ICM Krupp L3H163 Kfz. 72 Radio Truck in 1:35 (#35462), Work in Progress

This article is part of a series:

Radio communication was not new when WWII broke out but the Germans made it an integral part of their military doctrine. ICM released this marvel of a kit in 2012 so given my historical interests I decided to build it in honor of those men who provide communications between units then and now.

The kit:
For those of you who are following my Air Ministry build, you may have noticed ICM is a favorite soft skin vehicle manufacturer of mine. No guns this time around (well, apart from the obligatory pair of XK 98 carabines) but the crew of these trucks were for the workings of the German military was concerned what DJs are for today's youth!
http://imodeler.com/2018/05/from-model-to-diorama-a-days-work-at-the-german-air-ministry-1941/

This kit has crisp moldings and virtually no flash. It comes with complete, highly detailed chassis and engine, most of it is invisible when finished. The basic vehicle was available in many different versions and in this case, a radio cabin was mounted on the rear of the chassis offering cutting-edge communications equipment with short and medium range to its crew.

The kit itself does not offer the interior of the cabin. Understandably, this is in fact a kit to be researched on its own and in normal conditions you would not see much of it anyway after the cabin is closed-up... But that was not good enough for me scratch builder!

Scratch built interior:
I researched this vehicle in numerous internet resources, books and magazines. I had a lot of time in trains and airplanes, which helped! I added some pictures here of the interior as I could discover them here and there. There seems not to be a standard interior layout as many of these trucks were "field-pimped" by the crew itself depending on the radio sets and services they connected to.

The build:
You can follow the progress on this thread. I used styrene sheet of various thickness as well as PE and tiny detail elements from my spares box based on these pictures. I will also add the areal extended, given ICM only allows for the retracted antennas on the rear of the vehicle. I will also add a LED or two to the interior in order to highlight its details even after the cabin roff is closed.

Current status is that I gave the interior a coat of primer. Just before primering, I took these pics of the interior so you can tell detail and materials from their texture: