15mm BPM Sdkfz 10/4

 SP Flak became increasingly prevalent as the war progressed, and doing my DAK stuff was an opportunity to add some more yellowish coloured SP Flak to my collection. DAK had an entire SP Flak battalion, and the models would also be useful for later war panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, as well as things like the Heavy Company of 16th SS Training Battalion at Arnhem.  

The Sdkfz 10/4 was fairly ubiquitous, so I picked up a couple of BPM ones, cast in APL instead of resin as they were cheaper. They come as single piece castings with separate guns. These are quite complex shapes and although the models are OK, there are some quite visible striations in places, although by and large they were easy to sand down.

I went for them in travel mode (sides up) as I like the side detail and they take up less space.

The engine grills and lights and very nice indeed, but you can probably make out the striations in the gun shields.

One problem with 3D prints is they never have any crew (why not? surely it would be easy to print them?). I think SP guns look silly without crew, so I added a couple of drivers from cut down PSC Hanomag crew. The gunners are PP seated crew figures from the AK47 range. I had to bend their legs a bit to fit them in the seats and file their hats down a bit. 

One slight problem was that metal gunners mounted on a (very) light resin gun model cause the model to fall over sideways... So I wedged a load of blu tak in the hole, as I prefer to keep the option to rotate the the guns if needed. If it becomes a big problem I will glue them in. Exactly the same thing happens with my BF Sdkfz 251/17.

You can see how complex the shapes are around the gun breech. tbh I wasn't sure which bits were model and which bits were supporting flash, I just carved stuff off until they looked OK.

They actually look pretty good I think, once painted up and based. I just did them plain sand so they will do for the desert and anywhere else after mid 1943.