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Hi everyone and welcome to this kit review, this time Meng´s Renault FT-17 in 1/35 scale.
Its a new kit and my first kit from Meng.
This kit was donated to me by "TacticalJackalope" from Texas, thank you very much mate for your generosity!
As you may know i want to build a couple of French tanks this year, so this one is perfect for me.
The FT-17 in general is one of the most important tank designs in the First World war, it was the first modern tank.
The overall design is still the same today.
It will be very interesting to build the ancestor of all modern tanks.
Alright, let´s have a look inside the box.
After opening the box you will find plenty of plastic sprues which are all protected in plastic bags.
This will reduce the risk of damaged parts a lot. Very good!
Let´s start with the instructions. It is a pretty small booklet.
I don´t like it when i have to cover my desk with one big folded instruction sheet, i prefer small, handy booklets.
It starts with some background history of the vehicle, which is quite long and interesting.
Its written in several languages, English is one of them.
The text is informative, but i guess it was written by a 7 year old child,
its boring to read but with regard to the information it is fine.
Here we can find more background history, this time about the developers.
Alright, enough of history.
Here you can see the options regarding the positions of the hatches.
You can position most of the hatches in opened position, a complete interior is included.
Thats quite rare and a very interesting option to show the vehicle opened.
Here is a detailed picture of the engine.
Then we can find some notes of safety, recommended tools, some tips for the decal application and a chart with the four possible variants.
They are labelled with a big letter, so whenever you have the choice between the variants you can find the letter in the instruction.
Here the assembly starts, we begin with the transmission and the engine.
As you can see it looks a lot like Tamiya instructions, the layout is very similar. Thats not a bad thing at all.
Everything is clearly arranged, nothing is vague. Very good.
Here you can see the interior.
The included interior is really a nice touch, this little tank has big hatches so you can see quite a lot of it later.
Here we have to use real metal springs and rods. These parts are for the running gear.
Overall it looks very "tamiyaish" to me and thats good.
I think even beginners won´t have any troubles with the instructions.
The parts you need for every step of the assembly are limited, you don´t get overwhelmed. It should be easy to follow.
The track assembly works without glue, we just click them together. That way the tracks will be moveable.
Here they show you how to position the hatches in opened position.
Here you can see one of those notes regarding the four variants, as far as i have seen they only differ in the armament.
Some photo-etched parts are used here, too.
They give you a French machine gun on a tripod, i don´t get why but its nice. I can use it for some kind of WW1 diorama.
Here we have a diagram of all included spures, PE parts and decals.
The painting and marking variants are shown in colour.
The first one is a French tank, May 1940, the second one is a French tank in WW1.
The third one shows a Finnish tank in February 1940, the last one is a German Luftwaffe vehicle in Summer 1944.
I like the detailed coloured print, but they only show you one side of the tank, thats annoying.
For those two complex camo schemes its hard to guess how the camo looks on the other side of the tank.
Its not a big deal for the first and last option, though. It would have been good to show the tanks from several sides.
Here we have a paint chart, it refers to Vallejo paints only.
Most manufacturers show the equivalent paints of the other paint brands aswell.
I don´t care much anyway, i choose the colours which look right to me, i don´t waste too much thought on that.
The assembly instructions are great, the painting instructions are a bit meagre.
Let´s take a look at the plastic sprues.
Here you can see the side walls of the hull, exhaust and some smaller bits and pieces.
It looks very good to me, again it reminds me a lot of Tamiya. Thats not an issue, its acutally very good.
The rivet details are nicely represented, for a WW1 tank those rivet lines are typical.
Here we have some parts of the turret, again exquisit rivet details. On the roof we can find some cast texture.
It could be a bit more striking but the usage of putty or Mr. Surfacer will help a lot.
No mould lines or flash in sight, but we can expect that from a new modern manufacturer. These kits are all perfectly moulded.
Here we have two sprues with the wheels, as you can see the wheels stick out.
I´m wondering why they made it that way. I can imagine that it avoids mould lines on the middle of the wheels,
because the casting mould closes somewhere down below. Just a guess.
It looks good to me, there are only two attachement points on the sprue, so you won´t waste time when cutting the wheels from the sprue.
I hate it when wheels have four attachement points, its so tedious to cut them from the sprue and afterwards you have to clean up everything.
Here we have even more suspension parts. Again great rivet detail.
The machine gun looks superb, aftermarket resin machine guns don´t look much better.
Here we can see some filigree parts.
It looks very good to me.
Now we take a look at the interior parts. Those are very detailed and filigree. Not bad!
Here are two ejection marks, but it will be covered by another part later so you won´t see it later.
Thats the bottom of the hull.
Those cloth parts have nice details aswell, the creases look realistic.
Here we have the engine and transmission parts.
I´m impressed, the details are extremely crisp.
No sinkmarks in sight.
Again very filigree parts. The moulding is flawless.
Down here we have some single rounds, i don´t know where they belong,
but i think they are useful when showing the tank during ammunition resupply.
Those two sprues are identical, they include suspension parts such as sprocket wheels and idler.
The idler comes in two versions, one is flat, the other one has rivets on it and a weird, almost woodish surface structure.
I´m not sure, i only know those vehicles with the flat steel idler wheel.
Here we have the tracks, they are moulded in hard black plastic and already cut from the sprue. It safes a lot of time.
Just for testing i assembled a track section already, you just click the links together, no glue is required.
That way the tracks are moveable, although they appear to be a bit inflexible.
On the bearing surface of the tracks you can see a little pin, there is no way to avoid that as they have to mould the parts in some way.
Its not a big deal to remove that, i´d remove the pin with a knife and sanding paper. It should be alright then.
The inner face of the tracks are nicely detailed too. Overall good looking tracks.
The kit comes with metal parts, here we have some photo-etched parts. There are only few of them but they enhance the look a lot i think.
Those parts are for the running gear, there are real springs and metal rods to keep the running gear moveable.
This is great when you position the model on a diorama with an uneven surface.
It looks very dynamic when the running gear adapts to the surface.
The decals are nicely printed, they are in register.
It appears like they are very thin, i think they adapt to the surface nicely using Micro Sol decal softener.
There are plenty of rivets on the tank, so thin decals should adapt to those uneven sections nicely.
My first impression is very good, but of course i will discover the true quality of the decals when i use them.
As i said before this is my first Meng kit. I never had a Meng kit in my hands before.
I have to say that i´m quite impressed with the kit. The mould is perfect, the kit layout is sophisticated and not complicated.
When i was talking to other fellow model builders about Meng they told me that their kits are overengineered.
Some parts are allegedly too complex, but i don´t have this impression after reviewing the FT-17 kit.
In my opinion the kit is right in between Tamiya and Dragon, it may not as simple to assemble as Tamiya,
but by far not as complex as some Dragon kits.
The instructions are good, it should be suitable for beginners too.
The decals are very thin, i assume they are good.
There is barely a thing to complain about. Its amazing that there is a complete interior included.
This offers a lot of possibilities, you can simply build the model opened up as if the crew is having a break,
or you can build a completely destroyed vehicle with the interior showing up.
There are so many possible ways to build the model, we don´t know that from older kits.
The kit costs around 50€ which is quite a lot, but compared to other brands its normal.
You get quite a lot for you money, thats for sure.
In my opinion the kit is doable for beginners, but considering the price of the kit it is quite unlikely.
No beginner would spend 50€ for a kit, they rather buy stuff for 20€ or less.
I´m looking forward to build the kit, it will be very interesting.
I don´t have an exact plan for it right now, i have seen a real tank in Paris once,
i think they have one in the "École militaire" if i remember that correctly.
Its really a tiny tank, even more tiny than you would expect.
I tend to build the model as a museum vehicle on a little base with some people taking pictures of it.
This also gives me the opportunity to show the model in opened position, they would do that in a museum for sure.
Thats just a rough idea, i don´t state that i will do that for sure.
Maybe i build the model as if it is in WW1, or WW2 or in between, there are so many possibilities.
Alright, i hope you enjoyed this kit review, see you in the next video, your Hamilkar Barkas.