My order list of parts look like a house wife's on grocery day I have parts coming from 4 different countries...amazingly, to me the first part to arrive (receiver board for rx18) was all the way from UK and arrived in just 4 days! I thought the distance factor alone would cause things to arrive slowly but this was not so-it must have come by air (Unlike some vendors from elsewhere (of course I mean china) I never have any qualms about dealing with British companies and vendors as service is generally timely, efficient, and honest).
The tank project is going at glacial speed not just because of parts....Unfortunately my patience and energy is limited by disk disease so i am forced to do things in dribs and drabs, things go horribly slowly when I can only work a half hour at a time before being forced to take a break. That and the parts bottleneck means I'm not accomplishing near as much as I want to do as fast as i would like on this tank!
My last small project is from last night when some of the small parts arrived. SO THIS post may not be as interesting as I'd like either. But if my expensive mistakes help someone else to avoid them and not to waste time and money perhaps it's worth while...,l received the motor connector wires for the rx18 and soldered on a 5 inch extension to all four wires. I have plans to relocate the rx18 to the back, under the engine grills so I needed more wire to work with. Plan is to splice on solderless connectors in case this board blows out as well.
Of course soldering is superior in almost every way stronger neater, less bulky and less ugly so I try to keep the connectors to a minimum but sometimes they are simply more practical especially when all the problems are not worked out yet...
Also in the picture is the receiver board for the rx18-which arrived before the rx18 itself and no real idea of how I will even hook it up yet!
Other parts on the way:
Transmitter for the the rx18 unit since my old one won't work (only $10 from eBay UK THE shipping more then the parts)
-crystals for same
-2 X RX18 Boards (aliexpress)
-2xtk01 boards (old style, I have a cheap non SS Tiger 1 on the way and I'm guessing they won't go to waste)
(1 from eBay and one from aliexpress-they have a surprising number of HL parts if you know where to look, but their site search system is so buggy often just doesn't show them unless you search from multiple search engines!)
-2 X rx18 wiring sets (ebay I got two because one didn't have the 8 to 8 pin wire and because I knew I'd need spares for the inevitable mistakes)
I can't do anything until all the parts arrive I'm using the downtime to work on the drivetrain..
Here's an image taken the same day the board burned up. Driving on grass perhaps that's what killed the board?)
I was curious how the camo pattern would look against vegetation, clearly the sand pattern was meant for the brown steppes of Russia and perhaps explains why they went to a darker Dunkel gelb base late in the war during the fighting in the forests of Poland and Germany itself...
An update there's not enough for another post. Here's another picture
I sent away for a stencil set to do the turret numbers. The numbers are several sizes and cost $7 from amazon...I received the steel gearboxes from Mato too. Unfortunately went to install and they wouldn't fit! I miked the motors and the new ones are 2 or 3 mm bigger diameter. I thought fine I have mabuchi motors on the way also I'll just wait... Those motors turned out to be completely wrong not even close-they were huge! That's what I get from not ordering from an r/c house....will probably swap the stock motors into the steel gearboxes if they'll even fit. Lessons learned measure twice cut once....
I will solder ONe wire at a time and let the board cool for several minutes in between wires. 
If it does at least i know what to expect. If the Tiger 1 does have that board i may try adding a cooling fan of some kind, to see if there is any improvement in lifespan.
