Part 1: First Look

MSRP: $13.50 Distributed by Dragon Model USA ( www.dragonmodelsusa.com ). Dragon does a nice service for the modeler with this kit. They give you 2 Humvees for the price of one armor kit. It really is a nice thing since the tanks are usually larger than the soft skin vehicles. Trust me … I've bought too many Jeep and Kubelwagen kits in this scale for the same price as an Abrams tank or a German Tiger. Upon opening the box, you will find individually bagged part sprues, 4 page full color directions, and piece of cardboard with decals, 8 soft plastic or vinyl tires, and 2 photo etched brass brush guards attached to it. For those who don't know much about Humvees, the M1025 is the hard top armament carrier with solid doors and windows and an armored roof. These vehicles were featured in the movie "Black Hawk Down." The kit also allows you to build M1026 Humvees which are M1025s with a winch attached to the front of the vehicle. "ASK" is short for Armor Survivability Kit. These kits are being attached to many "in field" Humvees to up-armor them against insurgent attacks in Iraq. "LRAS3" is short for Long Range Advance Scout Surveillance System. These ground mounted reconnaissance sensors can be used on a tripod, a Humvee, or a Stryker APC, and they allow high quality reconnaissance outside of direct fire range. The PsyOp team Humvee has a roof mounted PA system. This kit has 4 soft plastic/vinyl tires per truck with minor flash noted on each tire. Each vehicle can have an optional photo etched brass brush guard placed on it. A plastic brush guard has also been provided, and it is considerably thicker than the brass one. Each vehicle has 67 styrene parts including 4 optional guns with magazines, front bumpers for either an M1025 or M1026, and clear parts for the doors, roof, and windshield. Minor ejector pin marks and minimal mold flash was noted upon first review of the styrene parts. The decals are made by Cartograf for 1 unit of the LRAS3 Humvees in Iraq in 2004. No stencils were provided for this unit, and no decals were provided for the PsyOp Humvee. I plan on building both Humvees for this review. The LRAS3 Humvee will have the M2 .50 caliber gun, the winch (making it a M1026), and the photo etched brush guard. The PsyOp Humvee will not have a brush guard, and it will be modeled as a M1025 with a M249 gun. I will use MV lenses on both for the headlights. My references for this build are as follows: 1. Finescale Modeler Magazine - October 2007 issue 2. Hummer - Humvee in Action by Squadron/Signal Publications I'd like to thank Dragon and IPMSUSA for these beautiful review kits. Stay tuned for the final build in a few weeks.

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