RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

43rdRecce (Roy) recently said it’s traditional to start a new build before you finish the last one, so no shame then.

My next tank had to be a Panther, and if I had to pick one, I’m going to do an ‘A’. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, I don’t like the asymmetrical rear deck and mantlet chin of the 'G'. Secondly, I don’t like the letter box MG and old-style cupola on the ‘D’. Lastly, and probably most importantly, making an existing Heng Long into an ‘A’ is enough to challenge my skill-set.
What makes an ‘A’? It depends on the field upgrades really. It seems legitimate for an ‘A’ to have:
• rounded mantlet chin
• no mantlet top debris shield (some were field installed)
• no close defence turret ports
• no smoke launchers
• rounded cupola
• stepped rear side sponsons
• sloping sponsons and hull rear to match
• hull MG Kugelblende
• fixed hull periscopes (3 as the fourth was deleted with the Kugelblende sight)
• single headlight on left side of front hull
• skewed front hull hatches
• matching rear fan vents
• wavy rear deck louvres
• central engine vent has no cowl
• dished road wheels
• left exhaust with/without triple pipes and no flame suppressors

I don’t want to make a rivet-counter’s delight, but I do want to make it close enough to please me. There are a few ways to go about it, including accurate bespoke parts from Ludwigs Hobby Seite, but I’m happy to do it on the cheap and not be scale perfect.

Making an ‘A’ has been done before and DSGSelkirk (Dean) showed a smart way to do it from a ‘G’, so I’ll follow his lead. I bought this from Tank Army for a good price. On the upside it’s IR, so it has cannon recoil, but on the downside it has a 27Mhz radio. Maybe it’s not a downside, as I can convert it to 2.4GHz and a hobby-grade radio with Kevin Grannum’s RC5HL.
I also bought a Pantiger upper hull from Aliexpress, as there a bunch of bits I can use to make the required changes.
And so it begins…

Jeeezzz... I really should get around to finishing that one in the near future. Maybe after I finish a Jagdtiger I have been working on for a couple of years for a friend on here...

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13525&hilit=Panther+A

This is the age of 'diversity', Estniche. So why not diversify the pending projects? I like the way you state your terms of reference at the outset. It's a good idea to keep to certain limits, or the costs can easily spiral; but it's the time these builds can hoover up, that can be the real drain on your resources. Looking forward to this excursion down an alternate route.... Still hope to see the Tiger, and Johann's ( ) Götterdämmerung unleashed someday... !
Roy.

A solid base for an interesting build, Estnische. Looking forward to it!

43rdRecceReg wrote:I like the way you state your terms of reference at the outset. It's a good idea to keep to certain limits, or the costs can easily spiral; but it's the time these builds can hoover up, that can be the real drain your resources.

Absolutely, it's a good way to avoid the feature creep that can stall a project halfway (ask me how I know about that! )

So here is the latest:

Mostly its cutting and drilling, with a couple of fill-ins.
The front has the ‘G’ periscope and old hatch lines and hinges removed. I also scavenged the head light post from the Pantiger and moved the mounting point from the mudguard to the hull.
The rear has the old grills, engine cover, engine deck hooks and engine vent cowl removed. A new vent grill has been installed and the hole for the left fan housing filled. As you can see the turret rotation motor projects into the engine cover space, which is inconvenient but not surprising.

Here is what it looks like from underneath. The body posts pop up everywhere and their bracing also had to be trimmed but not as badly as in the Tiger, so I don’t think I’ll reinforce them. I’ve braced the infill for the fan housing with off cuts from the Pantiger hull and JB Weld.

Estnische, your pictures aren't showing for me. Colour me curious!

Same for me

Works fine for me - using Chrome on a laptop

Ah, I tried to cheat on the picture sizing, which apparently only works in Chrome. I'll fix it when I get home.

Edit: I don't bloody know. This was never a problem in my Tiger/Red Skull build story, but now it appears my picture posting method only works in Chrome. I hate posting links to photos, much rather have the images directly there. Mods, if you have any suggestions where I can keep using Google Photos as I do with my other Heng Long build thread, please let me know. In the meantime, I've posted the images and their address.

Brett

Estnische wrote:Ah, I tried to cheat on the picture sizing, which apparently only works in Chrome. I'll fix it when I get home.

Edit: I don't bloody know. This was never a problem in my Tiger/Red Skull build story, but now it appears my picture posting method only works in Chrome. I hate posting links to photos, much rather have the images directly there. Mods, if you have any suggestions where I can keep using Google Photos as I do with my other Heng Long build thread, please let me know. In the meantime, I've posted the images and their address.

Brett

Hi Brett they are coming though fine for me.