RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

What a brilliant solution to the lack of space for both a battery and a receiver I shall be taking another look at my M16,
I knew I was making the right decision about changing the control board because like you I discovered the cheap and very nasty wiring attached to it.
I was warned off of using the original speaker because it was supposed to be at the limit of its electrical abilities,
I pin vised a multitude of holes in each side stowage bin and put a Mato (Actually Chinese Rip off ) rectangular speaker in each one,
They give the Elmod sound chip room to breathe
I await with interest your plans if any for the winch.
With 1/16 working electrical winches now available @ Banggood it is an area I might revisit.
I think your build is going to get a lot of interest from lots of Forum members

The machine guns were screwed and glued...

Clearly making a pigs ear of the job just once wasn't enough for the assembly folks

Hi, thank you Jarndice for your encouragements.

Guys that have seen my previous builds know about my fondness for the M2 machine gun. I must have built 30 of them in past decade. Although the US half track is the star of this build, the four M2 .50 machine guns on their quad mount are the co-star and delivering the punch. As such, I have decided to make an effort to make sure the machine guns are equally treated. They need to have the same quality of build that I will give the rest of the model.

Instead of getting an Aber detailing set, these M2s absolutely need to be functional with gun flash and sound. So today I developed a prototype of the M2 that will feature on this build.

Below are two of the WSN M2s. They are well detailed but lack finesse. The barrel is their main weakness. Small LED wires are running through them in a trench like feature that makes them weak and easily distorted. If I was keeping them, I would simply replace the barrel by a brass tube and some fine tuning of the rest.
But the goal is to go a step further and replace them completely with the more detailed Tamiya M2. A new metal barrel is made using K&S 8126 (2.38mm) brass tube. Flash is provided by a large 1.5mm fibre optic. A nail file is then used to gradually reduce the brass tube in size up to the muzzle to give it a barrel look and feel. A larger brass tube is then glued over the tip to create the muzzle and sanded to the proper diameter and feel.

In the picture below, the Tamiya barrel is cut right after the sleeve and discarded. The Tamiya parts for the sleeve are then transposed on the brass barrel. At the bottom is the WSN barrel which is a bit bigger than the others but not as much as picture seems to show as it is closer to the camera.
A 3mm LED has been made thinner and a 1.5mm hole has been drilled into it so that the fibre optic can be solidly glued to it for a good connection without going too deep into it. In the picture below, the parts are being prepared for the assembly of the chamber. The LED will be fully enclosed within the body of the machine gun. I am aware that the flash of the LED will also come out of the chamber through the openings. Before I apply material that will hide it, I want to see how it will look when operating. It might provide interesting flash action coming out of the chamber as well...
It is important to be aware that two of the M2s on the quad mount have their mechanism reversed because the feeding mechanism is inward whether the M2 is on the left or right of the quad mount. This was properly reflected on the WSN machine guns.
Therefore, two of the Tamiya M2 need to be modified as well. To make this simple, the left modified WSN cranking mechanism has been carved out of the body and made ready to be transposed on the Tamiya M2.
And here we have the finished prototype of the new M2s for the build with the original WSN below it. The Tamiya cranking handle was used.
The front and rear mounts were also carved out of the WSN machine gun and transposed to the Tamiya.
Notice the two LED wires that will go into the mount without being too apparent. The positive wire is always the longer one, and also the one to which a 200 Ohm resistor need to be connected to somewhere along the way to the control board. I have already tested that the MTC-2 flash port can lit up 4 LEDs at the same time.
These new M2s will be strait shooters and strong. If ever one of the barrel is not fully centered, its brass so a little but strong bending can correct the situation. These barrels will never break.
Now need to make 3 others but I am out of fibre optics so I will not be able to complete them until the order comes in. Overall, the prototype took 4 hours to build but I expect the others to be made faster. Need some kind of assembly chain to ensure they are all created with the same process, length and size.

Regards, Louis

Absolutely incredible attention to detail, only matched by the execution. Oh that I had 1% of your ability.

It’s like an episode of “Weapons Hunter” !
I’d love to see what you could do with a Flakvierling !!

Thank you Silversurfer and Herman for your encouragements. I have 48 years of plastic modelling behind me but my hope is that the work and explanations here make it look easy for others to do something similar and better. I use very simple tools and basic techniques. Skills improve with practice...

This post is for the cutting of the cabin and rear compartment.

Like many Half track fans, I like to see the cabin armor windshield raised and flaps on doors lowered, and the flaps on the M16 rear section lowered in firing position as seen below. Notice the Browning M1919 machine gun at the front for defense, regular .50 cal ammo boxes pilled up on the raised armored windshield. You will definitely see these on this model as well.
First task is to do an inspection and determine how to best do this. Time to put a new deburring blade on my hobby knife. The cabin plastic is quite thick and not easy to cut. Making headway into it will involve more that just scribbling the lines around the windshield and flaps. It requires heavy handling that can send you to the infirmary if not done carefully.
The rear compartment is easier, the plastic is strait and a bit thinner I think.
This is what I want to achieve.
FYI, showing off the poor skills of the WSN employee that originally built my M16... I am showing a horizontal strait line under the base of the flap line. Red arrows show how the base part was glued, with lots of glue. The part was saved but I had to sand blast the whole interior.
To help me scribe a strait line with the blade and metal ruler, I am making good use of simple vise grips purchased at the dollar store.
That was easy enough. I few wounds in the plastic are filled with putty and sanded smooth.
Work on the cabin flaps and armored windshield is slow and methodological to avoid personal wounds and damage to the parts as much as possible. The plastic is way too thick to be realistic but that's the way it is. If you are lucky, the WSN builder did not drown the windshield in glue and can be removed the easy way with a blade inserted in between, not mine.
The windshield is thin and fragile and was damaged a bit in the removal process. The glue is removed by sanding.
To give the armored windshield some integrity back, it was glued to a thin plasticard sheet, cut and sanded. Alternative is to redo it all in scratch. The two positioning holes at the bottom can be filled.
Continuing on following post

The basic body parts are made ready.
The windows are carved out from the cabin main windshield.
Looking at references make me realise how thin the half track cabin side armor is. I was about to make a mistake by reusing the flaps as is.
The cut out parts are way too thick and need to be reduced in size. It would be simpler to replace them by new ones in thin plasticard but I am sentimental and after all the effort to salvage the flaps, I decided to make them thinner, but thick enough to be solid. It is my personal taste to glue them solidly in place and not try to put them on some hinges. I do not want to play with them, accuracy is more important and they will get a lot of details added to them.
I am noticing what seems to be the machine gun anchor point where the Browning is located on the pictures shown in previous post.
The armored windshield is reattached to the cabin.
I am noticing that the base for the supports brackets are provided.
Overview of the cabin as it stands today. It will require a lot of detailing.
Regards, Louis

WOW! This is really looking good!

Having helped restore a real M3 half-track, you realize that the armor on these things were really only designed to deflect small caliber bullets or some shrapnel. Using the word "armor" is a bit of a stretch...

tankme wrote:Having helped restore a real M3 half-track, you realize that the armor on these things were really only designed to deflect small caliber bullets or some shrapnel. Using the word "armor" is a bit of a stretch...

That's why they were called a Purple Heart box. Cause you were gonna get injured in one.