RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Toy World ??
Youre taking the piss
We are not set up with proper hobby shops here in Qld, and the out of state ones seem to not post the miliput product.
I have a Toy world close, and I will be there very directly asking if they have it

In my experience Toyworld stores can be a bit hit and miss. The local shop has a really good range of modelling and RC stuff but others I've been too might have a couple of 1:72 Revell kits stashed in a corner if you're lucky. They are definitely worth checking out though as you might strike gold. Hobby shops are few and far between in this neck of the woods these days too and I think there is only one left in Canberra now.
If you're brave enough to take on the unwashed nerd hordes, I've also found shops that sell warhammer and other tabletop games played with miniatures often have a decent range of model stuff. One near my work handily stocks Vallejo paints and some other bits and pieces.

I got mine from my local hobby shop, $15 for the superfine white stuff. Frontline Hobbies tout themselves as "Australia's largest hobby store", which they very well may be after Hobbies in the Hills burned down a couple years ago.

On-topic; I received my IBU2 Pro, TPA and a brace of Visaton FRS7s from the handsome and efficient Mr. Tankbear this week. Things are gonna get loud.

Gettin your 'J-lo' on are ya mate !! Lets get loud

How much room is there in this thing ?
2 speakers will use a lot of space surely.
Great if you can though,

After all the trouble it took to squeeze everything into the T-34 lower, I reckon I could park a jumbo bloody jet in the KV hull. Worst comes to worst, I've also got the internal volume of the casement to work with and that's the size of a (scale) house.

I haven't been updating much while I'm still working through the less glamorous, structural stuff.

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A new lower glacis for the Taigen hull, since I removed the appliqué armour plates. There were also some fairly large gaps between the sides of the hull and the bottom, so I laminated a few sheets of thin styrene sheet to cover the whole area up and maintain the correct shape.

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Filed off the diamond-shaped tow shackle fittings on the rear plate, since they should be circular on a KV-1S or SU-152. I also took the time to fill in the hole for the power switch, the Soviets stopped installing them there in 1942 after German combat pioniers kept turning the tanks off during combat. You know how unsporting the Wehrmacht could get.

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After a lot of mucking about (including cutting an entire 5 millimetres off from the front!), I've got the casement epoxied onto the upper hull. Unfortunately, the more I look into it, the more inaccuracies and discrepancies I find between the kit and the real deal. From what I can see, it looks like Herr Juckenburg has based his model off photos of both SU-152s and ISU-152s without realising they're different things. There are details that are in the wrong spot or from the wrong vehicle, and I'm trying to meet everything in the middle without having to start from scratch or driving myself nuts counting rivets.

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Styrene strips for the fender attachments to cover up the inevitable gaps between the superstructure and fenders themselves. I also airbrushed the fenders with a quick coat of Mr. Surfacer 1000 to smooth out the damage and repairs I inflicted earlier.

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One of the biggest inaccuracies is the size of the mantlet. It's nearly 10 millimetres too small in each dimension, so I've spliced in some extensions to try and maintain the correct look. Also built up the mantlet's mounting out of styrene sheet and added the return to the front glacis.

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And as always, everything's held in place with my favourite M3 bolts. I glued some threaded standoffs into the mantlet body to hold it all in place, this will help when it comes to working out the traverse mechanism.

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Holding the gun in place, it's starting to look the goods. Next task is working out the traverse/elevation/recoil mechanisms, then it'll be on to the detailing (the fun stuff, everyone's favourite!).

Where did you get the barrel?

I got mine from Frank's Modellbau Schmiede, but MK Modellbau do one too.

Slow going the last few weeks, been too sick to get much done. I figured that if you're not meant to be driving or signing documents after general anaesthetic, you probably shouldn't be using blades either. Managed to make progress on the traverse/elevation and recoil servo mechanisms setup bit by bit, though.

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Had a bit of a brainwave for attaching the resin mantlet to the aluminium barrel sleeve. I was never going to get a straight enough fit by gluing it place, and there's not enough material to bolt it. The hole in the mantlet is about half a millimetre smaller than the outside diameter or the barrel sleeve though, so I pressed it in with a vice. It's basically immovable now.

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Got the full -12/+12° traverse and -5/+18° elevation now, as well as what appears to be the right amount of throw in the recoil.

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The servos don't seem to move especially smoothly, though. I'm not sure if this is because the gun is unbalanced (that metal barrel weighs a tonne), so I'll try adding some counterweight by the recoil/elevation servos. Could it be that the servos aren't strong enough to move the amount of weight there?

Next on the to-do list is widening the mantlet to suit match the previous widening efforts.

Terrific work on the servos, I'm following along with great interest.
Alwyn