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Two points in your amazing build grabbed my attention. One is the point about the difference between the two metal axles for WPL. The other is your clever way of drilling out, reinforcing, and sturdily reassembling the gun barrel. I learn from your posts all the time.

Thank you Doc,


Now for the exhausts. I have to rely on eyeballing some pictures from the web to determine what to do; shapes, size, placement.

What i saw was a muffler under a heat shield. Everything needs to be custom made. I had to scavange through my stuff to find compatible material. There is no 3D printing for me.


For the mufflers, I selected a pipe that seemed to be of the right diameter, cut it and crushed a bit to give it a muffler shape, and gave it plugs at both ends.


The pipes and especially the 90 degree section at the front are made of leftover sprues from the Panzer III build. It's impossible to recreate a curved pipe by bending a brass tube, at one point, it just folds.


The mufflers are made and installed.


The heat shield is cut from a .25mm brass sheet, ventilation holes are made based on approximate diameter and position, determined the best i could from pics.


It's always a challenge to make 2 exactly similar.


The embossed stiffeners are represented by 0.8mm half rods.


And here we have the two heat shields ready to be installed.


And then installed on the model.


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Now for the hatches. The top right side hatch is separately molded. Good, this will be for the on/off switch. As for the front visor hatches, i want to show them open.


Again, i had to browse some pics and do something similar.


Getting rid of the front hatches, first by removing as much material with a drill before fine tuning with the knife and sanding.


Created new hatches and drew markings of the external shapes on the hull for the rain guards.


First, rough rain guards are installed on the markings, and they will be reduced in height, fine tuned, then given the external 45 degree weld lines around them.


Working hinges are made from Panzer III engine hinges, leftover from the Trumpeter kit build, and highly modified to match pictures.

Raw material below

Top hatch is installed and the frontal hatches are given the weld lines, before cutting the area for the top hinges. The welding on the BRDM-2 is quite rough, i tried to represent it.


Hinges are installed, including the apparatus in the middle that seems to control the opening and closing.


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Top view of the real vehicle hatches, used as reference.


Overview of the model hatches


Rain guards were also added to the top hatches, as seen in ref pics.


The model as it stands today


Next step, the deep wading trim vane.

Regards, Louis

Another captivating project mr Mcq11.
I reckon you will have the market cornered on these wheeled IFV's before long !

HERMAN BIX wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 2:36 am Another captivating project mr Mcq11.
I reckon you will have the market cornered on these wheeled IFV's before long !

After a few tanks, it's good to change to a wheeled vehicle. I also have a BTR-70 waiting to be completed.


This post is for the trim vane.

Looking at the frontal picture from last week, this is how the trim vane came with the kit, or some part of an anchor with a broken blade. It's totally disgusting for the vendor to have provided such a mess to its customers, it's nothing that can be useful and it look terrible. It took me a while to clean it all up.


The trim vane should look like this.


Without any model to use as a reference and also without any detailed information as to how the mechanism works under the blade, i decided to keep it simple and fixed. The trim vane would be constantly hit by something in the field and would be destroyed if too lightly built. The blade is made of 1mm plasticard, solidly anchored on its lenght to the hull with a spacer at the bottom of it where it does not show. I recreated in 1.5mm brass rods and some tubing a much simplified mechanism anchored strait in the hull by the lower end point.

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Hi,

These posts are for the headlights.

Reference captured from the web, mainly Prime Portal. Complex arrangement, with headlight, low vis headlight, signal and an horn on the right side.


These metal parts are from the AFV-Model T-55 headlight set. They are compatible and seem like a perfect match.


They need some work to clean up and also plug the back of the headlight as is have decided to use small LEDs and run the wire through a tube that will be used as a stand, as per reference.


Mounted on the vehicle after much eyeballing and calculations.


The guards are something, need soldered brass rods and strip for solidity. For the brass sodering of the brass strip with the 0.8mm rods, I had to create a jig using a nail file. I found that nail file are a good base for soldering. It can take the heat. I drilled holes in the nail file to hold on to the brass rod legs in the right position, allowing me to solder them solidly in place.


Then the brass strip component is added on top and soldered.


The guard before clean up.


After clean up with a set of files, these are the finalized headlight guards before installation on the model.


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And these are the headlight arrangements, with the horn and signal.

The model as it stands today.


Next step, the tail lights, add all the brass handles and hooks, and fine tuning the tons of imperfections on the hull.

Regards, Louis

Your soldering skills and creating beautiful details out of nothing never cease to impress.