The T90 thread

[jtracks]

Very nice, tanks just have to have recoil IMO.

[Jay-Em]

i ran the tank for about 20 minuets took the battery out and it was smoking and making a hissing sound

Immediately get rid of it. Most secure method is dumping it in salty water (yes, seriously) If it smoked and hissed, You got away lucky. The gases that are expelled when hissing are extremely flammable. LiPo's that overheat tend to go up in blazing hot flames. Or just put it outside on something that cannot burn. After about a week, it should be bloated for a bit, and hardened. Meaning the sludge inside has crystallized, and is no longer dangerous.

Bit of a dangerous oversight from Heng Long to nót include a properly working Voltage-Cutoff. LiPo's/Li-Ion's aren't dangerous, íf treated correctly. Deep discharge and concurrent heating-up is something that should not happen.

[wibblywobbly]

Just did a gearbox swap for black steel gears (pinched them out of my Bulldog as I had installed low profile ones in there), and can say that it runs like a dream.

Still need to convince myself that a TK24 T90 board would be worth the spend, no one has posted a video on You Tube yet, so I haven't a clue what they sound like.

[DOG]

So is anyone using an alternative battery

[wibblywobbly]

Any standard 7.2v NiMH will do, the snag is that it won't fit without surgery. You could try finding a lithium ion to replace yours, though a decent charger would also be a good buy.

I will be looking around for exactly that at some point as I will never totally trust the hl offering. It does concern me that if magic smoke appears, it will take too long to open the battery compartment and disconnect it.

[wibblywobbly]

Thought I would post up a few pics showing what I have done by way of mods to this T90. Seeing as it will only get run outdoors about 1% of the time, the emitter may well go in an empty periscope hole. It means it won't move with the barrel elevation, but on a flat surface this won't matter. I'll feed the positive wire through an old airsoft switch so I can switch the elevation off anyway, it saves having the barrel accidentally being raised and lowered when firing the main gun.

An added bonus of fitting the black steel gearboxes is that the allen bolts are larger diameter. The heads are an exact fit into the sprocket recess, which cleans it all up nicely.

If you are after cheap Visiton FR7 speakers, try here

http://cpc.farnell.com/visaton/fr-7/lou ... dp/LS03713

[wibblywobbly]

A few people asked me about paint and what matches. Well, my old bottle of US Dark Green seemed a perfect match when dry, so I ordered two bottles, only to find today that when thickly applied with a brush it is way too dark. Did a bit of research and it seems that getting a match is a problem for modellers of T90's no matter what scale they are working in. The current choice is apparently Vallejo Russian Green, but lightened up a bit, though in theory the US Dark Green can also be lightened. German WW2 Beige seems pretty damned close to the sand colour though, and Bogeyman tells me that German Black/Brown is close to the 'black'.

I have seen photo's of green T90's that are a dark green, and also come across reports that 'sales fleets' and show tanks are also painted in a different green to the one that HL have used.

My choice, when I get to paint it, will be a sand coloured primer, then US Dark Green. If that doesn't lighten it up a bit, I'll stick some white in the green and see how that goes.
Airbrushing seems to lighten colours anyway, so my brush test isn't terribly accurate. The whole thing will be heavily weathered which will darken the colour down, so starting off with a light base coat is where I want to be. If all else fails, I'll get the Russian Green and give it a blast with that.

I also found this, just to complicate matters:

As of today (4 April 2013) Defense Minister Shoygu has ordered all vehicles to no longer be painted in camouflage, but based on area of deployment to be either dark green, light green, or khaki.

They were all painted in three-color camouflage a la MERDC using a combination of three out of ten colors: light green, dark green, mid green, khaki, mid yellow, mid brown, light yellow, grey, light grey, and black. Camouflage matters are handled by the 19 TsNII-IV (19th Central Scientific Research Institute of the Engineer Forces)

According to the maintenance officer of one brigade, vehicles are painted twice a year with up to 40 kilograms of paint per session, timed to coincide with the start of troop training cycles (spring and fall). But takes a month to get all vehicles painted. A single color is easier and faster to apply and if combat is forecast the vehicle can easily be repainted in camouflage. One color only takes 1-1.5 hours to apply per vehicle.

So take your pick,

[Bogeyman]

Rob, you would think the paint issue is an easy one ? is it (swear word) no it is harder to match up the color on the T90 than any recent build I have done.

[wibblywobbly]

The following pics illustrate the different green shades. US Dark Green is very close to the bottom one. The base green that HL have is the plastic, the other two colours are sprayed over it. If anyone airbrushed the whole tank with a 'green' it would be accurate no matter what they used, it's trying to match the HL plastic colour that is the problem. Because its not paint its going to be a challenge to find a standard green paint that will match it perfectly.

[RobW]

I think Vallejo do a modern Russian green paint set?