RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi.

Honestly I am mostly here to collect some information on the OpenPanzer board as an Electronics Engineer interested in figuring out what would be points for improvement and to get in contact with its creator.
I own a HL Jagdpanther Pro model which i plan to customize top-to-bottom and make my own. For which electronics is one aspect.

Hi and welcome aboard

Welcome to the forum. You're in a good place for both of your goals and plans.

Foxhood wrote: ↑Sun Sep 28, 2025 8:07 pm Hi.

Honestly I am mostly here to collect some information on the OpenPanzer board as an Electronics Engineer interested in figuring out what would be points for improvement and to get in contact with its creator.
I own a HL Jagdpanther Pro model which i plan to customize top-to-bottom and make my own. For which electronics is one aspect.

Luke Z, he is on here and responds to post in the OpenPanzer sub forum fairly promptly. I also just did an OpenPanzer in my 1/8 scale Abrams, so it’s all fair fresh in my memory, if I can answer any questions for you.

And of course he hangs out in his own forum: https://openpanzer.org/forum/index.php? ... tion=forum

Thank you everyone. Yeah to get on the OpenPanzer Forum you gotta first join up here or on RC Universe. This one seemed the most focused on the Tank niche.
I'm now also part of the OP forum and keep very specific OpenPanzer electronics discussions to that one as per Luke's wishes. While here I will be mostly gathering overall information and feedback on what kind of parts and such have taken hold over the past 8-years to see what might need addressing for a potential OpenPanzer variant. And just checking out builds and tips for customizing in general.

Like one thing I'm looking at is how Smoke units have changed with many now using seperate heaters and blowers. the latter being often running at 6V.

So I’ve found that 5V is not enough for smoke heaters and 7v is too much, and I think 6V is just right (meaning that 5v doesn’t really generate enough smoke, and that 7v just makes way too much and the heater gets so hot that I worry about something getting damaged). This was with the metal HL heater with the hose plugs on both sides of the cylinder and one on top.

On my 1/8 scale model I had an oversized air pump for exhaust smoke which used 4.4v. This was in conjunction with a large 24v heater. Blew out tons of smoke. I have since moved this air pump to the turret to use for gun smoke, and it is now getting 12v to blow smoke out of a regular 6V 1/16 scale heater for the main gun of the tank.

I also have the machine gun smoke blower for that model powered off of the same line that the machine gun light on the OpenPanzer MFU is on, so I think 5V, and it works great for blowing smoke out of the coax machine gun shroud (it’s maybe like 1.5 inches long?).

I don’t really use exhaust smoke as when you’re driving around outside it’s really hard to see, and I dabble more in modern tanks, which don’t usually belch a lot of smoke anyways. I like to remove them just for a little extra space inside the model, especially in 1/16 scale.

For ones that still have the smoker in them for exhaust smoke, I feel like the fan/heater combo and the piston/heater combos are fine. I use the ElMod MFU for those, which have the ability to vary the level smoke output depending on what you’re doing, and you can definitely tell the difference in the level of smoke with those smoke/heater combos, if you’re inside, and preferably not moving (like from start up to idling). This is also using aftermarket smoke oil, for me Mega-Steam smoke oil.

For gun smoke I always use the separate air pump/heater style. Not sure if the combo is better or worse, thats just what I use.