HK is for Chinatanks II

This post was going to have a few more shots, but as I started editing them I realised I didn't even know why I took them, despite having some notes, but I think the notes were more for my own benefit, or curiosity than anything else, anyway, I'm going to share them with you just to clear them from the 'system'!

Starting to sort, we looked at these a while back with a view of a couple of the sets they come in, and here I'm bringing the loose ones together and sorting them, on the table is the stuff I had here from the TBS (to be sorted) box of AFV's just visible to the left, while the large bag was in storage, with a few other odds that were kicking around.

Which lead me to this tank-park - that's what they call them! The apple green AMX30 to the far right (Marine la Pen's?) is the latest version of these, is the only one found so far, and came with Matchbox-copy infantry and one or two other bits, via Peter Evans a few years ago. it's either unmarked or marked with a plain China, I can't remember. Also it's re-cut to a higher standard than the old ones.

While the three slightly herby-green ones in the centre are a smaller sample/issue/copy-set, who are all marked with a 'Hong Kong' and a capital letter thus;

• ·         T54/55 - 'O'
• ·         Chieftain (missing turret) - 'R'
• ·         Centurion - 'X'

They are all in storage now, and the notes have become as confusing as the rejected photographs, but I think the letter is on both halves, the HK on the hulls?

While the bulk of them have a more complicated set of markings, indeed if the notes are accurate (?) they have one or the other of two or more, but there is a consistency and with the two minor variants above clearly spottable, it's all a bit academic!

The turret numbers, are to help the packing staff get the right turret on the right hull, something which seems to have sometimes been strictly adhered to, sometimes totally ignored, consequently I've all these and still not colour-matched a lot of them - as you can see!

The number is found inside the turret and somewhere within the turret-ring moulding on the top of the hull, all the above are good-enough for 1:144th war games. Make of all that what you will, it's pretty nerdy-farty stuff, but it's out of Picasa and on a storage dongle, phew!

Because they were the next lot down in the box, I reshot the bubble-gum tanks while I had a parade-ground for them! We've seen them before once or twice, and I think I've bored you with how nasty the gum was, that it looked like a pencil-eraser and that we were 4/6 when we had them so late 1960's as a vague date. And we've also seen an earlier (1950's) Manurba one from which these Hong Kong ones were copied.