Armour Dreams

[Mike Cecil]

Congrats on reaching a very significant milestone. Great job - well done. I've enjoyed seeing each stage as it was posted.

Mike

[Jonathan Moore]

Thanks Mike I have enjoyed getting to this stage.

Evening All,

I have now turned my attention to finishing the detail in the upper hull. I may of mentioned that I had never intended making the whole tank, hence my upside down approach to the project. As such I never really paid that much attention to the upper hull as it was only supposed to be a stand for the turret to sit on, consequently I have made a few errors that I have had to revisit, not major problems but still time consuming.

I am currently working on the drivers vision area and how anyone could drive it with only this small area to see through is beyond me. There are three ways for the driver to see out, the first is with the visor open, the second is with the visor closed looking through a small slot and third through the two small holes above the visor. This is the only picture that I have of this area in an early clam shell AUSF C so this is what I am attempting to recreate.

I also have this drawing of the visor area but there is not enough detail of the glass block retainer, so at present I am going to leave the glass block until I can find more information.

The first two vision options are controlled by the levers to the left and right of the visor.

[Jonathan Moore]

To the right, is a lock which locks the visor closed.
This unit contains a spring loaded plunger that locates into the main shaft, ensuring that the shaft stays in the desired position.

[Jonathan Moore]

To the left, is the lever for opening and closing the visor.
This has three positions, closed, semi-open and open.
This assembly contains a vertical sprung loaded plunger to ensure that the lever can't jump out of position.

[Jonathan Moore]

The third method of seeing the road ahead, is through the two small holes above the vision slot as mentioned above. To achieve this one has to use a periscope that is attached to a rail bolted to the roof of the upper hull. As yet I haven't made the periscope, that's the next job but I have made the attachment rails.
And the blanking block that covers the vision holes when the periscope is not required.

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[Jonathan Moore]

And that's all, until next time.



Jon

[David Dunlop]

Fascinating work as always, Jonathan.

Its not until you actually end up in a tank for a while that you truly start to appreciate how incredibly important teamwork and trust are among the crew members.

David