, I promptly bought one. At less than P500 at JMN (P458 IIRC), it was quite el cheapo considering that it's a brand new, fresh from the factory, kit. When I paid for it, I had no idea that it was a real bargain!
When you open the box, the hull bottom is segregated from the rest of the sprues, keeping everything in order.
The (tiny) decal sheet and clear plastic (basically plastic sheet, not the clear parts that come with new Tamiya kits nowadays) and twine for the tow cable are in their own packet stapled on the box side.
You also get the usual Trumpeter-quality vinyl tracks (more on that later). There are no vinyl caps for the wheels (more on that later).
I first did the wheels. The two sprue trees of the wheels were packed together in such a way that the wheels and idlers of both trees matched together. This made building them a breeze. Just apply liquid cement down the middle of the trees, remove wheels from trees, and viola! Completed road wheels.
Do be careful not to confuse any of the roadwheels with the idler wheel. It has a different face than the road wheel.
The sprockets are nicely detailed too. However, they are attached not in the usual way to the hull (i.e. there is no peg on the hull to attach the sprocket to)
Next went in the suspension. As usual, Trumpeter did the proper thing by providing a detailed suspension (unlike Tamiya which insists on having molded on some parts of the suspension with the hull). The lower hull also extended outwards so that if you choose to not install the skirts, there is no vacant space or big hole (unlike Tamiya). There is very little flash so far (the road wheel arms has a bit of flash, but can be easily removed - all the rest don't have flash). Fit, I must say, was very nice.
Actually fit is very nice all over the kit. I dare say, Trumpeter is nearing "Shake n' Bake" status like Tamiya. So far, I've seen no need to do major sanding/filling. The only area where I did sand a part on the account of fit was turret mantlet's face (as seen in the photo above, lower right corner), which was a bit thick. Simple sanding solved that. The turret is nicely detailed. The periscopes/vision blocks of the loader and TC all are hollow to accomodate the clear plastic sheeting that came with the kit.
The tracks are the usual vinyl. My preference is individual links or link-to-length tracks. The tracks are usual Trumpeter quality - i.e. they are "heavy" unlike the newer ones from Tamiya. It also has flash which is most annoying. The tracks are a bit too long, hence they have a sag at areas where it ought to be tight (i.e. areas like the first road wheel to the idler, and the last road wheel to the sprocket - these should be straight, not sagging). If ATM comes out with indy tracks, I'll bin the kit ones and use the ATM indies instead. However, one can solve the track sag by overlapping it at the ends to make it tighter and stitching the ends together.
Which leads me to say....
Why bother with vinyl tracks when the road wheels themselves won't roll? The road wheels, idlers, and sprockets are all installed with cement. They do not have those vinyl tubes which one inserts inside like Tamiya vehicles. IMO, these vinyl tubes serve a purpose in that it ensures that the wheel are aligned properly in the vertical plane and are snugly fit. However, on the Ariete kit, the road wheels are fit snugly to the road arms. Though the fit is tight, this ensures that the wheels won't be rolling - not a problem, except that why bother with vinyl tracks anyway? Also, since the road wheels are attached as such, there is a chance they won't be aligned vertically. The idlers meanwhile do not fit with their attachment points, i.e. the holes are too wide and short, so if you dry fit the tracks, they often come out. Cement them, and you risk not painting areas that are out of reach of the airbrush. The same can be said for the sprockets - worse actually, since there's no peg to which the sprockets are to be attached, except a nice big hole. Fortunately, these aren't as loose as the idlers when you dry fit the tracks and thus are held in place.
The view of the engine mesh is nicely detailed and IMO needs no PE - like the engine intakes for the Tamiya Leo2A5/A6 kit.
One area which I would detail (if only I didn't promise myself to build this kit OOTB for review purposes) are these hinges shown here. These are molded on the deck and doesn't give the sense that these ought to swivel freely. To detail this, I would remove them completely and use styrene rod and sheeting. But, again, this will be an OOTB build.
Trumpeter gives you the option to replace the molded on turret's bolts (see picture above) with the these bolts (Part 53 - see lower picture). Problem though is how to remove these bolts from the sprue as a major part of it is connected to that rectangular sprue. Their small size means using really nice cutters to remove them or use deft knife-handling skills. I still have to work out a way to remove them from the sprue tree. However, they are nicely detailed and I would indeed later use the bolts and replaced the molded ones on the turret.
Shown here is the FLIR. This is a two piece part IIRC. Unlike other tank kits, this does not have the option to have the FLIR open or closed (as you can see, it's only closed). The door is molded onto the plastic. My preference is that it can be opened/set to the open position.
. I would've preferred that the CITV had a hollow space where the window was to be and use clear plastic instead. One can do that by hollowing it out and using some clear plastic sheeting (even acetator or camera film would do).<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Still unfinished, the Ariete looks surprisingly a good looking tank. It reminds me of the Leopard 2A5/A6. In fact, I call it a Lite Leo2A5 because it has some similar features to the 2A5 (120mm gun, 'wedge'/slanting turret face, and round engine intake). To be honest, I'm not quite thrilled with the design of the Ariete, seeing it as one of the ugliest modern tanks ever made. It looks quite bland really. But seeing it this time as an object and not a simple 2-dimensional picture, I see its )
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I highly recommend it for its ease of build and good fit. The cons I see are the tracks, the lack of clear part for the CITV, the closed FLIR, and the lack of vinyl caps for the wheels (but then, I was probably spoiled by Tamiya
). I'm not sure about the gun's length which I find it short, but then considering I have nil resources on the C1 Ariete, I have to resolve the doubt in Trumpeter's favour that the gun has a decent, accurate-enough length. The good fit, nice details and the el cheapo price tag more than compensates the flaws of this kit.BTW, I forgot to mention, the instruction sheet doesn't have a paint/color list. Even the line drawing showing what overall color the tank is and the placement of decals doesn't mention about the paint color to be used for the entire tank. All it says is a 'cryptic' TC10 (along with Chinese characters under it). Looking at the instruction sheet, there is no indication what TC10 is. Detailed painting have Gunze codes but no word equivalent.
