Tamiya Flakpanzer Gepard Project

Page 5: Building the Turret

The bracket shown on the left serves as the mounting point and rotation axis for the turret. The bottom of the turret has a protrusion which fits into the slot and then rotates 1/6 turn (hex) to be retained by the spring clip. This bracket also serves as a grounding point for the turret electrical system. The picture on the right shows it mounted to the underside of the hull along with the blue ground wire.

Here I've attached the large number of detail parts to the top of the hull. The real Gepard has a small diesel engine installed in the front left of the hull which is used to run generators to drive the turret traverse, gun elevation, and radar systems. The channel you see running along the left side is the exhaust system for that engine which vents through the back. The large hatch on the front left is for accessing this engine. The much larger hatch on the back is for accessing the main drive engine. The hatch on the front right is for the driver and contains the driver's periscopes as well as an extra armored panel over the hatch. The model uses this hatch to access the main power switch.

These pictures show the buildup of detail parts on the main turret housing. The picture on the left is a single molded part. On the right I've added smoke canisters, antenna supports, lift points, hatches, and periscopes. The hatch even has a clever working latch system. Everything is extremely detailed in typical Tamiya quality, though this is even more impressive given the year of release. Zoom in on the left picture and look at the weld beads and bolt heads.

This is the motor used to drive the rear mounted search radar. It has 3 stages of reduction: one at the motor pinion, another at a right angle into the radar housing, and a final large reduction using a worm gear. The radar dish itself is only pressed lightly onto the final shaft so it can slip if it becomes blocked. This motor was intended to run on only 3V from a pair of C batteries, but even so it rotates very quickly. At first I thought it was way too fast for scale, but then I saw some videos of the real thing which rotates at about 60 rpm.

Here is the MPDR-12 Doppler search radar which is used to acquire targets. It may look like only a couple of parts, but there are 13 parts here even before the mechanism for turning the radar.

The picture on the left shown how the motor drive system for the search radar is installed into the hatch on the rear of the turret. On the right you can see the hatch installed onto the turret. Note that the radar can fold down to lower the profile of the vehicle for transport. It raises when in use. This rotation is purely manual in the model; no motorization. This rear hatch is hinged so it can be opened to maintain the mechanism.

This little brush system is intended to allow power to pass from the hull to the turret without tangling any wires, thus allowing 360 degree rotation. In practice, it didn't quite work out. The white wire has to be sandwiched between a plastic shaft and a metal collar, but there is no slot for the wire so it ends up getting pinched very tightly. After only a short while, my wire severed. It can never be reattached because the collar can't be removed without destroying the part. Luckily, I was already planning to use a speed controlled electrical system for the turret anyway or I would have been very upset about this failure. The picture on the right shows the many stages of reduction between the motor and the output. The initial stages are plastic because the torque is low, but the final stages are metal.

The picture on the left shows the turret traverse mechanism. The motor is protruding at the upper right and it drives the crank at the upper center. At the same time, it drives the crank at the lower left at a 1:1 rotation with the turret. The little tab on the crank serves to lift the barrels up as the turret rotates. The barrel elevation cannot be controlled independently. The picture on the right shows this system installed into the turret. The turret and radar are wired together on the same circuit so they move together, thus requiring only 3 channels to operate the model.

The picture on the left is one of the Oerlikon 35mm cannons which consists of 22 parts, some of them very tiny. The guns press onto the elevation shaft with a friction fit rubber washer which makes them a bit wobbly but easy to adjust and/or remove. The picture on the left is the tracking radar which is gimballed on two axes (no motorization, manual elevation and azimuth).

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