Cobi Vickers A1E1 Independent

I have always liked the Vickers Independent. It looks like a schoolboy's drawing of a "super-dooper tank." I was excited when I saw that I could purchase a model of it.

This was my first attempt at building one of the Tank Museum's brick models. It was more involved than I expected. I thought to finish assembling it over a weekend, but it took several weeks, although not of constant work. That's not a bad thing, as I felt I got my money's worth. One minor part was missing; I managed to fudge that.

I should note that I am an adult. While I don't have children, my guess is that this model would be difficult for a younger child. A patient teenager or near-teenager would be able to assemble it on his or her own.

I spent most of my assembly time looking for the parts for the next step. Once I found them, adding them to the tank took far less time. I eventually sorted all the parts into ziplock bags, and then sorted the bags by categories that made sense to me. Some of the parts are hard to identify, as they are similar to others. I did make a mistake in assembling the tread sprockets. I found that late in the process and had to backtrack in order to correct it.

There are certain assemblies that do not stay together very well. They kept falling off as I worked on later stages. That was frustrating. I had to keep putting them back in their proper places.

In the end, I think that the model looks good. It works as a static display piece. I wouldn't want to move it around a lot, as those parts are apt to fall off again.