Thank you Charles. Trying
Ahh, the Chieftain Turret, what a beauty of curves it is, but not for the faint hearted, a crippler in fact if your not careful. It weighs a lot, making the KT turret child's play. And that was heavy.
From the beginning I was going to do something a little different than a standard Armortek options turret build. So the turret was going to be upside down for a while with three modifications to develop.
First, Remake the slip ring support bracket so that the slip ring device is more central so the wiring will do less sweeping inside the hull.
Second, A form of automized stabilization, nothing to complicated, but something that can be tinkered with on a relatively small budget no special tools and off the shelf bits and bobs.
And Third, a centralized push pull recoil system like the Armortek Centurion because it seems the best and most reliable system I can fit without having to change any major parts. The original Chieftain system draws on the side of the barrel, not as good as the central draw in my opinion.
The original Armortek slip ring bracket is set well off center, (70mm+) so I cut a similar looking bracket from aluminum and mounted it off the traverse gear ring, stepped above the pinon gear for clearance. The central point is still off center by 30mm but the sweeping effect should be less than half of the original position and its as close as I can get without attacking the recoil bracket.
Stabilization I thought like many would look really cool. But it's complicated especially on two axis. And anything going wrong with traverse could be devastating to the model and anything within the gun length arc.
The modification I've fitted is a single axis of gun up and down with override. The only way I could see to do this on the cheap is to use a big fat servo, a model submarine self leveling device and a servo slow motion controller. Oh and 1.8kg of lead and a bump stop!
I've used most of Armortek's original mounting points and added extra length to the recoil frame to suspend an extra two counter weights bolted together. Armortek's original counter weight (630g) has been removed and replaced with three lead weights totaling 1.8kg. This is to reduce the weighted leverage on the servo by the very long gun length.
A bump stop has been attached to the turret roof to stop overtravel of the servo when the power is switched off or stopping the gun banging into the hull in a malfunction.
In operation with the self leveling device fitted drives the gun quite fast, this causes inertia and bounce and maybe causes a "hunting" effect.
To counteract this effect a servo slow control device is fitted, which smooths out the action and no bounce is noticed other than that from the barrel slide. There may be some lag but this can be tinkered with at a later date when fitted to the hull. The self leveling device also allows manual override so the gun can be positioned via the transmitter. I don't expect it to be perfect just something to entertain if it works well in the frontal arc.
Phew, Finally, while I was messing around with the elevation I saw the possibility of modifying the recoil drive system from the side push pull system to what I think is more reliable and smoother the centralized pull push system as mounted in Centurion. Just my opinion and not difficult to do adding brass bush into the barrel pivot point which is nice.
A servo reverse device is required because the servo has been mounted in an opposite position and now works backwards. I'm not going to fiddle with the red box recoil unit or the servo as it is simpler to fit the reverser that costs less than £5.00
I should add, all of Armortek options supplied are very robust and easy to fit. They probably shouldn't be messed with, but I like a challenge especially the stabilization effect, Or I should say an autonomy system that could not be achieved with the basic screw jack system supplied.
(including one reverse image) I had something that resembles the piece, a few glued on bolts and a couple of brackets and it should be good to go.
