Review: Monogram T-80B Soviet Main Battle Tank in 1/72 scale

Approximately 100 parts molded in light tan.

The overall detail on hull and turret are done pretty well. The DShK machine gun on the turret is very simplistic, with a barrel that is not even round. The overall look and shape of the tank is very close to line drawing published in Tank Magazine and in Concord's book on the T-64 and T-80 tanks, probably as close as any T-80 kit currently on the market. Fit of all major components was somewhat bad, with join of the upper and lower hulls being the most difficult. The turret has locator indentions and grooves for parts that I assume are part of the Revell Germany T-80UB, the same tank but with an explosive reactive armor (ERA) array. There are also things such as stowage baskets that are shown on the instruction sheet's painting guide, but are not included in the kit. The track is of the link-and-length variety, but shows a fairly crude tread pattern that really doesn't look much like the references. The guide teeth of the track won't fit around the inner ring of the 3-piece drive sprocket (part nuber 18, of the 17-18-19 set that makes up the sprocket), requiring that about 7 teeth be cut away on each side to fit over the sprocket.

The finished model was painted in the sand/olive green/black scheme similar to the box art and the painting guide using Testors enamels. Because of wariness towards the decals in wake of the Leopard experience (review of the 1/72 scale Monogram Leopard 2A4 coming soon), I used dry-transfers for the numerals and hand-painted the divisional symbols. Despite the fit problems and simplification of some details, the finished model captures the sit and look of the T-80 rather well, and looks very nice when finished.