Just ordered another Walker Bulldog

[Jay-Em]

Two rivet-counters just had a stroke...

The Bulldog scoffs at any scale-sensibilities, is too big, is too wide, too high, and yet, they stìll sell like hotcakes, if I may believe a friend of mine that works for the company that imports them to the Netherlands. Kids lòve them.

Thanks to him I got a box full of half-way broken Bulldogs, gearboxes, motors and rx18 sets.

Upto now I got three working ones from that bin-o-parts, and they go like stink on a hot day. Due to their off-scale construction, they run about anywhere.

Tbh, I never threw a track outside of high grass. And I run the fully plastic ones. They're light, nimble and are a good basis for the weirdest modding. For another friend I made a Panzer 4 lookalike out of it, like Hollywood tended to use in their cheapie WW2 movies in the 60's and 70's.

For a non-rivet-counter it looks good enough as a Afrika Korps tank, and my friend is happy with it. Shame the former-Panther machinegun broke-off, would make it look even better. He does not care if it's authentic, it just has to work so he and his kid can have some noisy, cat-scaring fun in the garden. Ill see if I can get my iPad to uploadthe pics.

Woot! It's a bit of a hassle, but it works..and boy, is the iPad cam crappy..

Movie-Prop-tank

The mad-Modder strikes again

Not bad for a box full of broken and missing parts, I'd say.

Btw. To my amazement I discovered that the Bundeswehr had Bulldogs in the 60's. I still got one Bulldog -in pieces- left, plùs a sheet of Leopard decals. Hmmm.... Switch the apu exhaust around, cut off a bit of the mud-guards, a bottle of NATO green, some putty to make a baret for the stock helmeted commander..

*trundles off to man-cave, softly mumbling to himself..*

[PainlessWolf]

Good morning,
Shades of 'Patton' ;o) Very well done and very nice you sorting out your friend. I love my M41. It's in the lineup for a detail job.
regards,
Painless

[Max-U52]

I'm still waiting to see someone top this.

phpBB [video]

With the Corvette Headlights.

[von steiner]

The Walker Bulldog M41 with the "smoke, sounds and 2.4gig radio might not be here for awhile.
Why? Because I ordered it from BangGood in China and at first the company said it would ship in
6 to 9 days (Cargo/Cantainer ship) and then today I check the website and they said that they are going
to re-stock the warehouse in three weeks. So, I am bummed out but have been detailing that terrible
metallic green first edition M41 I have.

I find it funny that when you show off your work like the Tamiya M4 1/16 I just built, which is precision
modeling, or the HL M41 to your friends or children....
Well they think "what the hell is he doing playing around with a toy at his age?"

They don't understand and they would have a real hard time doing what you modelers do.
Anyway, no more rant. I love building stuff but got nailed with this terrible virus that knocked me off of the
game board for a few months.

If that (from China) Bulldog doesn't get here pretty soon...
I guess I will have to build another 1/35 tank. German of course.

One thing I know for sure is the day the Bulldog shows up, the TK22 gets ordered.

Patience.

VS

[Jay-Em]

Ugh!

You got hit with the "slow boat from china" -thing.

Happened to me when ordering the 1/12scale rotating beacons at Banggood (great for tanks!!) First order: not even a week, and it was here. Second order -beacons wére in stock- 3 weeks.. My word...

Three. Bloody. Weeks. For a bubble-envelope and €8.- of parts.

And the nagging that people give You when having fun? Fêh, I say. When people no longer play, they're dead inside. I bèt those grown-ups watch soccer, or football. A bunch of grown-ups in loudly coloured frocks, running behind a ball....

[HERMAN BIX]

Could also do replicas of the German tanks in Battle of the Bulge movie !
And Tobruk!
Plenty of scope to do machines from some iconic movies for sure !

Hard case to know that each time this page gets opened up , another rivit counter expires !!!!!

[Max-U52]

Glad to see I'm not the only fan of the Red Bear.







And I'll be adding the Red Bear to quite a few more.

[von steiner]

I talked to my father today. I wanted to know more about his landing at Iwo Jima.
LST 399 carried a vehicle called "The Duck."
They left the front on the LST and some of them never made it to shore because, he said that
the Duck would bow down in the front just as a wave would go over it and the vehicle would
sink. They were boyant though and floated.

They had four wheels and looked like a deuce and 1/2.
Anyway, I thought maybe he could give some info on the
Sherman M4.
Many years ago, my mother showed me some b/w photos that my dad had taken on Iwo Jima and
they were pretty graphic. Lot of respect for my father because he has never brought up the war unless
pressed for information.

I remember many convoys flying by us on Hiway 1 in Vietnam and saw lots of stuff but never a tank.
One APC ran over a civilian and it was pretty sad. Graphic. When they came flying down the road, you gave them a wide berth.

It is getting pretty depressing knowing that my HL M41 is hopefully slowly working it's way across the ocean.
Never again.

Even though I have never shot the 6mm air soft pellets at our German Short Haired dog, he hauls his butt
in the house when I fire up the HL M41 for a run on the home front.

VS

[von steiner]

After five weeks, the M41A3 made it's way from China to my doorstep.
This version has the 2.4 gig radio, speaker, multi-function circuit unit TK-EC001A, smoke, air-soft and
to my surprise... metal gear boxes.

Because it came with the metal gears, I am going to order metal sprockets and tracks.
I have to dig a little deeper to see what else needs to get beefed up.

I watched "Patton" last week and as you all know it is full of Bulldogs.
I have ideas for detailing the tank.
The firtst is to drop down the driver periscopes.
I got this catalog "Micro-Mart", the small tool specialists and it has everything a scale modeler could
dream of for small tools and detail items.

This one is going to take time and first I will focus on the R/C efforts and then the historical
detailing.

Will post up some photos in a few days.

respectfully,
VS

[Jay-Em]

My word! They certainly took their time..

Interested what You'll do with it.

I made a Bundeswehr Bulldog from the last -fairly complete- m41. It wasn't very hard. I only had to move the exhaust to the front, and make some exhaust pipe from a 220v solid lead. It's exactly the size of the HL pipe. I should have done that earlier. The plastic pipe is far too vulnerable.
Hardest part is yet to come. The Nebelwerfers, ergo : The smoke-grenade launchers. I think I'll order an extra Leopard sprue. There are a ton of them on the Leo. Germans sure love their smoke-grenades..

By the by, I was amazed where the Bulldog popped-up when doing some research. I thought it an exotic. How wrong I was. Must be one of the most successful export-tanks the Ami's ever made.