Kampfer Revival Part1: Ground Work

This week marks my modeling come back. After nearly a year off, I've decided to tackle an old busted kit that I have had laying around for years. I bought this bad boy when it was first released and have taken a couple of cracks at it over the years with absolutely no success. So, now that I have some time on my hands, I have decided to try to do something with this kit once and for all. For the most part this kit represents two challenges to me. First of all its a time challenge. I only have about 45 days to finish this kit because I want to complete it before my family trip this April. Also, this kit is going to challenge my determination because I've not completed a Gundam kit in years and really have never completed a MG kit. So, I am trying to keep my nose to the grindstone and work on it every day to meet my goal.


This past week was spent laying down the ground work for the project. Really, this kit was completely in parts and I had to go through all my model boxes to collect everything I needed to bring her back together again. Here is an example of one of my parts boxes. I do have some kits squirreled away in baggies in a drawer, but the rest are in boxes like this. My Kampfer was mostly assembled, but I searched out the rest of the existing parts just in case.



The concept for this model is pretty simple. I want to create a version of the Kampfer that is as stripped down as possible. I'm thinking that it would be like a mass production model that would be used for close assault. It would be for combat in the close quarter so colonies or other space structures. To achieve this, I am doing away with the big shoulder pads and removing a lot of the extra detail throughout the model. I am trying to smooth out the panels as much as possible while still maintaining a tough military feel.

In addition to this, I will be making two major changes to the model. First I will be replacing the three thrusters on the back for one big thruster that will be incorporated into a sort of detachable backpack. And second, I will be replacing the two thrusters on each hip with fuel tanks. The concept is that the main thruster and the fuel tanks are a temporary one-use type meant to get the Kampfer into an area fast and then break off to give it better mobility.







Here is the fuel tank that I fashioned to replace the hip thrusters. It is made from a part of a technical pen and detail spare parts. I plan to duplicate this one to create the four tanks.



Here is a view of my tank mock up to show how the tank should look in its final position. I really think this tank thing is a good idea, but I'm not sure how it's going to look in the long run.