A heavy self-propelled howitzer, attempt two
I've been thinking about the incomplete Hummel project every once in a while and now I got a new one to work on. In case I didn't write it down earlier, when I was paying for the StuG III in Tieto-Nikkari I commented that "this called me the most, but had you had a Hummel I'd grabbed it immediately". The guy had his sales pants on, so he wrote down an order from any manufacturer in 1:35, and promised to call when they had it in the store. Two weeks later I got an SMS and I half-ran from work to fetch it, on just about the last summery day of 2025. At that point I hadn't even opened the box of the StuG. This model was also the reason I ordered a double set of the Panzer III/IV tracks.
Memories from the early two thousands
I accidentally found a few photos of the source for all this, the Dragon's Hummel that I had built and painted grey. The winter-geared crew was also assembled but completely unpainted. What cut my project in this stage back in the day? I had been very excited about it, of course, so it was very difficult to come up with an explanation or a reason. This was also my stage of painting all my German stuff grey, most likely because of the way they were depicted in Steel Panthers.
The timeline for these photos I could poke at by the Leman Russ in the background gifted by a friend, and the speaker connected to my father's Beomaster 6000, and the last photo's CRT display. Earliest it could be was 2003, and latest 2007 but I was unable to guess any better myself. Then I realized that the zip file was named based on the photo metadata and that told me they were taken in 2005, handily in the middle of my guesstimate.
A new bumblebee
When done, I could somehow compare this one to the old memories, even with a very different crew and a completely different approach to painting. The variant was also different, the Dragon's had spare roadwheels on the front armour plates while this Tamiya one had them in the back hull. Tiny differences.
Paper stuff
First of all the box revealed a background information sheet with basic stuff about the Hummel in a few languages. There were two suggestions for a paitnjob, both from an unknown or unspecified unit. One of them was plain Dunkelgelb, the other in three-tone camo. I especially appreciated the third photo's "this is what we're talking about" section for those who didn't live and breath these devices.
Not many decals in a way, in addition to the Balkenkreuze and the unit number there was the black info sheet for the gun aimer. The rest belonged to the shells, I imagined, but didn't doublecheck from the instructions in advance.
In general the instructions were Tamiya-clear and I was very happy to see the 1:1 track schema in the second photo. I could use that when building the Panzerwerk tracks.
Bits and pieces
Hummel's Panzerwanne was a big single entity so that kept me safe from a funky-angled side walls. Painting the crew made me a bit worried but maybe I could survive especially if I didn't get more bright ideas of giving them camo patterns...
All the running gear in their sprues were doubled, and I was foreseeing half an eternity going to the painting and fixing the painting on the road wheels, idlers and friends. Maybe this time I should at least prime them in the sprues before getting much further, just to recude swearing.
Most of the remaining vehicle was then spread to the last two sprues. The cannon alone at most of one, then the deck and armour plates took the other. Pretty clear to me, as the manufacturer led me to expect. I doubted I had to spend insane amounts of time searching for the individual pieces all around the spruesets.
Finally we had a plastic bag with random things, like the tiny screwdriver, a bit of thread to play the part of a tow cable, some sets of poly caps and whanot. Hopefully I wasn't going to drop any on the floor for the cats to play with.
This'd be a lot of fun as long as I didn't make a fool of myself with the assembly/paint order choices.
