F. Giovagnorio T-Model M1114

The M1114 HMMWV is an up-armoured version of the Humvee family vehicle which was designed and manufactured by the American Company AM General. The M1114 HMMWV was designed to conduct reconnaissance and security operations as its primary function. The new design along with the older XM1109 served in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans, Bosnia and Kosovo. The next trial for the M1114 came in Afghanistan where 56 of the first M1114s were tested in harsh combat and brutal terrain, and later it was widely employed in Iraq. The M1114 can be fitted with a wide range of weapon systems on the ring mount station on the roof, such as the 7.62mm or M2 .50 caliber machine guns or an MK 19 40mm automatic grenade launcher. Some variants of the vehicle were armed with M134 6-barreled minigun or GAU-19/A 3-barreled Gatling gun.
Packaging On opening the box (a sturdy cardboard top-flap box), you find 2 large sprues in light tan plastic, plus 2 smaller sprues of the same color, 1 separate piece (the hood), another sprue with transparent parts, 2 PE sets, a full colour 12 page booklet and a leaflet with the top picture and CAD images on the reverse side.	There is no total count of the parts written anywhere, so I tried to sum them all (included clear parts, PE parts and optional parts) totalling 155. Never seen so many parts in such a small kit. Moreover, the quality is very good as you would expect from the latest productions from China, with no flash or short shots, not even in the smallest parts.

The parts The two larger sprues contain all the necessary parts to build the vehicle, while the two smaller sprues are two copies of the same one which contains the wheels, springs and seats. Naturally, the transparent parts are the window glasses and the lamp lenses, plus a single block with the front grille and lamps. The PE sets contain the usual parts which are normally seen in PE (gun shield, lifting rings) plus windshield wipers which should be made in plastic as they look too flat in PE (but they are so small that it would be impossible to notice it). Sadly, there are no decals, so looking at the aftermarket will be necessary.



Some preliminary observations In an appreciable effort to reach the best possible 1/72 wheels in plastic, each one is divided into 8 parts which need to be assembled. This is something I do not recall having ever seen in this scale, and it look intimidating at first glance. The real gun shield has a complex design, but the PE piece has no guides to help in bending. There are interiors, an engine, very detailed suspensions and all hatches are detailed on both sides, which would make the model usable in any condition (under repair, upside down, etc.). However, the engine would need all the tubes, which are normally present, to be added, and the interiors are nowhere as complex as the real ones (for example, the very intricate comm system between the front passengers is not present at all, as you can see in stage 10 of the manual). I had no time to do extensive checkings for accuracy, but when comparing the sketch visible in the painting scheme against pictures of real M1114s I noticed something which should not be there: some sort of louvres (for air conditioning ?) on the right rear side. I do not know if it might be present in some field modification, but no M1114 I saw in photos seems to have it. Anyway, working on piece B11 to cancel this detail should not be hard to do...


Instruction manual The instruction booklet is very well done, with 21 steps and a final single painting scheme in overall sand.
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Conclusions T-Model certainly demonstrates with this kit that they belong to the current of extra detailed kits (like Flyhawk) as opposed to the other Chinese current of "easy-to-build" kits (which Dragon and Trumpeter, just to name the biggest two, tend to follow). As such, T-Model certainly deserves praise for its striking entrance into the world of 1/72nd scale, with a model of an important and widely used modern vehicle which will be hard to beat in terms of quantity and finesse of detail.
Review sample provided by T-Model

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Article Last Updated: 04 July 2017