Since almost the entire model is NATO Green, my plan had been to build
the whole thing and then spray paint it. However, as I built I
realized there were too many little bits that were not green, such as
the road tires, for this plan to work. So at this point I broke
down and primed and painted all the remaining parts and trees as
shown. This is not very efficient because you waste a lot of paint
on open space. I needed 7 small cans of Tamiya paint, more than
my local hobby store carried so I had to drive across town to another
store to get more.
It has nothing to do with building, but I found this photo
fascinating. This is the bottom of the hull plate after
painting. The bottom did not get painted, but it appears that some
residual particles were drawn up onto the surface. The pattern
you see here was invisible in the part as it came out of the mold.
I surmise that there was some sort of local static charge which
preferentially attracted the primer, revealing the flow lines from the
injection gates. Cool!
Time to start building the hull plate. The back grill is not
fastened but is only attached with cement. This turned out to be a
bit of an issue because it can catch on obstacles while driving and
then it rips right off. I had to go back and install it with CA
which turned out a lot messier than I would have liked. At the
time of this photo, it is still pristine.
Despite the large scale of this model, the areas that need to be lit are
still too small to reasonably install an LED. For this reason,
all the lights are handled with fiber optics. Here I have
installed fibers to the front marker lights and secured them with
aluminum
tape. The fibers come in two diameters in long spools which must
be carefully cut to length without damaging the ends and interrupting
light transmission.
Step 29 took forever. This is headlights. Each square of my
cutting mat is 1 square inch, so that gives you an idea of the
size. Inside each light it needs to be painted silver and then two
fibers need to be installed. The larger diameter fiber sticks
right out in the center. The smaller fiber needs to be sharply
bent and angled toward the tiny vent hole on the top. The large
fiber will be the main light, and the smaller will be the camouflage
running light. Each of these little assemblies has 8 parts are all
must be cemented without getting any glue on the transparent lenses or
breaking any fibers.
Step 30 installs the headlights, some spare tracks, and some side marker
shields on the front hull plate. The lights cannot be tested at
this point because the light source has not yet been installed.
The spare tracks did not fit very well and took a long time to
successfully glue into place.
If you thought the headlights were fiddly little bits to assemble, wait
until you see the tail lights. Each assembly has 3 fibers, and all
are tail lights. The outermost is the standard tail light, the
middle is the brake light, and the inner is the camouflage tail light
which is smaller, dimmer, and shielded from above. The 4th round
lens does not contain a functional light, nor does the outermost
amber. The kit contains no colored transparent parts, so the
lenses needed to be painted with trans red and orange, and silver in the
well behind to aid in reflection. In the right hand photo, you
can see the tiny glass fiber poking out of the inner most light.
Step 32 assembles the light sources. There is a front and a rear
unit. The front light board has 4 LEDs which control the marker
lights, the head lights, and the camo head lights. The dimmer
lights share an LED while the headlights each have their own. All
are white. The rear light board has 3 LEDS which control the tail
lights, the brake lights, and the camo tail lights. All control
two fibers and all are red. The extra connector on the rear board
is for the NATO convoy marker which has its own LED and does not use a
fiber. This is the brightest light on the tank. The lights
can never all be on at once but have have peacetime and battle modes
which correspond to those on the real tank. The lighting mode can
be set from the transmitter. There are 7 options: 4 peacetime and 3
battle. Two (off) are the same.
Step 33 installs the light modules and attaches the
12 optical fibers to them. The armor is also installed above the
tracks.
The side skirts are screwed on in Step 34. These protect the
majority of the track sides from enemy fire. The rubber mud flaps
are also installed here. The instructions call for a warning label
to be installed on the side skirts telling people to keep their fingers
out of the sprocket. While this is no doubt good advice, I can't
imagine anyone putting this huge ugly label on such a beautiful scale
machine. In fact, if you look at the pictures on the box Tamiya
didn't install it either.
Now it's time to install the hull plate on the hull. This is
trickier than it seems. Step 35 just has you route the wires but
the actual installation isn't done until Step 36. It is important
not to pinch anything, and all the wires for the control unit need to be
passed up through the center. You also need to be able to remove
this later to access the drive system for maintenance. Four screws
attach the top plate to the hull, and another four attach the top plate
to the speaker box. However, since the speaker box is not
attached to the hull it can be lifted out with the top plate. The
wires you see sticking out are 2 for each motor and two harnesses going
to the light units. It looks pretty tidy with that cover on!
Steps 37 and 38 attach a whole bunch of tiny bits to the front of the
hull plate. There are grousers, rear view mirrors, spare track
pads, tow hooks, cleaning rods, and a driver's hatch with windows that
slides open. This takes the relatively smooth, flat hull and adds a
lot of detail.
Steps 39 and 40 install the rear hull detail. The first photo
shows the installation of a couple of intake towers and some radiator
grilles. These are photo etched parts installed with care.
The right hand photo shows a lot of tools, not all of which I can
name. Looks like there are a couple of shovels, a saw, a breaker
bar, a pick axe, and a jack among others. I considered painting
all of these in metal tool colors, but real tank operators usually
camouflage right over the tops of the tools so I figured I would do the
same. A couple of tow cables are also installed here. They
are not functional (too weak) but they are flexible and can be detached
for accessing the hull. That box you see in the middle top of the
back is a rear view camera. Though hard to see in the photo, there
are also a bunch of little handles averaging about 4mm in size.
Much of what you see on the back top here will be hidden by the turret except when it is rotated.
