Armortek

I am in need of advice with regard to fitting a counter weight to balance the Barrel. what weight is needed? Should it be a perfect balance or should it be under weight?
Many thanks Steve

Steve hi. I can only give you my experience with the Cent. The further you can extend the location of the weight from the trunnions, the lighter it can be. The CG of the gun of course moves on recoil and I set mine up for a perfect balance at the battery position (ie gun fully run out forward), which rather neatly causes the muzzle to jump when the gun recoils (which is realistic). I did find though that balancing the gun exacerbates the effect of any free play in the elevation linkage and you get even more unrealistic juddering when the tank moves unless you can eliminate the backlash. I replaced the elevation leadscrew completely and introduced a direct linear servo drive with very little backlash and it works well. With the balanced gun, the elevation becomes a lot more precise and responsive, which I like because it allows you to simulate a much more realistic engagement sequence, with the gunner making small elevation corrections as he would in practice. It's also usual for a tank gunner to re-lay between each round, always ending the lay in the same direction to eliminate the real turret backlash. On Chieftain and Cent, the gun lay was ended in elevation (ie you depress the gun beyond the point of aim and elevate it onto target). I don't know which direction was used on Tiger but the Tigerfiebel will probably tell you.

All the best.

Stephen

Hi Steve,

This is what I did with mine but it depends on the drive system for the elevation.
I set it so it balanced evenly with no mechanism attached.

Dennis.

If you are coming to wincanton, look inside mine, all have counter balance weights Denny.

Interesting how we all come to the same conclusion about some designs. I have ours with a counterweight, a chunk of brass rod.

You mean carefully crafted piece of brass!?

Counter Weight now sorted, the weight is supported by a 12mm Screwed Rod and consists of a short length of Scaffold Pole filled with lead and weighs about a 1.25Kg. Balances perfectly!

Very nice!

btw Did you hear Anthony Hopkins was filming in Oxford for the Nazis vs robots film?