Zweiradienlenkgetriebe L801

Heavy hardware

Clearly the driver and radio operator had way too much footspace and too few tools. The solution to this problem was just behind the corner!

Control unit

Unlike the last Indiana Jones movie's tank, this jolly beast wasn't (only) controlled by pulling levers to brake the tracks, but via a steering wheel! The L801 steering device was a simple-looking two-piece module, that was glued onto a larger cylinder setup. The steering wheel didn't look too ergonomic to me, nor did was it a wheel, but that was just silly nitpicking.

Gearbox complex

As far as I understood the next setup consisted of the gear-housing (a 7-gear Zahnradfabrik AK 7-200) and a more blocky gearbox (OG 40 12 16B Schaltgetriebe). From now on, whatever all this should technically be called, will be referred to as "the gearbox" for simplicity.

FunkGerät 5

My King Tiger's radio setup consisted of a couple of boxes. Based on a couple of photos I found from the interwebs it should have a rack frame of some sort (painted white). Setting one up wouldn't be a problem, if one could count on the tank's upper part fitting on top of it. The larger box was a FuG 5, but I didn't recognize the smaller one as anything else - or a command unit's FuG 2 (unlikely, this didn't have the antennae required). This was the time I should've had a handful of very technical sourcebooks... in any case, whatever these were, they got installed on top of the gearbox housing.

The driver's seat

Something for the driver to play with

For the first project hours I had built components and attached them here and there, with an obvious bottom-up principle, without any specific plan or concentration on a specific area within the battle compartment. Now the beast started being in a state where some subareas were to be worked on.

Controllers

Until now the poor driver had only received a single stick, that maybe had something to do with setting the gears or not. Now the dude received some more crap to fill up his working environment.

The first photoetch piece of the kit ended up living next to the driver's head, to the left front edge. At this point the function of this setup was half a mystery. It looked like a periscope, and most likely was one.

A friend of mine in IRC referred to the plate below as a "nail plate" in Finnish, so the translation may be off a bit or eight. Whoever it was, it was installed below some pedals. I still had no idea of how a tank was driven, so I assumed them being a brake and a clutch, while the acceleration (or separately braking the left/right track) was done via the handles.

With the controllers installed and no explanation given about anything the place looked like a jungle. To my eyes the pedals looked like they were a bit too high up compared to the floor level.

Ohjaimet asennettuna, kahvojen merkitystä ei missään selitetty ja polkimet näyttivät olevan vähän hämmentävän korkealla tämänhetkiseen lattiatasoon nähden.

The freshly installed nail plate (?) at least protected the driver's feet from the torsion bars, but the ergonomy really made me suspicious, especially with the pedals being so far away from this new foot-resting plate. Then again, my only experience of sitting inside a tank is from a T-55M, that had pedals like from a go-kart than anything that we've seen here. So I had no real clue for comparison.

Meanwhile, further back

At this point I also built the firewall between the combat compartment and the engine compartment, with the pipes and whatnots. This piece of wall sat into its slot pretty damn nicely.

The driving seat

This seat was built out of quite a load of pieces. Especially while fiddling with the small, unglued axles the bench seemed like it could maybe be adjusted inside the model. Somehow.

Despite the freehand gluing position the bench complex settled in pretty nicely and, surprisingly, sturdy-lookingly.

Sadly I didn't have any sitting 1:35 scale gentlebeings readily available, in a sitting position or otherwise. At this point the bench looked functional. I was just wondering, how did it work in the real world when the dude wanted to actually see where he was driving and popped his cabbage out of the hatch? I somehow doubted it was as convenient as an office chair with quick-locks and whatnot.

Some more boxes to the bottom of the tub

Boxies

A short post this time, there wasn't much that happened between the torsion bars and the next bigger chunk. Now I installed more boxes to the bottom of the tank's hull. Sadly there was nothing to tell me what they were for, for example that hole-topped pair in the end. I'd been more than interested in knowning what I had put together and put inside my tank-to-be. Once again a good sourcebook would've been incredibly handy.

Torsion bar suspension

Not the same as the Panther

This tank's torsion bar suspension was a slightly different beast from the old Panther's twin torsion bar suspension, not that I could say what was the pros/cons set of these systems. At least this one was a bit simpler to assemble, not that the other one was challenging, from a model-builder's point of view.

Series 'A'

Obediently following the instructions I started by building eight combinations of the torsion bars and road arms for the inner road wheels.

Smashing the bars inside the tank's belly was started from the nose, because I thought that the driver's place was the most obvious spot for piratey swearing. It wasn't that bad, just the final millimeters were a bit tight.

One by one the bars found their places. The rearmost one in this photo looked screwed, but I was going to blame that on the angle of the shot. It didn't look twisted or bent seen through my own eyes.

Series 'B'

For the outer road wheels I likewise assembled a set of twelve bars and road arms. Installing those was a similar fight in the end of the tank, where a couple of the throughput bits were misaligned or clogged.

Now the tank's floor was looking pretty hectic, wouldn't want my foot to be caught there while driving cross-country. I remembered from the pics that there'd be an internal floor of some sort, so that the personell didn't need to step between those torsion bars in their cramped, potentially gloomy and most likely bothersomely noisy workspace.

The instructions wanted the road wheels to be installed right now, I hadn't even assembled them (each consisted of two parts), because I knew I wanted to paint them and the outer hull separately before installing the moving bits.

Megabonus

As luck would have it, it happens to be Donald Duck's birthday today. Yay for the 87 year-young dabbler!

Starting on some crew positions

The driver and the radio operator

First of all the driver got a controller bar into his footspace. Installing that multi-angled bar was somewhat frustrating. The flimsy 

Kuljettaja sai jalkatilaansa nyt ohjainkepakon, jonka paikoilleenasentaminen oli kevyesti tuskastuttavaa puuhaa. Rimpulamuovi oli vääntyä poikki moneen kertaan.

The radio operator got a cushion for his buttocks and if I recalled correctly, a first aid kit behind his place. The seat didn't really look too comfortable. If the tiny hatch opening in front of their feet was for anything but light service functions, I will be confused.

The lower front glacis plate was covered in Zimmerit and it was to be installed right now, not when the hull was about to be assembled. Its effect on the internal views was, as expected, nonexistent.

There the hatch went, under the shoes of the radio operator.