Anti-funk project; Heng Long/Andy's HHQ Achilles RC

[Rob1970]

Rob, I am certainly intrigued by your ingenuity as you hide all the mechanisms in the hull and keep the open turret quite open for figures and details. I will continue to watch and cheer, albeit mostly silently. Go, Rob, go!

Well, one part of my mission is to retain as much as possible from the AHHQ kit's detail, because it is quite lovely. The few RC tanks with open turrets that I've seen often disappoint on the interior you can see. Another part of the mission is using as much of the original HL parts as I can, so the build is accessible to as many people as possible. It's the same mindset I had when I used to built scale models and turned "lowly and simple" Frog, Airfix and Matchbox kits into models that rivaled newer and more detailed offerings. Like turning this kit...



...by adding a scratchbuild interior...



...and a radar in the nose...



...all at 1/72 scale with nothing more than scraps of styrene, bit of left-over photo-etch and a lot of tinkering.





Anybody can buy a Tamiya kit and throw Eduard photo-etch and resin details at it (often for a lot of extra money, sometimes as much as 3 times the price of the kit itself), but scratchbuilding is King!
But I digress...

I got the smoker hooked up with one end going to a scratchbuild manifold to the exhaust and another end going away out of the top of the hull...



...and all the smoke comes out the right end...



...even with the top on and the deflector... deflectoring.



The other end comes out of the (what else) filler cap.



I made a little plug to go into the tube and topped it off with on of the kit's lids. I replaced the original handle with a piece of stainless steel.



And once painted it will just look like a normal kit part.



Next is figuring out the lights. I am going to -try- and use the kit parts, which are very detailed, nice and terribly fragile. But I might just use the HL Sherman parts for the lights. Also wondering what's up with those anyway. The output of the 7.1 module for the lights is 5.3volts (from what I measured a while back) and meanwhile (warm)white LEDs are usually 3 to 3.2volts and red LEDs even lower at 1.8 to 2.2volts. So that's a bit of a puzzle.

TTFN,
Rob

[Rob1970]

Conundrum time!!

Now, the kit pieces, as I said before, are lovely, detailed and -fragile-. Here they are compared to the some HL light guards from my large box of Sherman parts (everybody has a box of Sherman parts, right?)...



...and they stand about as much a change of surviving out in the field as a chocolate hammer in a forge. Now the HL lights and guards are good, the front lights being a gnat's ****hair away from being the same size. The HL rear lights and guards not so much, being the type that goes on top of the hull instead of on the rear like on the M10...



Then I remembered I got myself some metal replacements for my Firefly project (yeah, getting back to that one "soon") and wondered...



...and ye Gods yes! They do the M10 rear lights in metal too. So money was spent and things were ordered....



...I mean, it's only money, right? Now it is not quite fitting the mission statement of "using as much of the original HL parts as I can", but anyone else still could.
So that's it for now regarding the lights, but still plenty of stuff to do. Like Googling how you solder brass strip to make headlight guards for a Sherman or M10 in 1/16 scale...

TTFN,
Rob

[Raminator]

Lots of great work integrating Andy's kit with the Heng Long base Rob, with some very clever solutions for the gun mechanicals and smoker. Are you doing those weld beads with a 3D printing pen? They turned out really well!

[Rob1970]

Lots of great work integrating Andy's kit with the Heng Long base Rob, with some very clever solutions for the gun mechanicals and smoker. Are you doing those weld beads with a 3D printing pen? They turned out really well!

The welds on the Firefly build were indeed done with a 3D pen. You can read how I did them here.

[MonsieurTox]

Nice job so far!

I was going to make a custom turret gear like I do on most of my tank but I see if I have the large HL in stock, would save me some hours!

I'm planning to use a servo for the elevation of mine but your solution is very interesting, I have to think a bit more about that.

The HL Gearboxes doesn't need major surgery to be used inside the AHHQ transmission cover, I used the kitpart on mine and that was pretty straight forward (the kitpart need to be Thinned on the inside on one place though).

IMG_20240623_171435.jpg (2.36 MiB) Viewed 1419 times

Keep up the good work!

[Rob1970]

The HL Gearboxes doesn't need major surgery to be used inside the AHHQ transmission cover, I used the kitpart on mine and that was pretty straight forward (the kitpart need to be Thinned on the inside on one place though).

Looks like you're using the Kit's lower hull and suspension too? I'm using the lower half of the HL Sherman, and then the Kit cover just won't fit

[MonsieurTox]

The HL Gearboxes doesn't need major surgery to be used inside the AHHQ transmission cover, I used the kitpart on mine and that was pretty straight forward (the kitpart need to be Thinned on the inside on one place though).

Looks like you're using the Kit's lower hull and suspension too? I'm using the lower half of the HL Sherman, and then the Kit cover just won't fit

Yes HL cheated on the width of transmission cover (Tamiya cheated too!), but it can work with a HL lower though. The only drawback with using the kitpart is that you have to remove the whole gearboxes/transmission cover (like you would do on the real one) if you have to replace one gearbox.

[RC JENDA]

Hello colleague and colleagues, very inspiring build and very interesting technical solution. I bought this kit in the M10 WOLVERINE version some time ago. I was also planning to make a cheap conversion with a heng long sherman.

While looking at the kit I was thinking about how to solve the problem by rotating the turret and it gave me a bit of a headache.

It's great to see how someone else came up with a very elegant solution to this problem.

Would it be possible to share with us the 3D printed part that you made for this kit? I would really like to buy this stl file.

Thank you and I apologize to everyone for my bad English from the translator.

JAN

[Rob1970]

Hello colleague and colleagues, very inspiring build and very interesting technical solution. I bought this kit in the M10 WOLVERINE version some time ago. I was also planning to make a cheap conversion with a heng long sherman.

While looking at the kit I was thinking about how to solve the problem by rotating the turret and it gave me a bit of a headache.

It's great to see how someone else came up with a very elegant solution to this problem.

Would it be possible to share with us the 3D printed part that you made for this kit? I would really like to buy this stl file.

Thank you and I apologize to everyone for my bad English from the translator.

JAN

I posted the ring on Cults, you can pay whatever you want. Tips are always appreciated.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/m1 ... ing-spacer

Cheers

[ColemanCollector]

Dang! How did I miss this build? Between Ecam's electronics wizardry, and your skillful ability to hide things in plain sight, it's a RC goldmine! Suddenly, a Priest with gun movement is back on the table.

Mike.