Late April Update

Some more progress :-) This time some pics of the turret work, the fabricated stowage boxes and the result of wielding my trusty soldering iron for some hours in the shed!

Firstly the turret pics.

 The finished traverse assembly. The square base to the upright bolts to the tank chassis floor, the wires coming out of the upright are the turret power cables up to the integral three pin plug.

 Looking directly down onto the underneath of the turret showing the angle iron base frame and the centre spigot support legs.

 Same thing from a side view showing the elevation motor and recoil servo to the left.

 Close up of the frame and one of the support rollers. This bears onto the top of the hull but is purely for balancing rather than taking any of the weight, that is taken by the traverse mechanism.

 Close up of the elevation motor and recoil servo.

Close up of the centre spigot with the built in three pin turret power plug.

Next some pics of the rear stowage bins fabricated by Howard. These are superb and exactly to scale, however, they are too small for the rear panel so I'm not sure what we're going to do about that :-/ Not H's fault, I gave him the correct dimensions but the rear panel is not correct so they're about 20mm too short. Its so annoying as I'd wished I'd checked the rear panel measurements and adjusted the bins accordingly but cest la vie :-(

 Superb.

 Spot on.

Too short :-0

Next some short videos demonstrating some of the features of the working electrics.

First the synchronised exhaust smoke. Should have left it a bit longer to make more smoke but you get the idea. This uses the Benedini oil smoke module connected to the Benedini sound module but just to run the fans.

Couldnt get the short video showing the idler adjusting so here's the link to the YouTube appearance.

Idler Adjustment Video

Note how slow the idler moves and the led lighting when the limit switch has cut power to the motor.

This shows what happens inside when the idler is moving on the outside. Also shows the limit switches cutting power to the motor and putting the lighting the led on the control panel.

And to prove the turret works ok! We think the belt needs tightening as when the turret is sitting on the hull it tends to catch a bit as it rotates making it bounce too and fro.

Wont get much done this weekend as we've got some work to do on our tank transporting truck. More as and when.