AMX-30 “Brennus” conversion from Phebus Creations for 1/35 Heller kit

by Graeme Davidson

This all-resin conversion for the Heller AMX-30 kit is made up of 102 parts – a large portion of which are the reactive armour blocks for the turret. For those of you unfamiliar with Phebus, their casting is above average, I would say on a par with Accurate Armour.

My sample had no air bubbles or warping, but some of the minor detail was lost on the reactive armour. However, this detail is simply the line separating some of the RA blocks cast as a group, and could easily be recreated with a swipe of the x-acto knife. Phebus were thoughtful to include a moulded-on part number on the backs of many of the smaller resin castings, which will prove quite helpful in attaching the numerous RA blocks to the turret. Casting on the larger parts, particularly the turret, is well done and there are some nice undercuts on some of the detail parts. All of the parts had a “dusty” feel to them, probably a mould release agent, so don’t forget to give them a quick wash before painting.

Rather than cast a tubular turret bin, Phebus has included a resin jig for assembling your own out of styrene (or brass) rod. I would say that while this is a novel approach, it does require the builder to posses more advanced modelling skills.

The instructions are a bit vague in places, such as the location of the add-on armour for the turret, though I like the way they walk you through the actual kit instructions and call out at what time the resin replacement part needs to be used. The instructions also include a few black and white photocopied pictures as a guide, but I would suggest a long look at AFV Interiors to be sure on parts placement: a good reference source for this is located at http://www.kithobbyist.com/AFVInteriors/fullmetal/brennus/Brennus.html

While largely pictographic, the limited text in the instructions is in French – so this may prove a problem for some, though once you've learned how to understand “replace”, “glue”, and “assemble” you should be OK. I’ve heard that Phebus is working on multilingual instructions, but this kit did not have them included. The instructions do include a four-view (F, B, LS, RS) painting guide and Tamiya paint references.