M7 Priest scratchbuild

[PainlessWolf]

Alwyn,
The rewiring is required due to the fact that the connections for the things that you plugged in are at different spots on the Mato board vs the HL RX board. I am not an expert on the wiring for these things but have read through a few builds where one type of MFU was swapped for another one and unless both the boards swapped are of the plug and play type and advertised to be a simple swap over, issues usually arise with the wiring connection locations and power requirements on the boards. The Mato board is definitely not the same as the HL board. Having said all of this, my friend, it comes to mind that you may have received a bad RX-18 as well. That happening is getting rarer tho' these days.
regards,
Painless

[AlwynTurner]

Hi Painless, I opened up the board and when I looked at the back it seems to me that there has been some re-soldering and some of the connections are scratched which shouldn't happen with a new board, so I am now very suspicious about the board - I suspect foul play. I am going to e-mail Hobby Power that I bought it from back in Novemebr and see what they say. Thanks for the advice.

[AlwynTurner]

Hi Painless, I opened up the board and when I looked at the back it seems to me that there has been some re-soldering and some of the connections are scratched which shouldn't happen with a new board, so I am now very suspicious about the board - I suspect foul play. I am going to e-mail Hobby Power that I bought it from back in Novemebr and see what they say. Thanks for the advice.

[AlwynTurner]

The problem is solved as the mato chassis has the positive and negative connections the opposite way round to what the rx18 expects - hence the fried board !%$£*&!!! I never would have expected this in a million years but let this be a warning to anyone who plans a new build on a mato chassis with an rx18 board - beware the switched polarity on the connector plug - one costly and very frustrating lesson learned on my first tank build.

[PainlessWolf]

Alwyn,
If you need another RX-18, I've got some laid about here in my spares, I am sure. I've replaced a couple of them with 2.4 GHz sets . PM me your addy if so.
regards,
Painless

[AlwynTurner]

So with many of my projects at final finishing, It's time to get stuck into the M7.
Starting with the naked chassis with all sprues removed

Decided that this would be a removeable upper hull so worked out the approach

Helps to have an actual size blueprint correctly scaled, took a half hour or so with pc Paint to get that right. Despite that I managed to make a small SNAFU with the positioning of the bulkhead, but luckily spotted it in time to make a small adjustment.

Now starting to show the familiar profile - now it can be worked on separate from the hull so it's easier.

Things now slow down because the next item is the gun itself, which needs to be constructed and positioned before adding any more upper hull. The gun is very complex so I've ordered an Italeri 1/35 model so I can get a better view of the gun's fiddly bits and mounting. More in the next few days. Alwyn

[edpanzer]

Looking good so far Alwin

[wibblywobbly]

Looks like this is going to be another of your excellent builds, the Priest is a great looking 'tank'. Looking forward to your interior, I have a feeling that it will be well detailed.

RobG

[AlwynTurner]

Thanks Rob, that's the current plan - hopefully it all works out! Alwyn

[blimp]

Watching this build Alwyn - Great stuff ! Keep it coming , I'm sure it'll be a cracker !