Well, it's tied, I guess, because I previously built this same tank from Al.By. Marc Mercier previously reviewed the First to Fight TKS w/20mm Cannon kit, and included scans of the kit parts in his review. This machinegun version includes the same sprue of parts, with an additional smaller sprue that contains the machinegun parts. Michal Derela also reviewed the 20mm Cannon kit, and within that article, he compared this First to Fight TKS with several others that were marketed at that time. I agree with Michal's assessment of the other kits.

Several other companies market, or have marketed at one time, several variants of the TK tankettes (TKS, TK-3, TKW, etc.). My further opinions of some of the other kits are: the Al.By is OOP, and lacked hull rivets and had poor tracks; the ModellTrans kit is pretty decent, but again with poor tracks; NRC isn't too bad, though the rivets may be a little over-done, and the tracks are again, poor. The ESO kit looks really nice in the box and has link and length plastic tracks that would look absolutely gorgeous if one is able to handle parts that small, which I have heard from some people, is very difficult. But it apparently has some shape errors, and it is OOP regardless. The less said about the RPM kits, the better. And finally, PART makes (made?) several versions of this tankette, which come with photoetched tracks. Again, the finished tacks look amazing (based on the cover photo on the box), but they come in two layers of brass that need to be glued together after bending to shape, which I think is going to be very, very difficult. (I think it's time I write a comparison article between all of these options...)

Consequently, if one is looking to build a TKS, I would recommend this First to Fight kit whole-heartedly.

Assembly was a breeze. I drilled open the ends of the muffler, but I should have looked more closely at my references, as I opened up the left end of it too much. Crap. The pioneer tools are nicely shaped, but instead of trying to sand off the sprue nubs from the crowbar, I simply cut one to size and shape from styrene rod of the appropriate diameter as a replacement. I also added some attachment brackets for the tools from some metal foil. A small improvement that I did NOT make, though I think it would have improved the look of the final model, would be to replace the hatch handles with bent wire.

According to the dimensions included in Militaria i Fakty #31 Czolg Rozpoznawczy TK-S, the length and width of the kit are perfect for 1/72nd scale, though it's about 2mm too tall. Not that anyone would notice.

As with all of my recent builds, the model was painted with MIG's ATOM paints, and weathered with various products from AMMO, AK and Vallejo.