RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hello all. Making progress with Stug but I'm still bothered about the lack of traverse.

I'm aware 1st option is probably motors/gears and/or worm drive but believe I would have to introduce limit switches to stop over-travel.
2nd would be servos, either standard or continuous drive and either gears or pushrods.

I've ordered an IBU2U full option so the servo route seems best with my flysky 8ch setup.

I would welcome any hints or suggestions to help me with this; I can't really see anything on forum and although there are vids on Youtube there is nothing showing the degree of being walked through it step by step I need! Is there anything commercially available?

At present I'm leaning to servos and the printed elevation/rotation units by Forgebear, would I be able to adapt them for this use? Would scratch building an elevation/traverse mech be easier than trying to adapt the standard parts as I want to keep recoil and Stug is tight for space inside but at least it's IR.

So many variables so if anyone has experience or advice I will be very grateful as I have a JT and JP waiting for the same mods. Could this be an opportunity for some 3d wizardry as I'm sure it would sell (I'll buy 3!).

Over to you, thanks, David.

Just a thought, David, but you might be better off to start with the JP or JT first, just because the extra space will make it much easier to work with than the cramped quarters in the StuG. I'd love to put traverse in my StuG, but it's airsoft and just getting an IBU2 in there was a trick in itself. You have to leave a large square completely clear all the way down to the floor or the gun won't elevate freely. With traverse that square will have to get bigger, and that's going to be a problem for me. With you having IR it will be less of a headache, but I still think that "warming up" on one of your larger TDs will be great practice and will make the mod in the StuG go easier. Whichever way you go, I'll be watching and hoping you're successful so I can flagrantly copy off of all your hard work.

I've done it on both a StuG and SU-100.





The StuG is using the existing HL recoil and elevation, although I reversed the recoil. It was a simple matter of creating a pivot for the traverse, building a styrene box for the elevation to pivot and hooking up a servo to move it. It all fit easily, I used a DBC/Benedini, Visation speaker with a NiMH batt.

The SU was completely scratch built using servos for both, a Tamiya Tiger recoil.

Sorry, there's no surviving interior photos, they were all lost when RCU switched over and both tanks are long since sold off.

The problem for me is that the airsoft unit hangs so low. It really fouls things up and makes it a super tight fit. You can't get an IBU laying down under it, and that's why I had to stand the board up on it's side in the StuG. Having the board on its side like that limits what you can do for traverse. The consolation is that my StuG has one of the strongest airsoft cannons I've seen yet.



In this photo the bottom of the airsoft unit will be less than 1/8 inch from the floor of the tank.

I keep sayin' I'll do the wash and weathering on this tank as soon as I put in the Notek light but I never seem to get around to that so I suppose I should proceed with dirtyin' her up a bit, eh?

Thanks for advice, I'll concentrate on getting Stug finished, especially working exhausts and use the basic model JP as a test bed for traverse using my new IBU2U and see what I can come up with.

Stug may have to be without traverse for now as I've really got to get it done and stop putting it off!

Also dug Wechoe JT out of loft and pleased to see it all still works, pics soon!

David.