Armortek

Sounds promising Gerhard, would this USM RC2 be compatible with the Armortek system and if so where's the best place to purchase one ?
Maybe Armortek would consider offering such an option in the future, options like these keep things fresh and more interesting for are chosen hobby manufacturer and that's just a suggestion not a put down Armortek offers by far the best quality and range out there !
Regards Phil

Phil, Gerhard, the Beier card looks very capable. For stock sounds, the Benedini TBS-Mini is perfect but for my Cent I wanted to replace the stock sounds with real recordings made during the tank's operations in Vietnam, including turret and weapon sounds and recordings of radio traffic made during one of the major battles the tank took part in. I edited the recorded sound files on Audacity, which is the same freeware Beier offers. It was very simple and straightforward. It then got more complicated, for two reasons. Firstly, Thomas Benedini uses a proprietary sound file format, which required him to convert my overall files, which he did it very quickly, efficiently and relatively cheaply but it is a stage not apparently required by Beier. Secondly, the Benediini card capacity limits the special sounds to a total of 91 secs, which I found far too short for the recordings I had available. That limitation was a pity, as I had to edit the real recordings heavily to tell the story of a particular battle and I'm not sure I've done justice to the Australian participants, with whom I'm in contact. The Beier card seems to have a much greater sound storage capacity.

The Beier has a double 2x20 watt amp, compared with the Armortek 25 watt RMS amp.

I can't comment on compatibility.

Regards

Stephen

Thanks for the info Stephen.
Gerhard do you know of a video that you can provide a link to of that system so that we can appreciate the engine sounds/revs that you talk about regards Phil

Hello Stephen, hello Phil,

I'm using four Beier modules in my tanks, and some collegues asked me to help them with their special requests. Thus I can say a little about this unit. Unfortunately I have no personal experience in Thomas Benedini's modules, therefore I have no opportunity to compare both systems.

Manufacturer Beier ( http://www.beier-electronic.de/modellba ... sprache=gb ; infos and manuals also available in English) offers with his USM-RC2 a highly universal sound module with various options, but it is absolutely not a plug and play system! More than 100 pages (!) of the manual give an overview about the possibilities. You may use some of the sounds delivered together with the module, but a better way is to create your own sounds with the enclosed 'Audacity' sound editor or oher files simply in WAV format, which is used for all sounds of the -RC2. I have hours of sounds on the removeable SD-cards of my modules, including military songs for the built-in WAV player, because only the size of the SD-card is the limitation (I use up to 8 GB; with about three hours of sound capability per GB). No kind of tank battery is big enough to fit the possible range for playing background music in a tank show!

The built-in 2 x 20 W amplifier in my opinion is a little too poor for a 1/6 scale tank. I use Thomas Benedini's new 2 x 60 W amplifier which fits both to the -RC2 and to the 24 volts driving batteries. The -RC2 itself unfortunately accepts only from 5 up to 14 volts; therefore I use it with the 5,5 volts of my receiver supply voltage. This low voltage is only useful when not using its built-in amplifier, because the acoustic result would be miserable. When needing the full amplifier power, you must use 12 volts for the module.

I must confess that I don't have an Armortek control system like the motion packs; I use particular units for ESC (drive motors and turret / gun control), recoil, muzzleflash and sound. Therefore I have no experience in the Armortek solution. But the -RC2 is only controlled by a standard RC receiver and applicated with such like 'servo cables'. So I mean that it should be compatible to any RC system which uses usual servoes with 3-pin plugs as Futaba, Graupner, Hitec and so on.

Here I will stop to advertise the -RC2, 'cause I am not a member of Beier company! Just a last word: please feel free to download the free operation manual of the USM-RC2 if you are interested. If you have more questions according to the -RC2 module, I will try to answer.

Holy moly that's a lot to take in Gerhard, thank you for the information, I shall digest it all.
I'm sure other people have questions regards Phil.

..... then let's go!

Oh, Phil,

sorry, I just see that I overlooked your nice mine busting pics! Thanks for showing! In Germany we are forced to be rather cautious with any kind of explosives (secret or not), not to jeopard our pleasurable hobby Our so called mines are totally hazard-free for our models, they only cause some smoke.....

Love it! Looks like you guys know how to have a good time and the black and white pics are cool.

Hi Phil,

if you allow me to show some more pics of that in your thread:

Dont worry about posting pics on my thread im not bothered at all, its all good viewing, as its been raining today i have been shooting some video ...here is a still of the operation regards phil.
Just looking at that photo it reminds me that I must get some weathering on that Berge , it all looks far to clean and there's little wear and tear as it's all a bit new, trouble is once you start on the weathering it just goes on and on.
Just running the vehicle you get nice wear patterns developing...like the odd inner road wheel rubbing against another (just like the real thing) and becoming polished on the outer rim, if that doesn't happen by itself then I would add silver paint.
Our video suite seems to be behaving itself at present so I will endeavour to edit the video and post soon cheers Phil.

And another in colour. Oh and the track pulling "sprocket capstan" technique really does work quite nicely in this scale!
Going back to that bl..dy video editing suite of ours, it's new to me and there for it takes a while to get used to , that and the new windows 10 I think it is driving me nuts.
The system crashes and then searches for a solution on line and when it finally closes the program you just pray that it has saved all that you have just spent two hours editing, now I'm not to good with technology anyway and living in the country side with intermittent Internet speeds sure could drive a perfectly sane person crazy......I think that's why I like blowing things up !

Just some more pics:











By the way: I'm missing the gallery! Perhaps we could open an own thread for nice tank pics........?

YouTube !

Phil, I did create a YouTube Channel for my own Armortek videos, called, imaginatively, Tank Builders, here;

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ik1J ... -r83u-_JAg

If it's possible to open uploading to this YouTube channel to other, registered, users, I'd be more than happy to have it as an unofficial Armortek channel. I'm sure Gill and Mark wouldn't mind, as long as it didn't in any way clash with their Facebook and Twitter feeds. Does anyone know enough about YouTube to comment? I'd offer to upload material myself for others but the digital fibre broadband revolution hasn't reached our part of the world. It takes ages for me to upload anything.

Regards

Stephen

Well in theory it sounds feasible I'm sure someone in our community knows about these things as for me even the microwave is a problem .
I think so long as each member is registered with youtube ie has a channel ?
Gerhard is that a 1/6th Jagdtiger!We could do with that and that lovely the Demag.

I've subscribed to the channel....but when I click the visible to me upload icon it goes straight to my own channel "magpiespyro"