Panther G #4 build

[Ed Groenenberg]

Yesterday the new super magnets got delivered.
I did order a set of 20 pieces with a diameter of 13mm and a thickness of 1 and 2 mm.
The 1 mm version turned out to be perfect, although the 2mm version also will work if you want to accept a slightly
larger gap between the hubcap and the hub.

If you order them from your local supplier, get the 'N45' type, this has a higher magnetization.

They do stick pretty well, it requires a bit of fiddling & and a fairly nice pull to peel them off.

[Ed Groenenberg]

Today I made the mounts for the speakers.
Basically it is a piece of plywood which is mounted under the air intakes, the wooden base allowed me
to use short screws to fix the speakers onto.

The 2 frames

Adjusting and test fit.

Drilling the holes

Ready for install, flyscreen is used as a cover cloth

Installed

[Ed Groenenberg]

It was a nice day today, the sun was shining, and a nice outside temperature.
Jobs done today were furter work on the electrics, smoker battery box and misc related stuff.
Also some work was done on placinf the racks, spare tracks and other small thing.

Current state of the Panther

Innards of the turret

Innards of the removable base plate with battery box

Power distribution box (mounted on raised base), and the power switch

Detail of the front

I modified the supplied power cable, by cuttng off the XT60 plug, and replace it wit a small Anderson plug.
The LiFePO4 pack I use for the Tiger has this and now I can switch between tanks easily.
The cut of XT60 was then used to make an extension cable between motion control box 'A' and the
power distribution box. No need this time to go to the hobby shop.

The smoker is not connected, as I don't have an amplifier for the speakers (it is ordered).
The Benedini sound card is programmed and ready for install, and whil be done when I have the amp.

One note about using magnets for the hub caps, as the stick on the axle / axle end stop, they do not rotate.
Actually some do, (as one would like to see), this is likely due to the fact that the magnet is not touching
the axle end stop, the magnetic field just keep it in place (still difficult to peel off tough!).
A keen observer will note this, but it does not bother me at all that some stay stationary and some not....

[Ed Groenenberg]

A job done last week before militracks.

The manual of Armortek describes using the aluminum rods to glue on the mudguards.

That;s one way, I did it sligtly different.

As I have a bunch of brass rods in 2 and 3mm thickness (sort of inheritance from my grandfather), I used lengths of
2mm brass to use instead of the thinner aluminum ones.

These were carefully bend and fitted several times to make them the curve of the guards.
After that, the surfaces were cleaned, the rods clamped with clothespins and the soldered.
To avoid the problem of getting the solder of the other rods to hoot, I used wet paper to cool those areas.

I also replaced those dreadful small button head screws with brass M2 ones, a bit fiddly but looks much better.

After the soldering, putty was used to give the sides of the rods it a nice smooth finish.
Excess putty was sanded away with 600 grit and the the whole was re-primed and lacquered.

[Ed Groenenberg]

A useful day again today.

This time the battery tray got some modifications, as well as some new wiring.
The 'B' box was moved from the front to the back, and the power wiring for it was shortened.
Also, I replaced the power cable to he 'A' box with 2 4sqmm core wires to allow better power feed in.
The cables for controlling the ESC have been replaced with longer ones, now they can reach the
receiver which will be located under the Power distribution box.

The speed module of the smoke fan (just an IRL501 MOSFET) has been attached to the fan stand for
better placing, and the long wiring harness of the smoke element has been shortened significantly,
and will be controlled by a 10 amp rc controlled switch (like a Turnigy one).

The mono amplifier has been mounted too, it's incredible how cheap and simple they are (sort of
single chip does all). Should deliver 30 - 40 watt to the speakers. All that fun for less than 5 euro.

When I need to do some maintenance or servicing, I just need to unplug a few cables and out comes the tray.
No loose modules, wiring which is always 'in the way' etc.....

Side view 1

[Ed Groenenberg]

When I came into the workshop after a boring day of office work, I found the grey cable in 2 parts.....

I wonder what happened during the night. A ghost, mice, gnomes or even some sleepwalking maybe?
As the cable for me was unnecessary long anyways, I decided to make use of this (un)fortunate event

So, off with the various sleeves, and l was a little surprised to see 2 wires not being used.

That's in fact a good thing, as these could be used for a possible future addition into the turret.

Rewiring was easy and the new cable is much more useful for me now.

And fitted into the hull :

[Ed Groenenberg]

A sunny day today, so not much done in the workshop.
Only a bit cleaning.

I also had a taught about which number I wanted to give my Panther.
It's going to be 231, which would make it (I assume this for now) a part of the group of tanks which were
part of the skirmishes near Overloon during Market Garden.

Now, about the spacing between the numbers, was this fix space?

The stencils I'm going to use are currently placed as in the below picture. Do they need an colored edge too?
Any comments / suggestions?

[Ed Groenenberg]

After Militracks, my Graupner transmitter failed. It starts, and then immediately shuts down.
I opened it up to see if I could find a cause, but no loose wires, etc.
And as it did not work anymore, I had to move the Tiger to it's parking areas by hand and a cable.....

I bought a new MZ-12 and tried to program it. I was somewhat disappointed for the options it offered,
and the turret kept moving ever so lightly and I was not able to trim it out.
Also inverting channels was only possible for CH1. A nice device, but imho not one for tanks.

So, I went for another one, and found a lightly used 2nd hand FrSKY X20s.
It came with 2 receivers, and man, this is unit is sooo much better.
It took me a little to figure out the settings but now it's doing what I want.
Each channel is reversible, the mixers are fairly easy to configure and so on.

The Panther also got it's number pained on the sides, not sure yet if I will fill them in with red or black.

New transmitter

Sunbathing

[Ed Groenenberg]

It's Sunday, it's a little wet outside (good for the garden & such), not so good for a bike ride.
So what to do, well, I made the business end of the turret MG (at least, I hope I did....).

When we collected our kits early February, I had a look in the metal scrap bin and took out
2 pieces of approx. 10cm aluminum round bar.

Placed it in the lathe and machined something, which hopefully looks ok.

Now, I just wonder a little how far to let it stick out, as I did not find a usable image of the real thing.
So, what looks better, picture 1 or picture 2?
I can make a 3rd ring if needed to make it look better in picture 2.

or this?

A 3mm LED will be used and the series resistor will go into the tube as well (drilled up to 6mm for plenty of space.
As the wire loom of the slip ring has 2 unused wires (see my post above), these can be used to connect
to my TBS sound card, sharing the same connector as the front machine gun, but then using the other output port.
For the rest it is just a proper mapping of the heavy MG gun sound with the output port and it is done.

[Jerry Carducci]

After Militracks, my Graupner transmitter failed. It starts, and then immediately shuts down.
I opened it up to see if I could find a cause, but no loose wires, etc.
And as it did not work anymore, I had to move the Tiger to it's parking areas by hand and a cable.....

I bought a new MZ-12 and tried to program it. I was somewhat disappointed for the options it offered,
and the turret kept moving ever so lightly and I was not able to trim it out.
Also inverting channels was only possible for CH1. A nice device, but imho not one for tanks.

So, I went for another one, and found a lightly used 2nd hand FrSKY X20s.
It came with 2 receivers, and man, this is unit is sooo much better.
It took me a little to figure out the settings but now it's doing what I want.
Each channel is reversible, the mixers are fairly easy to configure and so on.

The Panther also got it's number pained on the sides, not sure yet if I will fill them in with red or black.

photo_2023-06-10_10-38-10.jpg

photo_2023-06-10_10-38-10 (2).jpg

Good to see someone is using the FrSky X-series system. I plan to use mine for my next construction. I'm hoping ETHOS Suite will be upgraded before long to allow model profile editing similarly to the way OpenTx companion or EdgeTx companion does. So much better than futzing with a tiny screen.

Jerry

[Vince Cutajar]

Picture 1

Vince

[Ed Groenenberg]

After Militracks, my Graupner transmitter failed. It starts, and then immediately shuts down.
I opened it up to see if I could find a cause, but no loose wires, etc.
And as it did not work anymore, I had to move the Tiger to it's parking areas by hand and a cable.....

I bought a new MZ-12 and tried to program it. I was somewhat disappointed for the options it offered,
and the turret kept moving ever so lightly and I was not able to trim it out.
Also inverting channels was only possible for CH1. A nice device, but imho not one for tanks.

So, I went for another one, and found a lightly used 2nd hand FrSKY X20s.
It came with 2 receivers, and man, this is unit is sooo much better.
It took me a little to figure out the settings but now it's doing what I want.
Each channel is reversible, the mixers are fairly easy to configure and so on.

The Panther also got it's number pained on the sides, not sure yet if I will fill them in with red or black.

photo_2023-06-10_10-38-10.jpg

photo_2023-06-10_10-38-10 (2).jpg

Good to see someone is using the FrSky X-series system. I plan to use mine for my next construction. I'm hoping ETHOS Suite will be upgraded before long to allow model profile editing similarly to the way OpenTx companion or EdgeTx companion does. So much better than futzing with a tiny screen.

Jerry

Hello Jerry.

Not sure what you miss now in the Ethos O.S., but I can edit the profile of the model.
When the Panther G profile is complete (I might need some minor adjustments still), I copy it for the 2nd model I have.
This second model (the Tiger 1) will then have the same settings, but uses a 2nd receiver (als a SR10+) so
all the switches and such have the same settings.

Ed

[Jerry Carducci]

Hello Jerry.

Not sure what you miss now in the Ethos O.S., but I can edit the profile of the model.
When the Panther G profile is complete (I might need some minor adjustments still), I copy it for the 2nd model I have.
This second model (the Tiger 1) will then have the same settings, but uses a 2nd receiver (als a SR10+) so
all the switches and such have the same settings.

Ed

Ed it not ETHOS on the transmitter itself but rather the standalone application ‘ETHOS Suite’ - it doesn’t yet have the ability to manage model profiles. I know you can do it on the transmitter via the built in interface but I prefer a normal keyboard and mouse- this where OpenTx Companion and EdgeTx Companion have spoiled me because with those two standalone programs you can manage model profiles more easily, at least from my POV as opposed to using the transmitter interface directly. I believe there are versions of the 'companion' applications for both MS and IOS based PCs.

If any of you read the previous version of this note before I revised it and were even more confused by all the typos I apologize- I should know better than to type on my phone and go walking at the same time...

Jerry

[Kent Wiik]

So, what looks better, picture 1 or picture 2?

Sadly non of them if you aim for the real thing.
Almost nothing of the MG34 was visible.

Kind regards
Kent

[Ed Groenenberg]

Ed it not ETHOS on the transmitter itself but rather the standalone application ‘ETHOS Suite’ - it doesn’t yet have the ability to manage model profiles. I know you can do it on the transmitter via the built in interface but I prefer a normal keyboard and mouse- this where OpenTx Companion and EdgeTx Companion have spoiled me because with those two standalone programs you can manage model profiles more easily, at least from my POV as opposed to using the transmitter interface directly. I believe there are versions of the 'companion' applications for both MS and IOS based PCs.

If any of you read the previous version of this note before I revised it and were even more confused by all the typos I apologize- I should know better than to type on my phone and go walking at the same time...

Jerry

Ah, I see. I have not used the suite myself yet, but will do in the near future.

Ed