Thanks Wildboar, that's some serious praise there! I actually went to bed a good 4-5 hours before I fell asleep last night but not sure that was the tanks fault to be honest... Thankfully I'm pretty lucky at the moment in that all of my next jobs are simply redoing what I've already done before. That means I no longer have to worry about how to reinforce the track assemblies, how to extend the axles or how to make the tracks bigger... That said I'm sure the challenges are FAR from over but still, I'm in a good place right now! Thanks again for the kind words though, makes it much easier to keep on track
Nothgrim, don't give up based on that, it sounds like you just set yourself a starting point that is inaccessible! I checked the date of my first post here and I've only been working on this project for about 30 months so far. And yes that is actually a long ass time but I took a year and a half off in the middle and numerous other months slip by with little to no progress too! Most of my actual delays (read - times I want to work on it but can't) have been caused by the need to solve problems that I didn't know would exist, much as wildboar says! Moneywise it's been far more affordable than you'd think, especially thanks to the generosity of some of the members here. You'll also see that throughout the whole build I've basically 'made do' with whatever I can get my hands on. I got a great deal on the plasticard in the first place so the shell wasn't that expensive and then things like wood and fittings don't exactly bump up the budget too much! One of the biggest expenses so far has actually been the CNC cut rear grill which set me back about 20 quid iirc, but that's an acceptable cost to make the end product as accurate to the source material as possible! I wanted to have everything in the turret working from the get go as well, but soon realised that just making the thing move would be tough enough! Currently I just want to get it 'ready' to move and looking how I want it to look. The job of actually getting it mobile may well come after final detailing for all I know, but I know it WILL come some day as I'm not going to let this build go until it's finished! Seriously, don't write it off just yet, it's a pretty fun undertaking and the more obstacles I overcome, the fewer you'll have to!
Also, imagine my recent horror to discover I'm actually NOT the first person to do this! I found some images linking to a dutch tank club (battle tank nederlands I think) where someone had made some kind of RC
mammoth. I soon realised however that it's pretty basic... It doesn't seem to be in any particular scale, the basic shape is wrong, it uses standard tracks (so everything is too small) and there is next to no detailing. That's kind of good as if I'd found one that some rich guy with a workshop had made, perfect in every way, I would be utterly devastated! So, I'm NOT the first person to try making an RC
mammoth tank. But I WILL be the one that gets it right. I don't have a workshop or a 'budget' for this build, I do have the dedication to individually make every single track link by hand though and that's exactly what will make this build better than an off the shelf 'adaptation'. I WILL finish this build, even if it takes another 30 months! And when I do, this guy will wonder why he even bothered
But enough of that! Just to wrap up a response to Nothgrim, I've always umm'd and ah'd a bit about scale since I got started. While I'm happy with it I do somethimes wonder if I got it right... Recently I came across a few more official pictures that make me wonder even more! They should be linked below if the website allows it.
Renegade - Direct comparison
Original - Direct Comparison
Obviously the size changed drastically between the two games based on these images! It's always been the Renegade dimensions I based my dimensions on though so I guess the former isn't all that controversial. All the same I decided to do the maths anyway...
As always, average height in Europe in the 90s is around 5'10", say 1.77m. That means the
mammoth in the first image is roughly 478cm wide, 301cm tall and 743cm long (903 including cannon)
The second image would suggest the commando is slightly shorter than the outer side of the sloping track guard (perspective plays little role in this image so direct displacement works fine) This would suggest a height of roughly 6'4" or about 1.95m. Ok, so maybe it isn't as drastic a change as it first seems! Still, thisa isn't the best image to take renegade measurements from anyway, this one is...
That image shows the full length of the
Mammoth AND real life Abrahms tank together with 0 perspective loss. Provided the Medium tank in the game is an exact copy of the Abrahms then it will be 9.77m long and the
mammoth here is approximately 115% that size. That would make it 11.23 meters from butt to barrell, so it IS a significant increaser over that first image after all...
However... I have a feeling that the
Mammoth I'm building comes in at something like 13m long with the barrels included... Quite a large error if I'm right! An image I posted at the very beginning of this topic shows an overall length of 13.09m being used in which case I'm quite a bit over! Will measure the build next time I'm able but been building up the two remaining wooden reinforcement assemblies yesterday so she's currently on her back! Hopefully I'm not too far out here but luckily noone will ever know except you lot reading this. Just remember, it's our little secret ok?!
Also in today's news, my new sprockets came yesterday! All the way from Hong Kong too, the hobby capital of the world! No idea how they arrived so quickly but am pretty chuffed they did! Will need to get them drilled out to 10mm like the others but unfortunately I have another issue with these in that they aren't exactly the same as those I used before... Mike (sassgrunt) advised me this may be the case and he's right. These are reproductions or similar and are virtually identical so they're fine for my build, BUT, I've been using some very prominent circular impressions on the old parts for locating and constructing the axles. Impressions which don't exist on these new parts... Will ask the machinist if he can accurately drill them in for me as then there's no problem but otherwise I may be in trouble!
Will update with images once both these remaining track assembelies are done, shouldn't be long as all the pieces got cut out yesterday and they're mostly assembled already. Even added the bolt that fix them to the hull already so just need to screw it all together today which won't take a moment! Then will probably form the other two pieces of armour as I can't get out to the machinist for a few days now which will prevent finishing the remaining axles. Whatever I do next, I'll let you know when it's done! Thanks again for the kind words and I hope you'll keep watching!
, You have an amazing gift for engineering solutions ! 
. A few more microcontrollers are rolling into the market soon that could possibly lower the cost but I will have to play around with them first.
. Keep up the awesomeness! I'll be sure to check back soon.
...hence this odd post that I have since edited... 
