Landships II

Hi Martin.

I've just looked at the pics available in landships articles; you've perhaps done this already. The MkIV interiors page has a couple of reasonably close pics of the rear bulkhead of what I think is Flirt II, but they look like it is missing the mechanism - it seems to be missing all the interior fittings.

More helpful might be the video of sponson removal from Grit in the Australian War Memorial; this vid is found on the 'surviving MkIV' page, and eventually, around 4min 23sec, pans across the interior to show the rear bulkhead more closely than the photos do.

Unfortunately that corner of the tank was not well lit when the vid was made, but if you watch fullscreen you should see a fair bit of detail, especially if taken in conjunction with the photos. There seems to be a bar/lever across the door towards the top, which is not present in the photos inside Flirt II.
Hope this is of use,

TCT

PS - what you've done so far looks great. What scale are you working in?

Not sure if you have seen this one.

They are very helpful, if you have any trouble let me know.

Hello TCT,

thank you!

I am trying my best to make this as close to the original as possible. Although a lot of it is brass and copper, the main body perts are copper plated circuit board. It is light, sturdy - and you can solder and glue it.So the weight will not be so bad in the end.

For motors, I am using these here. They are 540 motors with a planetary gear box, transmission will be via bevel gears and belt to the rear drive wheels. Various gearings are possible this way, but if my calculations are correct, these should be right for the job.

The controls will be very simple, 27 mHz, from the Heng Long tanks. The good thing about them is that they have engine sounds and various extras all ready. There are some simple tweaks to the controls possible to get more options, as I plan to have the turrets in the sponsons moving about.Best thing is, you can hardly beat the price...

If I see the necessity, I can always upgrade the controls and get more sophisticated gear, like the Elmod tank controllers or a programmable Beyer sound box, if I should ever get hold of the real sound of a Mark IV.

If you have more questions, please ask!

With best regards,

Martin

MRG wrote:

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Although a lot of it is brass and copper, the main body perts are copper plated circuit board. It is light, sturdy - and you can solder and glue it.So the weight will not be so bad in the end.

The controls will be very simple, 27 mHz, from the Heng Long tanks.

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 Circuit board? Ingenious, I would never have though of it. Copper plated is the natural state for the stuff, I remember we made printed circuit boards in sixth year at school by etching most of the copper away.

Heng Long does indeed look like an excellent value way to get some parts; I was pleasantly surprised to find you can get twin motor and gearbox sets with metal gears for just £20. 

All you need then is to use a smoke generator and have a little fan to blow it down the exhaust pipe in sync with the 'engine' - allowing the smoke to waft out lazily when 'idling'.

I don't know how the mortar trials on the back of the MkIV tadpole went during the war, but it occurs to me that any mortar crewmen would probably have been gassed by the dense clouds of exhaust smoke between the track horns if it had been tried in action!

Hello Helen!

Thank you very much for your response and the photos!

I think the mechanism is rather different though, as there is this disk with the square hole on the outside which I believe was some kind of lock.

The bolt positions of the mechanism are clearly seen from the outside views, but with the unclear pictures I can find from the interior views, I cannot make out how this might have worked.

I even tried to be creative, thinking "how would I construct that door lock" making several latch- and lever designs on the given bolts but it just does not come out right.

However, I am in contact with Bovington now to get that construction drawing., I will certainly post the finished results.

With best regards,

Martin

That's weird - it's exactly the same image on Landships I & II. If you right click on an expanded image in Landships II most browsers will allow display of the image in a separate tab.

Regards,

Charlie

Hello again!

Thank you all for your great help!

I gave in to temptation, took an extra day off for this passed weekend and drove the 580 km to Brussels on Friday afternoon to thoroughly inspect "Lodestar III".

I had goosebumps when I first approached it, the tank looming there at the rear end of the relatively dark hall, the Whippet next to it and the Fokker Triplane above.

Reading about German soldiers surrendering just like that when the tanks approached is totally understandable to me now.

The museum staff were very helpful and kind indeed, they even gave me a large ladder so that I could make pictures of the roof. I wish I had more than only two thumbs to hold up for the staff! Great guys. I spent the entire Saturday with Lodestar (only interupted by the weird lunch break the museum makes) and came back for more on Sunday morning.

This way I was able to take details that I could not find anywhere on the net, like the front end of the silencer, the hinges of the conical roof turret, the shaft behind the ventilation gills and the look of things behind the upper rear armour plate.

I was able to pick up and note a lot of small details, like the imprinted registration number on the front glacis nose girder, some graffiti (which might have been done by one of the original crews, to be researched yet), the painted over "L47" on the rear upper plate and so much more.

The door lock mechanism of the rear door is identical to the one on the left sponson door. So Helen's guess was correct, if you take a Mark IV sponson door into account. Why didn't I think of that before? The images of Flirt had been misleading me, finally the answer was very simple indeed.

I reached through the Lewis gun port and made some "endoscopic" pictures with my camera. Not good ones, but very enlightening.

Calling that thing a "door" is too much, I was rather shocked to see how small it actually is. Sure, I would be able to squeeze through if I would have to, but surely only in cases of emergency. I am amazed the designers put it there at all.

It is weird how working on the model inflated my expectations on the actual size of things.

I am not small - but at 182 cm not super tall either. I would not have been able to stand upright inside the vehicle - and how the crew managed not to be knocked senseless by all those corners and protuding bits inside when going over rough terrain will ever be a mystery to me.

Anyway, I have enough information to keep me busy for weeks now! I will make an according detailed building report, but this will surely be better positioned in the modelling section of the forum.

And - if I  can help with questions now, I certainly will! Just send me a note.

Please understand that I promised not to publish the photographs I made on the internet, but I can send you the odd picture on a private basis.

With best regards, and thanks again,

Martin

PS: The Atomium is also worth a visit. 

Well, sooner or later I just had to make that drive... and a little madness helps when making such decisions!

I am not 100 % sure, but as I am bit of a a cynic myself, it is probably going to be this one: C22 "Cynic", a female.

(Does anyone here also think they look like Aztec idol statues with those fascine bundles on top?)

At least here I can see the exact lettering of the name in the front - and I can more or less guess what the rest of the markings looked like, as I found some other pictures of C-company tanks from the rear. And now I also have a good idea about the original colour.

The airbrush will stay in its box, these tanks were certainly coated by means of a brush, so I will replicate exactly that by using small fine brush strokes.

With best regards,

Martin