Winter 23-24. And the wall came down

[Meter rat]

And tonight’s instalment of drivel.
Decided to make my cheep and cheerful means for giving an increase and decrease in gun elevation.
Take a standard elevation unit, and remove the operating wheel.

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Cut off the peg from the the wheel, and make an arm to extend beyond the wheel, by about 7mm. And attach the removed pin to the arm. Drill two holes in the arm. One where the fixing hole is and on where the the peg was removed from.

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Deepen the hole in the front part of the wheel and attach the arm to the

Remove the end of the peg, by the thickness of the operating arm.

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[Meter rat]

And because Mr Bix “helped” me get into bother with the wife, I used his idea of removing the cupola.

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I then decided to remove the machine gun ring from the cupola.

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I then started to detail the gun mount, by cutting a slot in it, and drilled out the bracket.

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This is how I want the cupola to look like when it is finished.

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[Herr Dr. Professor]

Ah, Meter rat, you have one of those simple-simply brilliant solutions to gun elevation range: adding an extended crank arm to the elevation wheel. I suppose the limit then becomes the turret opening itself.

[Meter rat]

I have neglected this build, as I have been fannying around with the Tiger. So it was time to get back on it. First it was a system check, and a play around with my new 7.1. I found out how to turn on the barrel elevation after the gun has fired, and that it needs a servo to do it. So the TK 7.1 is now earmarked for the Challenger.

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Next job was to solder the new wires to the motors.

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These two jobs were just while I pondered further work. As I am not quite brave enough to cut off the skirts off, I opened up the gaps between each panel of the skirts, while leaving the hinges.

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All this took the sun over the yardarm, which means it time for a glass of wine, and further stupidity.
I decided that for some reason I wanted to make the dozer blade operational, or at least movable, this involved cutting off the some of the original parts, and remaking them onto new plastic. The details were removed from the front, and installed on newly shaped parts. The back of the dozer blade was filled in and some filler used. This all needs trimming to improve the fit. Told you there would be stupidity and incompetence.

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Last job of the evening was to apply a small bit of filler to the turret, where I had removed the cupola.

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This will be allowed to dry overnight and smoothed off later.

[Ecam]

Great work! Coming along nicely.

[Meter rat]

Just a short video, trying out the TK7.1 functionality. I just used the recoil servo to try out the barrel lifting following firing of the main gun.

https://youtube.com/shorts/C7dxW6bNdxI? ... XrUbLefmbS

[Ad Lav]

Not a massive fan of the T72 but you’re doing a great job on this so far

[Meter rat]

Not a massive fan of the T72 but you’re doing a great job on this so far

Thank you. I just prefer post war tanks. Same with my model railway, I prefer the 1970-1980’s as this is the era I grew up with.

An so onto tonight’s incompetency. I got a movable dozer blade thing, with little working parts (turnbuckles)to hold it up. I am not sure of the correct terminology for these parts, but I understand they are to enable the tank to dig out its own berm, so it can go hull down. I believe they are manual operated from inside. These will not be RC, so will be accurate. I now need to make the operating parts that go into the lower hull.

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Small details made for the front, made from the scrap spru, from some PE.

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.

[Ecam]

I got a movable dozer blade thing, with little parts to hold it up. I am not sure of the correct terminology for these parts, but I understand they are to enable the tank to dig out its own berm, so it can go hull down. I believe they are manual operated from inside. These will not be RC, so will be accurate. I now need to make the operating parts that go into the lower hull.

Interesting. Do you know if the blades were factory installed or a field fix? Like the Cullen cutters in hedge row county, creative use of a powerful tracked vehicle to do alternative work.

Very cool work.

[HERMAN BIX]

All factory fitted.
They were/are handy for creating a convenient shrapnel blast containment receptacle for a T72 in the Gulf Wars !!
Reduced the debris field diameter and made the job of burying the blasted hull a lot easier!!