50 SHADES OF GREY

THE TRUCK THAT WANTED TO BE A BOAT

Most of us in the hobby for more than a few years would be familiar with some of the offerings from Hobby Fan. Hobby Fan falls under the AFV Club umbrella and seems to specialise in resin examples of some left-of-centre vehicles and subjects rarely if ever seen in styrene. If you are like me, you might have come across the company and some of its products multiple times through online searches, but never actually gotten the chance to see one in the flesh. Here in Australia, the kits were either very hard to find or extremely expensive, which all but ruled them out for me.

One of the releases that particularly caught my eye was the LARC-V. I recall as a child hearing the stories of them from a neighbour serving in the Australian Army, and then finally seeing them operate with my own eyes. They were so interesting and so unique that they left an impression on me that would last for years. So, whilst the LARC was on the wish list for some point down the road, in reality it seemed quite unlikely that I would ever actually get the chance to build one because of the elusive nature of the Hobby Fan kits. You can therefore imagine my surprise when the opportunity arouse to build one for an enthusiast who had been as intrigued by the LARC as I had. He had managed to source a kit and was ready to have it built, so that is where this story begins. But before I start, here is a little history on the subject -

The LARC-V (Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo, 5 ton) was developed during the 1950s by the United States and was used for a variety of auxiliary roles. It first saw action during the Vietnam War and was used extensively by the US Army and Navy for beach supply. They supported the 101st Airborne Division in 1967 and later the 1st Cavalry Division in 1968. The LARC-V would later see active service with the Argentinian Forces during the Falkland Islands conflict.

The LARC-V had an aluminium hull and had a top land speed of just under 50km/h, a water speed of 7.5 knots and was operated by a crew of 3. It could carry up to 20 passengers or a load of just under 5T.

968 examples were produced and were used by the United States, Australia, Argentina, Portugal, The Philippines as well as Iceland. And with that the model was complete.

The kit arrived and after a little investigation I was surprised to see it was a 2014 tooling. I could have sworn it was older than that !

Emptying the box reveals a pile of resin, some decals and a small photo etch fret.