got up early... and ...panther time ! FFFFFFF

[mcevoyi]

i love bank holidays ..

took friday off to make it a long weekend ..

so not to waste time got up early ... 7.30am ..

sat down with a cuppa and an HL panther g infront of me .....

by 8am ..

a large pile of parts scattered round the front room floor ...

which is so dumb as the gray carpet monster was up and about ....

been thinking for a bit about what to do with this panther ....

i have two projects in mind one for now and the other for later .....

so let the pics roll

[mcevoyi]

i have been infulenced by the idea that the germans were very late in the war trying to standardise many componants between tanks
so i too it just a small step further and addopted some of the tool layouts or the jagdpanther . by removeing the tool racks on the front
to give the G a cleaner look ..... then i looked at the track guards fenders that runn the lengh of the hull . too thick and seemed just too ugly . and thought s.o.d. it .. lets have them off too ....and what a difference it make to the look of the tank ...... and that go me thinking .. which is dangerious ....

so by lunch time .... srtipped ripped .. and then started to add detail back in the the hull ... as you can see above.... the worlds yoru clam ..... as the G stands .. its not bad .... but just a little work .. and it begins to stand out .... nothing too complex about doing it ... just takes time ....

one thing that buggs me a lot about the Hl tanks is the sprocket ... hl always leave a lot of detail off ... with the panther / Jp .. the sprocket id actualy nice .. apart from the center .. no detail at all ..... now the G and jp have a cap over the nutts that hold the sprocket on th the drive shaft .... so a few day ago i was in bovy ..and asked to see what was behing the cap ! and just by pur chance a brill chap challed hanz ! .. the chap german from all the tv documentrys . was there and with in a few mins he had the cap off and i took a pic or two on the mob phone ... and there a pile of bolts .. as you may see from my sprocket !

chatting to hanz ....and about the panther .. he remembers seening refurbished A hulls fitted with G turrets ... now thats an intheresting idea .. as the A's were zimmeritted ... and the turrets were not .....a bit of ruff with the smooth! ... we had a damd good chat ... about where he thought the panther was going ... and he thought that the F model would have been the final mark as the panther chassis was begging to get too small ..for the ever larger caliber guns in the weapons race .....especialy with the soviet turning up with 122mm guns ...

any way enought chat ......

it had to be done hay ... F

[mcevoyi]

one of the points that hans made was quiet interesting ..... he thought that a lot of the late war armour he saw had the hull mg remeoved ..... that is the ball was there .. but no actual mg .. as it was almost poitless with the limited field of fire !

one thing that was interesting chatting to him was after the war.. he spent a lot of time interprateing documents about works orders and coms between the tank manufactureres and the design beuro ... there was actualy a plan to change the angle of the slop of armour on the dumped panther 2 project form 50 degs to 55 degs like the king tigers ... and remove the ball for the mg in the front hull...of the ' standard panthers '

[fleshpedler]

Boy is there no stopping you Iain.. ......................
Fleshy...........................

[tanke]

Nice turret F! Pls show an inside view of the turret. Is it possible to install the usual recoil and elevation gears?

[FireflyKeith]

Hi Iain, the Panther is looking good already, and looks like an interesting build so i have moved it here to the build section, so now you have to show us lots of pics everytime you do something

Keith

[mcevoyi]

hi there tanke

there almost no room inside the turret for fitting any elevation equipmet ... but i am looking at it ... as for recoil .. no chance at all

i will have to look at makeing my own equipmet for the inside ......

but have another option onn the go at the moment .....lol

[[ICE]monkey]

looking good , keep them pics coming
cliff

[wly22]

I love F,nice work!

[Saxondog]

Iain, I can tell you how to achieve both recoil and elevation in a small hull. Tamiya 3-speed crank axle gearbox, this was suggested to me by Bubbajoe,it is a kit which can be built in three speeds for the output shaft. item number 70093. We have been using these for rotation gear drives and elevation in the KT'S to save space and allow the turret to be removable. The recoil can be made using the pershing recoil unit which is much smaller and can be modified to have a quick recoil and a standard speed return. This is a mod dietrich has been working on an I'm sure he will post soon. PM if you need the details, cheers Blake