My First Tank, "do you still remember your First '!

[ALPHA]

My first tank....a 1/72nd scale airfix Sherman

remember it going up in flames in a mock battle

ALPHA

[spongehoobtank82]

Mine was an 1/25 Israeli Merkava, although I may of destroyed it testing sloped armour vs high powered air rifle and f117a nighthawks really do need computers to keep them stable in flight as mine just bombed out the window ha ha ha

[hawkeye3guns]

Hi my first tank was bought as a box of bits to use as a tank hull on a RC LCT boat back in 1978 for £25, after getting home and rummaging through the bits realised it was a tamiya Gepard ( of which I test fired some of the early ones for proof) so I restored the model back to full working condition and painted it in the Oxenbourden Firing range colours as test vehicle No 2 and she's be going ever since.

regards Denzil

[brizo58]

Hi all,
My first tank was 1/25th RICO later named TAMIYA Panzer111 single motor rubber band tracks they also done a StuG111. This was back in the mid to late 60's . Brian...

[ALPHA]

Hi ALPHA ,
Oh for the Good Old Days of our Innocent Youth.

Yes a couple of my early airfix planes also went up in flames too.
It was a Thunderbolt that I never liked, hung it on the Aussie Rotary Clothes Line, poured turps over it, lit it, and spun the line around.
Oh we were naughty boy, can't have any 'boys fun' now, to much Political Correctness, the Nanny State, the Helicopter Mums, and just too much Cotton Wool.

Wayne

Most of our models went up in some pyrotechnic way... the celebration of the New Year was grand...an M80 taped to the undercarriage of a plane or slipped down the hatch of a tank proved to be great fun

ALPHA

[PainlessWolf]

Good Morning,
My first tank ( that ran ) was a Sherman Easy Eight dressed out for Korea: http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=26436 That tank along with complete cases full of other 1/35 scale armor was donated to my small town Library when I moved to CO back in 1980. My first 1/16 scale tank was the Tamiya Remote Control Gepard. It was a gift from Phil Battany who owned Boulder Hobbies. We had a friendship based on appreciation of the big Tamiya RC scale tanks and ships which were waaaay out of my price range at the time. I would go down to his shop and buy some small thing as an excuse to say Hello and hang out for a while. He really surprised me one year by just handing me the open kit saying that some one had returned it as parts missing and to see what I could do with it. Of course, nothing was missing. Someone had started the build and dropped it as it was and still is a very complicated kit. Phil got to see it run and displayed it in his store for over a year. My return gift to him was a bottle of good Scotch every Christmas for all of the years afterwards until he retired and moved somewhere NW. The Gepard went with me when I moved back to NC for eight months to help out the last of my family. I moved back to CO on a Motorcycle at the end of those months ( escaped, really ) and when I called to have my stuff shipped back to me, I found out that my cousin's son had gotten into the boxes, pulled out the Gepard and destroyed it trying to make it run.
regards,
Painless

[ALPHA]

Ever glue a baby popper ( mini camel brand firecrackers ) to Grasshoppers ? Talk about fun ...We soon graduated from the ground explosives to aerials.... using aluminum irrigation pipes...and shooting each other with them Those sure were the days...too bad they outlawed Fireworks here in this little rock in the Pacific ...Hawaii to be specific ....though I'm pretty sure I won't be blowing up any of my RC tanks soon

ALPHA

[greengiant]

Tanks were not my first models.The first I recall were models of Huey helicopters, and a US aircraft carrier. The hueys I bought with money that I was suppose to be using for bus passes to get home from school. I did a lot of walking at that time. The aircraft carrier was found under a bridge one winter when I was about 12. Someone had dropped it over the side and it was in hundreds of pieces which I picked up glued back together. I was very proud of that but then had fun after making it float by pushing it out into a lake and shooting it up with a bb gun and sinking it. My first tanks were those little ones on wheels Made I think in Austria in the late 50's. I think they cost about 50cents US and they were pretty accurately little models somewhere between HO and N scale. Us kids would have huge tank battles using these in sort of a kids chess game with made up rules. about all we knew was that it took a lot of US type tanks to get close enough to officially kill a German tank.
My first working model of anything was a American civil war cannon with wooden wheels and metal tires and barrel (about 25 caliber). It was quite an accurate model. Than to make it more real I used crushed match heads as powder and tinfoil rolled into a more or less round shape and rammed that down the barrel. To fire it a stickpin was heated up until it was red and then put in the touchhole. The first shot ended up with the cannon flying about 20 yds in one direction and the tinfoil pretty much staying at the point of ignition. After analyzing this The cannon was nailed to a heavy board reloaded and fired again with good results ( lots of noise and the tinfoil ball actually shooting out the barrel for about 20 ft).
Playing with this stopped when a friend of mine loaded it and fired with me in its path. It punched a hole through my jeans and into my leg at the rear of one knee. It didn't go in deep but I spent about a half hour pulling out tinfoil pieces from the wound. After a good washing with a disinfectant and some bandages that cannon was relegated to a hiding place in my parents garage and never thought of again. My wound healed without getting infected and nobody but me and my friend ever knew about it. That cannon might still be hidden away in what was my parents garage 40 years ago.
I finally remembered my first remote control tank. It was a M60 MBT in I think 1/35 scale and had only driving control via a wired keypad. I think it was a tamaya model. It had a plastic torsion bar suspension that worked quite well until some of the sand I was running it round on jammed up the torsion bars. I remember working out the sand and then in by young stupidity using a petroleum based oil to keep the sand out which in short order softened the styrene so much that the torsion bars more or less melted away. I think I just threw that one in the trash. It did teach me that petroleum products not specifically meant for use on plastics shouldn't be used.

[wibblywobbly]

Ahhhh, the lost days of my youth. Used to spend hours building Airfix models, but when Fireworks night arrived the temptation was just too much.....

[ALPHA]

Tanks were not my first models.The first I recall were models of Huey helicopters, and a US aircraft carrier. The hueys I bought with money that I was suppose to be using for bus passes to get home from school. I did a lot of walking at that time. The aircraft carrier was found under a bridge one winter when I was about 12. Someone had dropped it over the side and it was in hundreds of pieces which I picked up glued back together. I was very proud of that but then had fun after making it float by pushing it out into a lake and shooting it up with a bb gun and sinking it. My first tanks were those little ones on wheels Made I think in Austria in the late 50's. I think they cost about 50cents US and they were pretty accurately little models somewhere between HO and N scale. Us kids would have huge tank battles using these in sort of a kids chess game with made up rules. about all we knew was that it took a lot of US type tanks to get close enough to officially kill a German tank.
My first working model of anything was a American civil war cannon with wooden wheels and metal tires and barrel (about 25 caliber). It was quite an accurate model. Than to make it more real I used crushed match heads as powder and tinfoil rolled into a more or less round shape and rammed that down the barrel. To fire it a stickpin was heated up until it was red and then put in the touchhole. The first shot ended up with the cannon flying about 20 yds in one direction and the tinfoil pretty much staying at the point of ignition. After analyzing this The cannon was nailed to a heavy board reloaded and fired again with good results ( lots of noise and the tinfoil ball actually shooting out the barrel for about 20 ft).
Playing with this stopped when a friend of mine loaded it and fired with me in its path. It punched a hole through my jeans and into my leg at the rear of one knee. It didn't go in deep but I spent about a half hour pulling out tinfoil pieces from the wound. After a good washing with a disinfectant and some bandages that cannon was relegated to a hiding place in my parents garage and never thought of again. My wound healed without getting infected and nobody but me and my friend ever knew about it. That cannon might still be hidden away in what was my parents garage 40 years ago.

ALPHA