Wow
I have posted a lot of posts and a few pix too.
Anyhoo, before I pop up a finl pic with Brad and all his makeup done, just my personal feelings about this kit.
Would I recommend it, well yes
but with caution. So yes and no. I would not recommend this for a first RC tank kit and at MSRP it seems to me not competitive
.
It does come with the full Tamiya IR battle system and this is very complete and has depth to it.
Maybe they could have sold that as an option and kept the initial kit price much lower. The battle system in itself, I feel, is definitely worth it.
If you can do Tank Battles in 1/35 with friends this adds a huge dimension to this kit, nevertheless 1/16 is so so so much more popular. Good luck finding battle mates.
It does come with a full guarantee
and Tamiya's amazing aftersales parts backup service
that personally I used after having damaged some parts - excellent and needs to be factured into the overall kit price.
The kit is pretty good for 1/35 military model enthusiasts. Having a living, breathing kit is pretty amazing
. The kit is excellently made and the instrucions are very good, if a little unclear at times. There is no information about how to assemble or paint the machine gun or either of the 2 figures which is unacceptable.
Some scale aspects are sacrificed for RC, it's a trade off. I think the speaker metal plate is OTT and goes against the scale realism, I don't get that choice at all to be frank. The 2.4Ghz Tx unit is a peach. Small, very easy to use, has trim dial, super responsive, takes one battery (allbeit not the most popular size).
A little rant - what took Tamiya so long to get to 2.4Ghz. Tamiya makes superb quality MM and AFV kits, but their RC stuff is imo behind in cutting edge technology and imagination (look what people like Hong Nor, Thunder Tiger, Traxxas, Axial, HPI do)
The turret on the Sherman is so full of stuff that it really is limit to get it functional and keep it fully functional. The gearboxes are partially inaccessible and small debris is easily ingested. Maintainance of the boxes is fiddly and could even require serious dissassembly if something was really stuck. (On the other hand getting to the turret rotation unit and the 4Motor Control Unit just involves removing one screw and popping off the upper hull, again a little fiddly but nothing major.)
Given that I would think the gearboxes would fair better if dry mounted and grease not used (my opinon). The grease, although lubricating, also sticks to dirt and debris and holds it there.
Mouvement is excellent but a higher speed would be a 'fun' (if not realistic) factor. Sounds are good and fun, canon mouvement too. It seems from looking through the manuals that the Panther G would technically be the best of the bunch - because of space and layout.
The Sherman tracks are nice and thick and work pretty well, steel or linked tracks would be fun, realistic but the motors would probably be on overload. Batteries last a good while, at least an hour of continuous driving I'd say.
For the enthusiast yes, for you, well you really want to check out your other options before making an investment. Overall very high quality, never regret investing in Tamiya. Would avoid if unsure but if you are good with this kind of thing of course you'd enjoy it. If friends have allready got them all the more reason to join them, or do builds together.
Hope that is of interest to some
Thanks to the forum for giving me this opportunity to share and to all your amazing RC tanks, info and for helping out with questions
and melted the suspension units, well 3 of them anyway. Fortunately Tamiya after sales sent me a new sprue, it only took 2 days. That's one of the advantages of buying a Tamiya kit 
here is the 'main' coat or final top coat before I finish any streaking, mudding up and whatever.
I guess Panther and Tiger beats Sherman eh