Armour build for a change

[Weaver]

I've got any number of armour builds planned and bought for, but I thought I'd better start with something simple. Argentina has a licence-built APC called the VCTP, which is basically an original-style Marder hull with a Luchs turret (there are detail differences, but that's the essence of it), so I thought I'd do a developed version using the Revell Marder 1A3 hull, Luchs turret and the 50mm gun off a Puma. However, with the bits in front of me, the little gremlins on the shoulder started whispering.....

There's a French armoured car turret called a Serval, which mounts a 60mm mortar in the front plate and a 20mm exernally at the back, with the barrel sitting in between the roof hatches. Looking at the Marder's external Rh.202 and the high elevation of the Luchs' mantlet, I realised that you could add the former to the Luchs turret whilst swapping the Luchs' gun for a mortar...

Nothing worth photographing yet, but there will be.....

Info on the VCTP: http://www.military-today.com/apc/vctp.htm

[buzzbomb]

Woo Hoo !

Excellent find.. being an armour head myself, I am looking forward to this, plus I am filing the link away for a possible future project.

Great stuff

[Captain Canada]

Very cool. I like the video link...she sure blends in well with her suroundings !

[ChernayaAkula]

Sounds killer!

[Weaver]

Woo Hoo !

Excellent find.. being an armour head myself, I am looking forward to this, plus I am filing the link away for a possible future project.

Great stuff

Cheers - have you seen the TAM medium tank that goes with it?

http://www.military-today.com/tanks/tam.htm

[Aircav]

Is that a chemical warfare badge on the turret of the VCTP?

[jcf]

VCTP drawings from Modell-Fan March 1980.

Jon

[Weaver]

Cheers Jon - those are really interesting pics! 

Some progress now:



The mortar barrel is the "no-extractor" option from a Roco Minitanks 1/87th M60A2 (the Shillelagh-armed one), which handily scales to approx 125mm calibre in 1/72nd. The gunner's and commander's periscopes will have to be swapped, since the gunner is now under the pedestal with no roof hatch, Marder-style. I think the commander's position looks bare without a skate-ring over the tops of the periscopes: the Luchs comes with one, but there's barely room for the MG3 mounted on it, and it's hard to justify, given that the 20mm and the co-axial 7.62mm can both elevate to 80-odd degrees. The Marder comes with a lovely little MILAN launcher for the commander's position, but I'm saving that for something else. I'll have to scratch up a piece to blend the bottom of the pedestal into the back of the turret, but that will serve to handily cover the cut where I accidentally sliced down to the turret ring when cutting the notch for the pedestal.....

Revell have made a cock-up in the way they've designed the Marder kit. The pedestal turret has a horizontal axle running through it, with the 20mm pod on one end and either an IR searchlight (-1A1) or a 7.62mm pod (-1A3) on the other end, both pods elevating together. However Revell have given both pods a separate, moulded-in stub axle with keyways, so that a) they can elevate separately and b) you can only fit them at one elevation angle, and that angle is blocked for the 20mm when the pedestal is glued to the turret (ask me how I found that out.... ) It would have been much better to do what Minitanks did with their version and reproduce the axle.

[ChernayaAkula]

Great-lookin' turret! 

[Weaver]

Looking at other turreted mortars, I'm thinking that this one needs more suggestion of a recoil system. It's probably too late (barrel HEAVILY glued on) to fit a ballpoint pen spring around it, but I could do a tissue paper fabric cover over the base of the barrel. An alternative would be a short tube around the base to suggest a concentric system, or a pair of tubes (various arrangements) next to it.

All thoughts, opinions, pointing and giggling etc... welcome, as ever.

[rickshaw]

A canvas cover concentric recoil spring would work fine.

[Weaver]

One of the things that's been holding me up on this one was that I didn't have a backstory for who owned it and why. Well I've now decided: it's going to be a Britishised version bought instead of the Warrior! To that end, I'm fitting it with the RARDEN cannon from an Airfix Scorpion/Scimitar. Now I know that this is 1/76th rather than 1/72nd, but if you scale that out, it comes out at near-as-damn-it 27mm: the clip-feed RARDEN would have to be significantly re-engineered to work in a remote pod anyway, so I'm claiming that this is essentially a new gun by RARDEN using the same ammo as the Mauser Bk.27 in RAF Tornados. I'm also using storage bins, skirts and smoke dischargers from an Airfix Chieftain.

Here you can see the RARDEN-27, the smoke pots, the new mortar barrel sleeve, the RHS stowage and the Chieftain skirts:




And from this angle, you can see the work I've done to blend in the pedestal mount and the LHS stowage, interrupted by an escape hatch (nameless Minitanks piece):




Comments, criticisms, pokes with pointy sticks etc... all welcome, as always.

Edit: Just realised I'll have to change the MG3 barrel in the MG pod for a GPMG one......

[Captain Canada]

Looking good ! Love the escape hatch idea,

[Weaver]

Been making slow progress with this, and just tried to assemble the tracks tonight. What a pain! It has hard plastic tracks moulded in short lengths and individual links, which is pointless for a start because the Marder has live track and track guards, so there's no "sag" to simulate and you can hardly see them when it's finished anyhow: rubber tracks would work perfectly well.

Then it turns out that the instructions are wrong. They show five individual links around the idler and the drive sprocket and the rest of the run made up of short lengths. However, it takes SIX links to go around each drive sprocket, and you have to put another one in between each of the three lower lengths to get them to match up properly, which is probably why there are 14 in the kit. Presumably the spare one used to go on the hull in the -1A1 kit.

Then to make matters worse, each sprocket has a disc in the middle of it, which I presume on the real thing runs either inboard or outboard of the track links' teeth. Well on the kit it runs right in line with them, which means you have to cut the teeth off the individual links to get then to sit on it properly.

Why do they bother with all this complication? If it was a Tiger or T-34 with exposed, dead track that sags onto the top of the road wheels then I could see the point, but I can't for the life of me see how this kit wouldn't look perfectly good with rubber track.....

[SinUnNombre]

Looking at those last two pics; hover-tank anyone? Nice work Weaver.

Jon