Modelcollect

[Dizzyfugu]

The kits arrived in Germany, but are (naturally...  ) withheld at the customs. Gotta fetch them tomorrow morning. Curious.

[chrisonord]

Modelcollect are pretty good for getting parts from as I wanted some rubber tyres for a scratch build, so I asked them how much for the tyres and they sent me 8 tyres,8 wheels and the corresponding wishbones and suspension for free. Pretty good if you ask me.
Chris

[Rick Lowe]

Yeah, enough steel for dozens of tanks.

But, it does fit with the Nazi fetish for huge fantasies, their plans for a continuous wall
in the East bastioned by large, circular fortress cities, was nuts on a grand scale.

And warships.

I want to see this in 1/35

IIRC, Claymore over at BtS was doing exactly that...
It may not show on his thread though; apparently he hit the wrong button and deleted his entire thread and had to reload it all, but for whatever reason the Ratte didn't make it into version 2.

[Leading Observer]

Remove the battleship guns, load it up with a Natter launching system and Wasserfall AA missiles and Roberts your Aunties brother, a "mobile" AA system

[Thorvic]

I got the new B-2 that I pre-ordered back in Sept 2016, and its quite a tasty kit.

I will probably get the new MAN GLCM and Pershing II kits when they come out this year, two of the weapon systems that typified the end of the Cold War in the late 80's 

[The Wooksta!]

When is the Ratte coming out?  That's the important question.

[Dizzyfugu]

Apparantly it was already on pre-order at HLJ.com:

https://hlj.com/product/MOLUA72088

"This item is expected to be released on or about 12/31. We will accept additional orders at that time if supplies are sufficient."

List Price:     ¥11,400
Our Price:    ¥9,120 (= $84.33 USD; €70.06) plus postage


There's also a weapon set available (Jan. 2018), full of spare weapons from other Heer '46 kits (and apparently great general whiffing fodder, too!  ):



https://hlj.com/product/MOLUA72150/

[Madoc]

Dizzyfugu,

That Weapon Set Pack is actually a helluva bargain!  The Whiffing coming from that is gonna be epic!

[zenrat]

They'll sell more of them than they do Rattes.

[Dizzyfugu]

I think so, too - and, from subjective judgement of the Ratte's box art, you might need the set in order to pack some punch to the P.1000 - it seems to be pretty bleak? But this raises the investment from EUR 70 to 120...?  It will find buyers, though.

Got my Vierfüssler kits from the customs yesterday, and I am pleased. Noteworthy is that they are marketed under a new label, "Rocket Models", but the interior (decals, instruction sheet illustrations) is 100% ModelCollect.

The kit looks crisp, but comes with many tiny parts. The ventral Kugelblitz turret (also part of the Ratte set!) is actually a full, spheric turret with an attachment ring - and the designers of the model surely ignored the internal need for space for both the upper and lower turret in one hull. I think I will rather omit the lower turret when I tackle these tanks, and use them for a whiffy AA tank (maybe with a Panther hull...?) The upper turret comes from the tank kits.

The legs are fully poseable, even though they come w/o vinyl caps. But on the other side, the legs feature moveable hydraulic pistons - theoretically a nice detail, but we'll have to see how these delicate things do in real life?

Furthermore I assume that a six-legged walking tank is in the pipeline, too - under the wacky name "Kakerlake" (Cockroach). There's a small profile diagram of it on the box.

[Dizzyfugu]

Found sketches of the six-legged version (with E-100 hull):







That should be huge! 

[PR19_Kit]

What is all this about walking tanks? Seems a crazy idea to me. 

Did anyone ever build a real one?

[scooter]

What is all this about walking tanks? Seems a crazy idea to me. 

Did anyone ever build a real one?

Prototype US Army Walking Truck


Then there's John Deere's Walking Tractor:


As for actual combat mechs?  Not yet.

[zenrat]

IMO walking tanks are a solution in search of a problem.  Look how easilly AT-ATs and AT-STs were knocked out in TESB & ROTJ.
If the Imperial armour on Hoth had been tracked (and no reason why not on an ice plain like that - ground pressure would have been less for a start) then the snow speeders would have been unable to take them out except by suiciding.
However, like Mobile Suits in Gundam, Macross, Pacific Rim etc they are just so Sci Fi that they have to be used.

I'm trying to work out the walking.
Front Left, Rear Left and Middle Right would step forward.  Then Front Right, Rear Right and Middle Left.  Then repeat.
But would it be able to gallop moving opposite legs in pairs?
I need to study ants moving.
Plenty of them in the yard to look at tomorrow.

[Dizzyfugu]

A walking tank would be clumsy, slow, complicated and heavy. It would IMHO only make sense for very special purposes. I could imagine that a walking tank could be handy in tight urban combat situations, where wheeled or tracked vehicles might face problems. Anyway, ground pressure is the biggest issue, IMHO - a track distributes the weight of a tank well, but "feet" have much less area, and when the thing walks it becomes even less and you have dynamic forces on top... I guess a terrain where you can safely operate such a thing is hard to find. Beware of subways...

Another inherent flaw is the very high CG of many walking tank designs (as zenrat mentioned). The AT-AT is absurd because it will surely easily fall over. I guess that even side wind would make a "ride" hazardous...

One of the best walking tank designs I have found is a scout vehicle from the Patlabor 2 anime movie. It is light, has six legs (IMHO the minimum for safe operations, esp. when combat is involved) and can actually retract and fold the legs so that it becomes a more or less normal wheeled vehicle.