RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Interior view after installation of the gun recoil mechanism, nothing is showing or sticking out, important to me...
Here are two YOUTUBE videos of the howitzer recoil in action. These video were made to study the operation of the recoil which is not yet optimal, but it gives a good indication where this thing is going.

Recoil testing;


Slow motion of the sliding breech. The recoil is happening very fast. There is a small click sound at the end of the recoil that i still did not find the source, even with slow motion video.



This is it for now. Next step is to finetune the recoil and build the gun elevation.

Regards, Louis

I love the fast back, slow return of the recoil. All to often, you see the barrel return at the same speed as the recoil.

silversurfer1947 wrote:I love the fast back, slow return of the recoil. All to often, you see the barrel return at the same speed as the recoil.

I totally agree with silversurfer1947. Very realistic and something that's not seen often enough!

Cheers,
Eric.

Good progress - the gun is very well detailed.

Astonishing is what it is...........
The level of research
The fine changes needed to make it work without any obvious faults
The forethought in what hardware to use & where it will come from
The almost invisible method of automation

Just mind blowing...............

Thanks for continuing to share your skills & vision with us all

Good Morning Louis!
Nothing short of Supernal work ( and the Gun Build is not lacking either ;o) The only thing that caught my eye was the metal rod slanting across the lip of the opening in the plastic deck. Given time, that might groove out a channel in the lip and cause an issue through normal recoil operation. A small metal 'U' there, press fitted over the plastic lip of the opening will provide a durable non wear surface and prevent any future issues from cropping up after assembly is complete. Knowing you, you have already noticed this and it is on your list of tweaks.
regards and following along,
Painless

Thank you all for your encouragements.

PainlessWolf wrote:A small metal 'U' there, press fitted over the plastic lip of the opening will provide a durable non wear surface and prevent any future issues from cropping up after assembly is complete

Good point Painless. I wanted to finalize the elevation first, and see what i end up with. But the push rod is very glossy and the plasticard quite strong, i think a lot of other items will fail before the push rod start eating into the plasticard guide. After a lot of finetuning to make it work correctly, i am hesitant to play with it again.

This post is for the completion of the howitzer, with a short video at the end.

To see the sFH 18 gunsight, mount and traversing mechanism, i had no choice but to find wartime pictures as these items cannot be found on surviving Hummels.
The gunsight kit parts are very accurate and finely molded but their design do not allow for gun elevation movement, which is surprising. I had to replace the main plastic shaft by a brass rod to which the bracket connecting to the gun mount can swivel. An M1.2 bolt is used for the other end connector. The gun sight itself was glued to the shaft and stays fixed.
View of the gun sight and traversing mechanism. Looking good.
View of the gun elevation hand crank mechanism. On the Hummel, it is mounted on a bracket attached to the gun mount.
I had some difficulty determining the size of the bracket. The size extrapolated from the Dragon kit was not a good match for the size of the Merit 1/16 crank mechanism. It might be a bit underscale. I beefed it up a bit.
Gun elevation is activated by a push rod connected to a large servo inside the hull, and sharing the hole of the recoil mechanism. It will be hidden behind the gun shield.
I had to move the connection of the rod towards the rear for a better movement. The rod just goes into the cradle by 10mm and stays quite solidly in place, but is also easily removable by just pulling it sideways. The elevation does not go as high as i wanted as it creates stress on the recoil push rod. The elevation servo is connected strait to the receiver on channel 6 and assigned the VRB knob, which allows a much more smoother elevation movement than through the TK40 control board and sticks. It also avoids the board chink que chick elevation sound that i dislike.
continuing on following post.

General overview of the howitzer installation.
And here is a short YOUTUBE video of the howitzer elevation and recoil in action.



Next step, the frontal shield.

Regards, Louis

Flawless

Keeping one of these weapons in service back in the day must have been extremely difficult.
The open fighting compartment in all weathers and no doubt constant demand for availability must have tested the crews.

Man, that's smooth! Love it! Very realistic!

Cheers,
Eric.