Kaczor wrote:in the end, you will have like 2% of the Vandra left
I would say between 10 and 20 percent of the kit will be used. For a rivet counter like me, its not the best investment i have made. But somehow, its better than starting with nothing.
MonsieurTox wrote:Great job Louis, the amount of work you're putting in that kit to get it looking great is paying off.
Thanks, its fun fixing stuff, finding solutions and do things i have not seen before.
Continuing with the build.
Before building the gun base, its time to complete the interior. We can see that the single diamond style treadplate at the back is in 3 sections, two are missing in this photo. There is an horizontal metal rack on the floor to hold on to something.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
View of the 1/35 kit, showing the ammo holders on the side walls. I did not find yet how the ammo rounds were secured to them, likely some latch or removable bracket. Kit and references are not showing the whole thing.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
The Vandra kit comes with 10 nicely moulded ammo rounds in resin, ready to fire with the fuse on. The diameter is actually good for a 155mm round... phew.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
The fighting compartment floor is done with the ammo racks on the sides. The air filters are the Mato M4A1 filters modified with a new top and side details. The floor rack seen earlier will be added later.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
The interior will look impressive with the ten 155mm ammo rounds stored in place, a rare sight in 1/16 scale RC.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
You can fully see why the raised fighting compartment floor of the Vandra kit need to be lowered as it should be for an accurate representation of the M12, otherwise nothing would be right, including the midget size engine air filters provided with the kit... i did salvage the top of the Vandra air filters to transplant on the Mato ones, with some modifications.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
Switching effort to the howitzer gun barrel. The M1918M1 howitzer that equips the M12 is quite large and is not a single tapered barrel length. It is mostly a suite of cylindrical sections in descending diameter size. This is the Academy 1/35 kit barrel used as a model for extrapolation to 1/16.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
I decided to replace the Vandra howitzer and built a new one from scratch. The resin barrel is quite heavy and would likely give problems with the recoil system to be designed. It needs to be light. Every section of the Vandra barrel is also undersized. As you can see, the 155mm round is too large to exit the barrel, the extrapolated Vandra muzzle in real life would have a diameter of 144mm.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
For rigidity, simplicity and lightness, i have selected to create the barrel in Carbon fiber tubes. This is possible here because the M1918M1 individual barrel sections are not tapered.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
Carbon fiber tubes of diameter going from 5mm to 60mm in diameter, matt or glossy, can be purchased on ebay from various Chinese vendors. The cost depends on the diameter sizes and length. I purchased mine a couple of years ago. The buyer need to shop around for the best deal. As i needed only a few inches per diameter size, the total cost of the material was below $100 and i only used about half the length. I have enough for another barrel if i wanted to. A metal barrel would be complicated to create, heavy and would cost a fortune.
- 1/16 RC US 155mm Gun Motor Carriage M12 - Build
- Capture10.JPG (76.26 KiB) Viewed 1743 times
continuing barrel story on following post
