Alright boys and girls,
Tonight I slid up to the upper hull and decided to take a crack at modifying the staggered front plate between the driver and radio operator's hatches. Using some 1/35th scale 3-view drawings I scaled up the dimensions, only to find some serious inaccuracies in the HL placement of the hatches and molded in rain gutter around each. I decided rather than trying to re-engineer and scratch build the entire upper hull, I would fudge it as best I could. Plus I did end up pilfering the 3 to1 gear boxes out of the Pz III so I had limited room to play with on the inside as well. Concessions had to be made and I decided on making it "look" as accurate as is reasonably possible without completely reinventing the wheel.

Started by marking how far back from the stock position I could step the front plate in front of the radio operators hatch without interfering with the gears (pic 1 shows the mark) about 1/8" (.125) in front of the molded on rain gutter.

Next I went after the driver's side and moved it forward by a 1/4" (.250) using .080 styrene strip. I matched the angle of the front plate by first marking a line parallel to the front edge before I did any cutting. I then cut the front plate into 3 pieces ( the middle one would end up being scrap)

Then I ground off the bow machine gun and drivers armored vision port as both of those will be replaced with scratch built items.
I then reinforced all of the joints from the inside making sure to keep clearance for the gear boxes.

I set everything aside to let the solvent dry overnight. Tomorrow will be time to putty to help even and smooth everything out.

Squid