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A very brave and difficult addition Stephen, I'm not normally in favour of battle damage but you have it there.

Hi Stephen
This has to be the most realistic true to life Armortek model ever.
Simply stunning

Hope to see you Sunday

Regards

Derek

Thanks Phil and Derek, your comments mean a lot. I keep checking back with the surviving crew and will always be guided by them. They've been very supportive to date, particularly with the sound recordings I used. Derek, looking forward to catching up on Sunday. I'm going to be doing a short talk on the research behind the model, if you're interested. More original films and photos than me, though.

Barrel Smoke

When I installed my barrel smoke system, I removed the kit LED flash unit, mostly because I wanted the space to run a neoprene tube down the barrel from the smoke unit to the muzzle but also because I never found the LEDs very realistic. If you push them sufficiently into the muzzle that they can't be seen, .....they can't be seen.

I was browsing on a well known online store looking for laser measuring equipment when I coincidentally found this:



It's a tiny red laser marker which will fit easily into the barrel alongside the smoke tube. The Centurion muzzle is just over 14mm in diameter. The laser is 21 x 7 mm and works off 2.6-5v DC.

The plan is that the laser beam will colour the smoke out to a distance from the muzzle and represent a substantial and visible flash as the gun fires. I've just got to work out how best to integrate it into the tank electrics. Thought it might be of interest, not just to anyone thinking of barrel smoke.

Don't point the barrel at any low fly air craft Stephen
Funny, I was going to fit one of these to the Chieftain targeting sight for bit of fun. But you have to keep the beam low otherwise you'll have some silly making a blame claim for loss of sight in one eye. ooh arr

Have you considered a strobe flash up the barrel onto the smoke you've generated by one of those 1/16 scale tank add on units Stephen, I guess the illumination would be quite short but it might be enough to draw the attention to the effect.

I had considered a flash paper gun used by magicians , sadly it would be one time muzzle loaded device only.

Not for the faint heart'ed though

I like the flash paper gun, I've got loads of similar material in my magazine!

Can I get a subscription Phil

You can buy it from various firework companies so long as you can persuade them your legit, you don't need a licience!

I've completed the installation of the laser enhancement to my barrel smoker and done some initial testing. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the result. After looking at the various sources of power in the turret, I decided for simplicity's sake to draw 12v from the feed to one of the fans driving the smoke into the barrel. This is triggered by a momentary toggle switch on the tx and will therefore trigger the smoke and laser simultaneously. The wiring was very simple, just a Y-lead. The laser requires 5V, so the harness includes a 7805 voltage regulator. This probably doesn't need a heat sink as the laser will only be on momentarily but by mounting the regulator on the turret wall, it's got the biggest heat sink going.


The laser sits alongside the smoke discharge tube in the barrel with a baffle to disperse the smoke.


Some test shots:

Only a short movie can do this justice!

With a reservation booked for the Tank Museum first day open, time to refurbish the Aussie Cent, in anticipation of running her at shows this year. I've been flying OpenTX on my model aircraft for a while and have wanted exploit its capabilities on the Cent for a while. I had to get help (as ever) from Adrian Harris to sort out a problem with installing the Benedini Rotary Encoder, which he did months ago. It was only last week that he was able to meet up and return it. So, out with the old Spectrum analogue radio and in with the digital, programmable FrSky Taranis X9D Plus and an X8R receiver.


Although, with an X8R receiver, there are eight physical channels, the transmitter can be programmed with up to 32 virtual or digital channels, which can be combined in any permutation, giving huge flexibility to create new functions and to link physical functions together on one programmable control, whether a stick, pot, slider or switch. The X8R also supports a number of telemetry sensors and although most are orientated towards flying, there are some which can really help to understand in real time what our motion packs are doing.


The Benedini rotary encoder was simple to install, much like on a Spektrum radio (or at least it would have been if I hadn't soldered a dry joint). It sits where the Taranis Switch G was, with the additional momentary switch installed in a new hole beside the rotary selector. Teaching the sounds was exactly as with any other radio.


FAS 100 is a voltage and current telemetry sensor. It sits inline between the battery and Power Module, with a lead to connect to the SBus (telemetry) port on the receiver. Simple, after soldering a couple of XT-60s into the battery lead. Setup on the radio is easy. Get the radio to detect the new sensor, set up how you want to display the data and that's it. In raw form, the sensor will give you a real time readout of battery voltage and current consumption. With one extra line of programming, it can also display mAh remaining as a number and percentage. There are also two detachable temperature sensors which could be applied to the motors or the battery, to give real time readouts of external temps. So what use is this data? Knowing how much battery power remains should mean no more stranded models. Knowing the peak current consumption should also help understand whether the battery capacity remaining will support a high load situation such as driving back up the ramps into the car. Temperature is useful to avoid motor overheating or to indicate battery stress on hot days. All this real time data can also be logged although when the system is shut down, the telemetry data resets. Nevertheless, having a robust view of power remaining is a big bonus.

Pt 2

Setting up an Armortek model on OpenTX in its basic form is straightforward, he said......There is a lot of help out there. There are guides to setting up aircraft on YouTube and useful material on the OpenTX website but this commercial guide, which is updated with each major software release, is really useful to find your way around the menus and understand the structure of the software:


https://alofthobbies.com/taranis-plus-user-manual.html

https://www.t9hobbysport.com/taranis-x9 ... ser-manual

What follows isn't an exhaustive guide but just a flavour of what's involved.

There are a couple of things to set up on the radio page, including binding the receiver, then a new model is created. It's best to avoid using the New Model widget, which is intended for model aircraft.

Short press MENU to open the MODEL SELECTION page - long press ENTER on a vacant model slot, CREATE MODEL and EXIT to avoid the widget.

Short press PAGE to select the MODEL SETUP page. Enter a name, scroll down to INTERNAL RF and select XJT 16. Scroll down to CHANNEL RANGE , select CH1-8 (TELEM ON).

SELECT BIND, press ENTER (TX beeps). PRESS the BIND BUTTON on the RX and power up. Flashing RED LED indicates BIND COMPLETE. When power is restored, the GREEN LED indicates Bind successful.

The radio is now talking to the model. Now to set up the model.

INPUTS

Short press MENU to enter the MODEL SETUP pages. Short press PAGE to navigate to the INPUTS page. This page tells the radio which physical entry devices (sticks, pots, sliders, switches) will control which logical function. This is an important concept. Forget channels for a moment, the logical function is what you want the model to do, so for example drive forward and reverse, steer, traverse turret, etc. This is my INPUT page for the usual driving functions and control of sound, searchlight and barrel smoker. Thr, Ail etc are the names given to the four sticks, SG etc are switches, S3 is the Rotary Encoder.


MIXES

Short press MENU again to select the MIXES page. This is where the logical functions are translated into logical channels (up to 32). Channels can be combined, added to each other or subtracted. Channels are what you want the radio to do. So for example, DRIVE and TURN are combined by adding them to each other to give us single stick driving, as ever. Despite its name, this page isn't about mixing in the old analague radio sense. It's better to think in terms of what effect you want each of the physical input controls to do - it's the brains of the whole setup. This is my MIXER page for the Cent.


OUTPUTS

Short press MENU to select the OUTPUTS page. Here the logical channels (what you want the radio to do) are translated into the physical channels on the receiver. The Channels here relate to the physical connections on the receiver. The OUTPUTS also set the physical conditions of the devices being controlled, such as servo limits, reversing, mid points etc. As with the other pages, it's helpful to give each line a name which reflects what it actually does, such as TRAV, SMOKE, LIGHT etc. This is my OUTPUTS page:


For a basic model, that's all you have to do.

To begin exploring some of the power of OpenTX, I also wanted to fire my barrel smoker with the momentary switch which controls the special sounds, so that now when I select Main Armament sound and trigger it, the gun firing sound is played, the barrel smoker fires for as long as the switch is pressed and the laser in the barrel fires. That's much easier than the setup with the Spektrum, which required two switches and a rotary knob selection to be co-ordinated. This sort of advanced functionality is setup using LOGICAL SWITCHES and SPECIAL FUNCTIONS. This is where I struggle as my mind isn't as logical as I'd like to think. It helps to have the simulator in the OpenTX Companion. You can play around with the setup and test it in the sim until it works as you wish.

These LOGICAL SWITCHES create a condition - the condition is TRUE when the rotary encoder is selected to the main armament special sound, which causes the sound channel to output a certain value AND the momentary switch is positive ie the sound is playing. The condition is FALSE when the rotary encoder is set to any other position ie any other sound is selected, OR the momentary switch isn't positive.


This SPECIAL FUNCTION tells the radio to activate the smoke channel to run the barrel smoker and fans for as long as LOGICAL SWITCH above is TRUE (ie as long as the correct sound is played.


The model setup is stored in a file on the TX SD card, in a format which can be read by any OpenTx software. A basic configuration setup might be worth developing and made available to anyone starting out. Doing it from scratch though does help with learning the software.


This is really only scratching the surface of what OpenTX can do. Pioneers like Liam in Australia have pushed it much further and when the Taranis becomes the Armortek default radio, there will be a lot more applications. Owners of the Lee/Grant might find that a lot of the complicated stuff going on with the guns can be made much more flexible and controllable.

> Owners of the Lee/Grant might find that a lot of the complicated stuff going on with the guns can be made much more flexible and controllable.

That's certainly my plan: Add a second receiver, then use a three way switch to select between the commander's cupola, turret and sponson, which then allows the left stick to control elevation and traverse of the selected gun. That combined with a tweak to my MG splitter and recoil modules and she should be good to go

Adrian.

I’ve got a Lee .... sounds like the beginning of a big learning curve