I received the four boxes from Armortek for their latest Tiger 1 late variant. It was shipped on a Tuesday and arrived in Malta on Wednesday. It then took the shipper a couple of days to get it delivered to me!

One of the tank crew has taken possession of the boxes.

We call her Tiger so I guess it is fitting that she is the first one on the box.

I transferred the boxes to my other garage/workshop where the build will take place.

I could not resist, so I opened box 1 to get a better feel of the size of this model. It's huge! Bigger than I imagined.

Congratulations to whoever does the packing. It is very well packed. There is a paper with a list of contents of the box and used that as a checklist to see if everything was there. Everything was there and also in this box there is the assembly manual and the certificate.

I noticed that the tank floor plate has got extra holes in it which previous versions of the Tiger did not have. Most probably some enhancement. We will see as we progress.

Checked the other three boxes and everything seemed to be there. Decided to do a trial assembly of the lower hull to see how it goes together. No major problems encountered. Before starting I deburred the floor plate (don't ask how I know it needed it) and also did a little draw filing where the bends are to remove the slight burr created in the bending process.

Also removed remnants of machining coolant from holes. This is what I ended up with today.

No major problems were encountered and like this I can visualize better the changes I am contemplating.

These are the extra holes in the floor I mentioned previously.

As this is a June 1944 Tiger 1 it has the small idler wheel and the track deflector should be slightly angled downwards. I could not find the actual angle so I eyeballed it with some photos I found

I made a prototype bump stop. I decided to do four of them to replace the kit supplied parts. I think they look better.

part  two here.