Hi Zak,
Yes, it is pretty much what I expected. In fact I'd say it is somewhat better than I was expecting. All up it cost me about $150 with postage ($153.46 in fact), so I wasn't expecting a museum grade replica. She looks good though, quite to scale and nicely detailed.
I was setting myself for a measure of disappointment, but I have been having a bit of fun racing it about the house. All the functions appear t work; my daughter noted with alarm that there was smoke coming out of it!. The up/down doesn't work as I expected it to. I thought there'd be seperate up and down on the stick, instead it's all on the down stick and I'm guessing a cam rotates and cycles the barrel up and down. Not an issue though.
The BB mechanism seems to work. The light flashes and there's a 'clack' as it fires. The recoil of the vehicle is a bit alarming I must say.
I can see why they need to be slowed down. It doesn't help being ham-fisted, but the remote is touchy. I'll have it sitting there and gently moving the stick to do a slow turn, when it will suddenly spin about. If I'm really careful I can get it to crawl along, but it seems to prefer flat-out.
There was a slight imperfection in the moulding of the back plate which meant the mount for one mudguard hinge wasn't on very securely. I broke it off entirely when fitting the mudguard in place.
One track link (metal) wasn't formed properly. A casting defect, so that it was only being held together at one end by the track pin.
Luckily I had ordered a few track links earlier to get a feel for the size, so I had spares. So she's been in the workshop having a link change-out already! I managed to remove the drive sprocket without any problems, but putting it all back was a bit of a pain and I found out how to remove the idler without splitting it. A bit fiddly but it's all good now.
All in all, I'm very happy with it
Cheers,
Michael