RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Sometime last year I brought a Heng Long Tiger I from my local model shop. It was an early example having no sound and no smoke, It had however been heavily weathered and battered, repainted to represent a Tiger from 2nd heavy panzer regiment " Das Riech" during the battle of Kursk.



The first thing I did was to order a Taigen chassis for it to replace the Heng long one, and fit new motors and gearboxes.
I went for Taigen premium series III 5-1 gear drive set and black motors - fantastic quality. These were fitted to the new metal chassis.







The new chassis was painted up to match the existing upper hull, first it was sprayed the yellow base colour.



This was followed up with some textured paint that looks like mud when it dries, I've never used anything like this before
but the results is very good, better than the pics suggest, I was trying to match the new lower to the previously weathered upper
so you can't tell its a newer part.

I decided to replace the RX13 radio system with a 2.4 RX18 system but this did not last long either. Having spent ages reading various builds on this forum I was going to go with one of the aftermarket boards, I chose the IBU2 as it seems to be quite tune-able and has excellent after sales support. I purchased one and the TPA deal with two Visatron FR7 speakers.

I figured the power from the TPA would be sufficient to power an acoustic smoker, so...

After playing around with various combinations of Heng Long and Taigen smokers on my T34 I decided to build a acoustic smoker for my new Tiger.
If you search around there are a few guys on here doing wonderful things with these smokers, of one of these I found a source for powerful small speakers to drive the smoker, I've completely lost the link to them at the moment, or they could be on my work computer, anyway, I order one of these small speakers from America.
Once it arrived I found a small bottle which when upturned and cut in half makes the cover over the speaker, a Tarr II unit was brought of Ebay and an acoustic smoker was made.





I also brought one of these little " thingies " that step up the voltage for the smokers resistor circuit.
It's a Sunkee DC - DC converter module.



All this was fitted into the Tiger's hull, plenty of room in a Tiger for all the stuff.
I wired up the smoker through a on-off switch so I can turn off the resistor circuit of the smoker and just run the speaker for engine sounds.
I can turn on the radio and smoker manually, then start the motor using the radio and get a big puff of smoke as the engine "starts" which is kinda fun.
For outdoor airsoft battles with my friend and his son with their tanks, I've got an alternative set up whereby I remove the smoker unit and replace it with a second FR7 speaker to play the engine sounds.

Some pics of the Tiger

Comprehensive work, you wouldn't be able to pick that the lower hull was done any differently. You've matched them perfectly, it looks great.

How are you finding the acoustic smoker? I'm still not 100% clear on how they go.

Raminator wrote:Comprehensive work, you wouldn't be able to pick that the lower hull was done any differently. You've matched them perfectly, it looks great.

How are you finding the acoustic smoker? I'm still not 100% clear on how they go.

I did lots of reading up on acoustic smokers on this forum and a few others, different configurations and sound systems all make a difference.
The best results I noticed were with a Benedini TBS Mini set up for the sounds although the IBU I use is pretty good on the Tiger I sounds.

If the smoker is turned on 30 seconds before you start the engine when it does start you get a good puff of smoke which then thins out as the engine settles, when you pull away and the engine accelerates you get another belch of smoke and then it thins out again so quite realistic.

The nice thing about the IBU is the sound can be changed yourself, they are stored on WAV files so I am going to have a play around and make some better diesel sounds for my T34, I'll leave the Tiger sounds alone as they are pretty good.

I've spent countless evenings messing about with different size air gaps and pipe dia on my smoker, made my hobby room smell like a chemical factory but have had loads of fun doing it.