RC tanks anyone? Girls und Panzer King Tiger

For anyone who's not seen the anime show Girls und Panzer, I highly recommend it. Basically the premise is: high school girls battling in WWII tanks as a sport! Totally ridiculous, and yet so much fun and I find the characters pretty cute, likable, and hilarious (at least the protagonists). To date this project is still unfinished, awaiting final sanding of defects in the primer coat and a paint job. But the construction and electronics are all set. The show features some great music (really catchy marches and such, if you're into that sort of thing   ) and some great phrases (in Japanese) of the girls shouting orders and stuff, so I chose a control board with some powerful sound capabilities.

This is actually my second non-1/6 RC tank project. The first was an overly ambitious project to convert several Tamiya 1/35 scale Tigers into RC, and I actually got all the mechanicals/electronics worked out but burned out badly as it was one of the hardest things I've ever done (so small!). Those still await detailing and basic modeling work before even getting to painting and weathering so are a while off. I turned to 1/16 as a diversion thinking I could bang a few out quickly. I was wrong there too! 

Anyway, this is what I've been doing the past two+ years before starting to post here again.

The below project was mostly posted at rctankwarfare.com, so I'm going to start with it since it's easier to copy it over. I'm pretty sure there's virtually no crossover in membership here so pretty confident none of you have ever seen it. There will probably be some technical RC things you won't be familiar with, but don't worry too much, it's not that important. The important thing to realize while I babble on about it is: RC is a pain in the @ss!

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I'll be honest: the only reason I got into these 1/16 scale tanks was because I wanted some tanks to complement that giant 1/12 scale Panzer IVDhttps://www.goodsmile.info/en/product/5049/figma+Vehicles+Panzer+IV+Ausf+D+Finals.html from Girls und Panzer, with which I planned to do some basic RC functions (drive only since it's already motorized but no turret functions) and a basic "play scale" interior for the really adorable GuP 1/12 action figures of Miho's Ankou team (those of you who know the show will know what I mean by that). So I bought a KT to "battle" with the Ankou team Pz IV, my reasoning being that the KT is the largest of the WW2 tanks and wouldn't look too out of scale next to the Pz iv. But, as it seems is common in this hobby, the gateway drug led to one thing after another, and now I have the KT with ElMod under construction, a Taigen Tiger I early awaiting mods and also with an ElMod, and a Taigen Panzer IVG kit (without electronics) winging its way over here from Germany which will largely supplant the 1/12 Pz iv for my Ankou team girls (oh, and I plan to use ElMod in that as well, although I may just swap one of the boards from the other two tanks in since I can't actually operate all three at once!). Sigh...

I'm basically a lazy modeler, despite my OCD tendencies when I focus on select details and spend inordinate amounts of time, effort, and money trying to get things as perfect as possible. I try to get the main things right, or at least the ones I notice most, and try to ignore as many faults or wrong details as I can get away with. My goal here is to try to model a "show accurate" Erika's King Tiger, but it will certainly not be perfect.

So disclaimer finished, here are my progress pics so far:

Erika and Maho couldn't wait to get this project started!

The first thing I did was replace the crappy zinc gearboxes with the Mato 5:1 steel ones, and of course the ElMod for the stock 5.3 MFU:




Along the way I did the magnets mod as well. Got rid of the smoke unit (hate those things) and realized I couldn't live with a plain old BB unit without recoil. So I found a metal recoil unit with servos sold by the Chinese ebay retailer who sold me the tank and bought it (not sure what brand: Heng Long, Mato?). Once received, I realized major mods would be needed to use it. To start, the unit requires a threaded barrel, but the nice metal barrel that came with the tank was untapped:



It had other problems like untapped screw holes which I had to deal with, but the major problem was figuring out what the thread was in the recoil unit. I figured it was 9mm, but I tried various automotive bolts in that size and none fit. I finally realized through much searching that it was a specific type used for firearms, which is fitting! Unfortunately, hand turning a die is really hard to keep straight, so it's a bit off center and the barrel wouldn't screw down all the way, but ... good enough.




Once that was done, I quickly realized the design of the barrel and mantlet precluded any recoil action, so I needed to thin down the barrel the correct length needed for recoil:



15mm recoil is the max for the unit, which is fairly pitiful (should probably be twice as much), but better than nothing.

Some shims were added to ensure a proper fit and smooth and even travel:




I couldn't figure out a way to fit the elevation servo, so I kept the stock elevation motor unit, as the recoil unit has the tab that fits it on its "breech"




Once the recoil unit was tested and working, I realized I could fit the entire figure body down the main hatch (not just the half body on the bb feeder), but it came dangerously close to the oily elevation motor, so I devised an "oil wall"







You can see I finally added the Taigen flash unit wiring to the main gun. Had to cut and resolder because the recoil breech was too narrow for the LED to pass through. The plastic oil guard also helps to keep the wire from tangling into the gear teeth of the elevation motor when the gun recoils.



Thin styrene sheet is all that's needed. The plastic installed behind the gearboxes in the second pic from the top is also basically just an "oil wall" to prevent grease splatter from soiling the rear compartments, so I also only used thin (.5 mm) sheet--it's not structural at all, I didn't see the point of using anything thicker or heavier. I did the same type of thing on the upper hull right behind the magnet posts.

At this point it may be worth showing some video of the tank being put through its paces when I got to this point, which was a few months ago.



The voices are rips I made from the BDs of the series and movie (Der Film), which I own. They are almost all of the "wrong" characters (like Yukari and Erwin), but I have since ripped some appropriate ones from Kuromorimine (mostly Maho's voice, but at least one of Erika shouting "Ute!" (Fire! in Japanese). All the music is from the soundtracks (movie and series) as well, which of course I also own!  

One thing I noticed about Erika's tank (and GuP depictions in general) is that although rendered quite accurately, they are missing many of the details that modelers usually fuss about. One of these is the flame cut edges on the interlocking hull plate dovetails--on the King Tigers they are totally smooth and not shown:






Instead of going the simple but tedious route of filling the poorly rendered Henglong flame cut edges with putty and sanding, I opted for the complicated and even more tedious method of sanding the random cross hatches, then trying to cut thin sheet to fit the spaces as well as possible, gluing those in, and then filling with putty.  The process took over a week of steady work, and that was just for the upper front sections. I haven't even started on the lower hull and I gave up and just puttied the rear section under the tow cable. I won't even know how it really looks until I prime everything for the first time, but I suspect there will be gaps and undulations that will need rework. And, I missed the small section at the rear of the turret sides, which I may or may not do, we'll see... 





Along the way I added/modded a few details, such as a more accurate Bosch headlight shroud, and replaced the molded hatch handles with wire. Also basic modeling things like scraping mold lines and flash, something the factory never does for us. And for once wouldn't it be nice if they could make clean cuts to the parts (or at least scrape the burr a few times) from the sprues before gluing them on? Also, holes needed to be filled with plastic or putty or both. Along the way, I broke off the commander's hatch handle simply by pulling, discovering it's held in by about 1mm of CA'd brass handle. Rather than regluing, I fabricated a new one with longer ends, drilled the holes through and bent the wire underneath and CA'd so no amount of pulling will yank it out.










I hadn't finished puttying and sanding the flame cut edges yet on the above pics. Also, if you're wondering why I filled the lower pin brackets for the spare tracks, it's because those are missing from the King Tigers in the show. The lower half of the two piece track section is not there, so I'm not sure what they would do in the case of actual track replacement!

So finally it was time to tackle my most difficult thing so far: the track tensioner cable brackets. In the show, neither the King Tigers nor Maho's Tiger I have the cable attached. At least the KTs have their tow cables--the Tiger I doesn't even have those, and is missing the brackets for those as well. And, the show does not render all the brackets and are missing some. That's great for a lazy modeler like me--less work! 


I considered getting some nice PE sets and gluing them on per the usual route, but quickly realized they would pop off or deform easily with any real handling. So, I took the opportunity to work on my brass fabrication skills and make my own, and figure out a way to secure them so they wouldn't come off. I borrowed a technique I saw from armourguy (is that his handle here?), AKA John from East Coast Armory, who is one of the true masters of large scale armor modeling and who I've been watching with wonder and envy for years. On his 1/6 scale armortek KT, he soldered on some bolts to the back of customized brackets he built himself, and bolted them on through the predrilled holes. Working in 1/16 is a bit harder, approximately 5-6 times smaller from a 2D area standpoint, though the scale is technically a third smaller. So, I had to take brass sheet, hand cut slightly narrower than 2mm strips, and bend six brackets as identically as I could. Then, I used the smallest flat head counter sunk screws I could find (Hob-bits 00-90 1/8") and solder them on to the back of each as neatly as possible. I also had to fabricate the front tensioner post bracket, as that one was shown. And of course, measure and mark the placements and drill holes as accurately as possible, and then countersink them so the screws would sit flush. Yikes! 








You can really get a sense of how tiny those screws/nuts are from the last few pics. Just threading the nuts on at the end was an hour long chore, never mind the hours it took to get the soldering right! And yes, I practiced on some "larger" pieces (0-80, not much!). This really pushed my soldering skills, and let me tell you, I hate soldering. But I now have some high quality tools (an actual station [trakpower] with variable heat up to 900 degrees) and materials and finally am starting to get the hang of what I need to do to successfully solder things. On such tiny pieces you don't need much solder and it's hard to keep things neat, but any excess is filed off with needle files and of course flux must be cleaned off with solvent (I use lacquer thinner). Turns out I may have taken too much off or not had a successful joint on the tensioner post bracket, because the bond broke as I was tightening the nut from behind, so I had to resolder that (easier the second time of course). All the brackets are now permanently attached with gap filling CA and the nuts, except for the front one which sits on the reworked flame cut edge dovetail. I don't want to glue that on until I'm sure that area is flat and gapless after priming.

Final note on the brackets: the quality of the screws were horrible. I have had luck in the past with those Hob-bits screws in the smallest sizes (both 0-80 and 00-90), but this time nine of ten screws (two packs of five) were not properly threaded. I had extra nuts and some hex bolts in the same size so I know it was the screws. I think the short length makes it extremely difficult for them to be properly cut or molded or however they're made. Anyway, I had to sacrifice several nuts to use as dies to force the threads to conform as best as they could, but I didn't need the whole length so it didn't matter too much.

Still have to fabricate the angled engine vent screens (I'm going Aber on these, as the Taigen ones are useless), and probably I'll succumb to fixing the bow machine gun mount as the gaps and placement of the inner ball are atrocious. Rear plate needs some work, and the lower hull needs that puttying done.

I then turned my attention to the rear plate details. The stock HL exhausts were absolutely horrible, huge seam gaps with halves not even lining up, and had to be replaced. I luckily found a spare Tamiya set for sale relatively cheap, but even those needed work as the wedge shaped grenade guards molded into the openings are pretty crude.






I just did some careful hollowing out of the opening with an appropriate drill bit, and then glued in some thin styrene rod to simulate the grenade guard. Also some seam cleanup and straightened out the flange area, as I decided to keep the lower part of the stock exhaust and just mate these on. I don't use a smoker so didn't care about hollowness all the way through. I cut off the "hinge" thing on the right side armored cover. The stock set is closer in shape to the series KT than the Tamiya one, which also saved me some work in having to cut the whole thing off!






The jack block and brackets are scratch made from balsa, plastic and leftover PE "sprues." I didn't try to go for ultra accuracy with hinges and wing nuts, but wanted it to be removable to make painting easier, so it just attaches on the right side with a screw. I'll add the handle part later, and also decided against trying to replicate the rivets.






Unfortunately I misjudged the size and it's a bit larger than it should be, but I can live with it. That's the problem with having to eyeball things instead of having real measurements to go by.  

Next, I tackled the curved mesh grenade guards on the rear deck. Erika's KT only has these mesh screens and none of the others, which is interesting:




I used the Aber ones, which are excellent but tricky because of the curves and bends, and definitely require soldering to put together. They are also too long and impinge the front corners of the turret (but not the rear), thus limiting traverse to just over 180 degrees. But, short of drastic alterations or a complete scratch build, I decided I could live with it. This tank won't be a battler and is mostly just for fun anyway!




The top screen for comparison is the Taigen option, which is pretty terrible (but would have fit better). The problem is those are meant to fit into the plastic brackets that come with the stock tanks, but which are not available for purchase anywhere I looked.

Instead of gluing them down, I needed them removable at least for the basecoat, and also felt a nut and bolt attachment would be much stronger. Unfortunately my hex head bolts were too big and would not fit, so I opted for tiny 1.2mm screws which are small enough to be subtle. Styrene strips cut and glued on provide the supports for the screw brackets, which also needed to be enlarged. I had wanted to put the screw brackets on the inside of the screens so they would be hidden, which is how it looks in the TV show (see screen grab above), but it was just too hard to figure out how to drill the holes just right and then attach the screws later if they wouldn't be accessible like that. So I opted for the real scale option as shown below.











It's a tight fit but the turret turns just fine until the front edge swings around and bumps into the front corner. I've thought of various solutions, none of them appealing. Sometimes good enough is good enough!

Next up I worked on the armored ball mount for the machine gun, which showed ugly gaps where there is supposed to be form fitting armored plating, and also the ball is mounted too far forward. Here's an earlier pic with the unmodified armored ball showing how thin the plastic is, although it's hard to see clearly in shadow.


I decided not to move the ball back as it was too complicated to fabricate a new mounting bracket that would fit exactly and still move freely. But the gaps could be fixed relatively simply with some epoxy putty.

First, I want to show off my new MG-34 with the correct Panzermantel, courtesy of rctank.de. I think the tooling is actually Aber (beautifully made and accurate), but with an LED and fiber optic installed which also works well when tested.



To get it to fit I used some silicon fuel tubing to space it back properly and make it a press fit so as to be removable for painting and maintenance. I also crimped some JST connectors to the wiring to be able to remove it instead of soldering. I should have done that with the Bosch headlight LED but didn't think of that at the time so that's already soldered in. If it fails I'll replace with the connectors.

Here's the putty after it was cured, after lots of sanding and smoothing with needle files to get things straight and smooth. I deliberately angled the inside edges to give the illusion of depth so it wouldn't look so shallow. The putty was form-fitted to the ball while still curing so fit would be perfect and movement unhindered. The putty is Tamiya epoxy putty, and water was used to keep the ball from sticking while forming the concavity.






Ignore the tape on the end of the MG. The tip is a press fit and is a bit loose so will need a more secure fixative, although I'm hesitant to glue it and may just use blu tack.

I forgot to take a clear pic of the stock mounting plate but you can see a part of it in this pic. It locks the ball down and works well, though does restrict some up/down movement because of the bulk of the LED mechanism butting up against it.

And that's pretty much it for the major mods! Of course I still have to clean up/scrape and paint all the tools and the cables, which are crude but usable. Also have to finish sanding the putty on the lower glacis. There are some other things I did which I didn't really highlight or mention, such as smoothing out the barrel, esp. at the tip next to the muzzle brake, and pretty much scraping and sanding out all the flash and seams I could find. But that's typical modeling stuff, hardly worth mentioning here.

Erika's impatient for me to get the painting going so she can attack those pesky Ooarai upstarts!




I decided to go with metal tracks too, those plastic ones weren't cutting it.















The cables were temporarily pressed in just to give it a more complete look, but are obviously not in final form.

Here's the latest video showing off the mods and some of the new sounds I uploaded. There's only one clip of Erika yelling "Ute!" which I have as an option (she doesn't say much other than b!tch!ng a lot), but Maho's commands are way cooler and are featured here. I've got the motion and sounds/music dialed in just about how I want it: it drives pretty scale and the functions all work. The tricky thing is remembering which sound/function goes on which stick, I'm going to need to create a cheat sheet! 

Very cool project. The amount of work you've put into this -- from research, to look, to functional design, is very impressive.

Incredible! I don't normally bother with military stuff, but this is impressive. So much work and such love for detail. Respect!

GubernatorFan wrote:Very cool project. The amount of work you've put into this -- from research, to look, to functional design, is very impressive.

Diana wrote:Incredible! I don't normally bother with military stuff, but this is impressive. So much work and such love for detail. Respect!

Thanks GFan and Diana! Appreciate the support and kind words! I have a tendency to choose projects because they're hard, and burnout is a problem as I often end up putting off finishing stuff for months or even years. But if or when I finish, it's usually a very satisfying feeling that keeps me going for future projects.

Hope to be able to finish these tanks (or at least this one) by summer. Unless I rent a studio. Hmmm.

Wow! I had to take my time with this to appreciate all your hard work. I seriously do not think you are the “lazy modeler” you profess to be. This is stunning — between your electrical skills, soldering, and overall craftsmanship (or craftswomanship in this case) — it’s hard to believe. The recoil and muzzle flash on the canon, everything really, is astounding. This is truly mind-blowing, and I may have to impress upon you to help with a sound board option for my Jabba project if your willing to give me some insight (as I have very limited electrical skills).

Awesome some, TGF.

Stryker2011 wrote:Wow! I had to take my time with this to appreciate all your hard work. I seriously do not think you are the “lazy modeler” you profess to be. This is stunning — between your electrical skills, soldering, and overall craftsmanship (or craftswomanship in this case) — it’s hard to believe. The recoil and muzzle flash on the canon, everything really, is astounding. This is truly mind-blowing, and I may have to impress upon you to help with a sound board option for my Jabba project if your willing to give me some insight (as I have very limited electrical skills).

Awesome some, TGF.

Thanks so much Stryker! Please bear in mind that this was first posted over at rctankwarfare.com, where in that context, yes, I am a lazy modeler. The die-hard "treadheads" over there do some incredible work, not just in the scale arena but also in the engineering and electronics part of it, and my work just pales in comparison. And if you've ever taken a look at the modelers who publish in the 1/35 scale world, it's crazy to what lengths they will go to for total scale fidelity. And in that tiny scale it's incredible (it's ironic that once 1/35 used to be considered the "large scale!"). Now, in the context of RC airplanes, there I am considered a "scale guru," because the level of care for accuracy and scale is much lower in general compared to the armor people.

I've thought about my projects over the years, and I'm not sure I've ever done one where I go for "total accuracy." Even somethings as involved as my Eowyn or the Schwimmwagen, I cut a lot of corners to get to "good enough" (didn't do real chain mail, for instance, or didn't go for a total resculpt of Miranda Otto's head; didn't make the Schwimmwagen fully functional in the water, for another, not to mention the starting point of the 21c body). 

But I take your compliment gratefully and thank you for it. It's nice to know a few here do appreciate the crazy world of RC vehicles to comment on it. 

Re: my electronics skills, please bear in mind that I was using a control board that was plug and play (it's called ElMod from Germany and is a marvel), and all I had to do was set the parameters on a PC and program my radio so the channels activated the right controls (that was tricky but it's typical RC stuff). I didn't create the sound board myself or anything like that, so I'm not sure how useful my knowledge will be when it comes to your Jabba project. But do let me know when the time comes and I will try to be as helpful as I can.

This is cool, and timeconsuming and expensive I guess.

TravelGuide wrote:This is cool, and timeconsuming and expensive I guess.

Thanks! And yes, and yes! RC is not a cheap hobby, and if you do go cheap, you usually regret it. Most of us start out trying to buy the cheapest things that look cool, and when they break or fall apart, or we get frustrated by how badly they fly/drive/run, we start to spend real money, and then it never ends! Even this King Tiger was a pretty cheap version, which was just as well because I replaced almost everything and spent way more on parts than on the original tank itself.

You've probably  noticed it already, but Bandai Namco Arts have put up the first 9 minutes of Das Finale part  3 on their youtubechannel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFUIY3-qrco

It's a whole new level of awesome. The graphics and music is improved. The junglescenes are awesome. Favorite moments:

Spoiler:

So you started out intending to mod a couple of 1/16 tanks to serve as opponents for the girls and their official 1/12 figma/Good Smile Panzer IVD. Then, after working with the 1/16 tanks a bit, you decided to pick and up a 1/16 Taigen Panzer IVG kit and mod that one into the official Ankou team tank as opposed to using the stock figma IVD, and that’s what we’re seeing here?

Sorry if I seem a bit dense, but it’s a lot to take in, especially for someone not familiar with either tank or RC terminology, but I’m genuinely interested in the work you’re doing here. I collect figmas, but I never got any of the GuP figures because they were already becoming expensive on the secondary market before the whole team was even out. Plus, I knew if I got the girls, I’d want the tank, and I really didn’t have that kind of discretionary money back then. I didn’t watch the show either, because I knew if I did, then I would *really* want the figures and the tank.

So what happened with the figma IVD? Did you just leave it intact? I’m guessing it would have been a lot more difficult to mod that one than a kit. Also, did figma release 2-3 different tanks for the GuP girls? I’ve always been confused about that and what the differences were. I should probably go look up some You Tube reviews.

Yikes! Haven't been on the forum actively for months (only brief lurking  ), and I never got notified about these replies. Wonder if the forum is having issues or they ended up getting screened by spam filters.

Anyhow, thanks for posting TravelGuide and Xavion2004! I'm anxiously awaiting the English subbed versions on Bluray for the Das Finale, but given how slowly they're coming out in Japan, it'll take years to get the complete set. I wish they would release them episode by episode, but they're not doing that, so...

And Xavion, yes, that's about the sequence of events!   Except, the tank in question is the King Tiger, not the P IV, which is tested out but unmodded. I still have the figma IVD. It's a huge tank and it's motorized but the tracks are awful. Problem is, short of casting my own, I'm stuck with them. Someday I'll get to it--the plan was to build a "play scale" interior so I could put the girls in them but also drive it around with basic movement (no turret) functions and some sound. But, the 16th scale stuff just took over. And then, my Yae projects just took over, and I've done almost no work on this tank for almost a year. Just need to do some final sanding (which I hate because it has to be perfectly smooth) and then paint and decals. Hopefully by the summer...

BTW figma released two versions of the PIV, the D and the H, and that was it. Look on ebay, some are still available I think. It's an awesome show, and I highly recommend watching it. The tunes are really catchy, if you're into marches and stuff.

tankgirlfuzzy wrote:
Anyhow, thanks for posting TravelGuide and Xavion2004! I'm anxiously awaiting the English subbed versions on Bluray for the Das Finale, but given how slowly they're coming out in Japan, it'll take years to get the complete set. I wish they would release them episode by episode, but they're not doing that, so...

I've got Part 1 of Das Finale with english subs from Ebay. The listing was confusing though, it said "Girls und Panzer Saishuushou part 1: The Movie", the back of the case describes the events in Der Film. I thought I was getting that, I don't complain though.

Part 1 and 2 have also been released with german subs.

Wow!! I'm sorry I didn't click on this sooner. While I'm completely unfamiliar with the source material, and even less familiar with RC tanks, the amount of work that went into this is extremely impressive. Your figures are no doubt having a blast in those!

Thanks sky! Now if only I can just finally finish sanding and painting it, Erika might actually crack a smile...or not. (she never smiles, only smirks)