RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Good Morning, CH,
I am ordering some proper stars and 3rd Army lettering today. I will have to use the Mato decal of 'In The Mood' but I will trim it with an X-acto and sand it lightly to kill the sheen before applying it. It will turn out looking all right, I think. ;o)
regards,
Painless

Good Morning, Dr. Scalawag,
It is the Tamiya .50 cal. I love that thing for it's detail. It looks amazing once assembled and painted and the functionality of the loading gate and removable ammo cans and tray adds a very nice touch of realism. The molds of the Mato .50 cal and the older and even the newer HL .50 cal ( which is modeled after the old Tamiya .50 cal, btw ) don't match up to it. I think in the future tho' that I am going to spray the components while they are still on the sprue and touch things up once it is assembled vs the laborious 'assemble and hand paint' gig I have been doing. That runs into some serious time even with the aid of a magnifier. Thanks for the kind commentary, Scalawag, it is appreciated. ;o)
regards,
Painless

Good Morning, Alpha,
Looking through helmets to hang off the back of the turret, I found that one with the desired peg molded on under the rim but saw that it had a molding error pin mark on the top of it. I was going to set it aside as unusable but this idea came to me. I'm sure that Sgt. Pool had a number of close shaves given his propensity of commanding the tank from the open hatch all of the time. It adds a bit of fun to everything using the imagination. ;o) As far as the lights go, I really do think that Mato changed their bulbs out over the years, either through design or just using the newer ones as they became available. I'm glad that I did not have to do a lot of light can repair as updating the wiring for 2.4GHz was plenty enough extra work. ;o)
warm regards,
Painless

you may have said ? the 2.4 tx/rx unit on my in the mood sadly now departed [regrets] had the sound of the radial ,and the sound of the slow fire browning [30 .?] 2 second burst,s I replaced the speaker with the better taigen .. a vast improvement ,but how does yours fair with the sound pot old chap ?

CH,
The 2.4GHz Mato update came with a new speaker and sound chip. The same radial engine and slow fire MG sounds are there just crisper. The new sound pot is a boon, definitely. The sound can get very loud without distortion. I keep it turned down to around 25 % and that is easily heard.
regards,
Painless

PainlessWolf wrote:Good Morning, Alpha,
Looking through helmets to hang off the back of the turret, I found that one with the desired peg molded on under the rim but saw that it had a molding error pin mark on the top of it. I was going to set it aside as unusable but this idea came to me. I'm sure that Sgt. Pool had a number of close shaves given his propensity of commanding the tank from the open hatch all of the time. It adds a bit of fun to everything using the imagination. ;o) As far as the lights go, I really do think that Mato changed their bulbs out over the years, either through design or just using the newer ones as they became available. I'm glad that I did not have to do a lot of light can repair as updating the wiring for 2.4GHz was plenty enough extra work. ;o)
warm regards,
Painless

CLOSE CALL?????????????????????????? ..............Never the less... a good added touch of detail like how you did the chipping of the texture put on those helmets back in the day

Nice Job Painless

ALPHA

PS. have you given any thought to contacting Palepainter? I recall him having a post where he spoke of offering stencil type services to those who need it ...I remember it because I had thought of contacting him for some of my markings... but I decided not to because of the complexity of some of them

Alpha,
Contacting Pale is exactly what I will do since searches for workable decals and stencils are coming up bupkis. Thanks for the refreshing idea, chum. ;o)
warm regards,
Painless

PainlessWolf wrote:Alpha,
Contacting Pale is exactly what I will do since searches for workable decals and stencils are coming up bupkis. Thanks for the refreshing idea, chum. ;o)
warm regards,
Painless

If worse comes to worse.. if there is an art store in the area...check if they have frisket paper .... it has a light tacky backing..meant for airbrushing murals and the like ,,,you could take your stock decals and stick them to the frisket ....then cut the image out with a sharp Xacto knife ...stick it on to your Sherman..shoot on some color and that should be all she wrote for that lol...the stuff is pretty good...just don't get too close with your airbrush... that's about the only thing that will cause it to lift and bleed just light misting coats

Good Luck with your adventure Painless

ALPHA

Alpha,
Thank you for the sound advice. Problem solved by the Inestimable Mr. Pale Painter. ;o) Stencils on the way.
Warm regards,
Painless

Toyed around this evening with painting the turret inner hatches back to a more realistic shade of OD. Gun tanks didn't usually have light colored paint on the hatch undersides that I have seen. It tended to highlight the tanker's head like a halo. That made for easy targeting by enemy snipers. Also, I worked with a couple of posable tanker figures and mixed and matched some heads and hands and added a helmet ( sans bullet hole ;o) to get a St. Sgt. Pool and Loader. The insignia is wrong and I will eventually track down a couple of figures to replace these with. You tankers can see and judge here. Pictures: