Ken Overby Mirage M5

	At first I thought the box art (left) looked "Pretty Nice".... Now I don't know who the artist is but he (or she) needs to do more research. See right : there're no brush guards on the glacis and the right side has no light at all....
Now let's look at the instructions :


		One part was confusing..... this shows the locations of the exhaust pipes (wrong location)
		but the painting guide shows them in the correct locations.
Now let's look at the sprues: There are "only" 2 new sprues in the box, the other ones are from previous M3 Kits
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The next sprues are the same from previous kits :
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This one is directly from the M3A1 (Pacific 1943)
Being from the M3A1, the molds are worn-out (see comparison below) :

And as the suspension sprues are the same ones as in the other Stuart kits..... They suffer from the same issues :
Now, an interesting thing is that, I believe they plan on doing an M8 HMC as well. This is evident by the fact that they molded the upper hull with voids in the roof and front, with the M5 parts being plates to be glued in.

They even molded the Grousers (Spuds in the UK) as separate parts. Now there are exactly 20 of them (just enough for the turret) so don't drop any. But there are no mounting points on the turret for them.
Now I laid the Mirage M5 (left) next to a PSC M5A1 hull, they are the same length, so it is just as short as the rest of the Stuart kits. Which makes sense, since they are using the same tracks as the other kits.
Now, this may be only "my" opinion but I feel the hull MG is too far to one side. This leaves no room for the headlight and brushguard. So here are pictures of the Mirage part and the PSC conversion from Cpl Overby's MOTOR POOL to compare : --------
All in all this will (with a little work) build up into a nice little model of the M5. Well that's all for now.... I hope this informs you all well.

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Article Last Updated: 03 December 2013