Hey George, where did you get your scale drawings? They look darn good.

And glad to hear the engine deck is a accurate as I thought...without really good measurements it is hard for me pass accurate judgement. And I hate that.

Ok George, I might disagree with the amount of info in the first post as to the exact books/mags/publishers...but this once, I will forgive you! No problem, Ijust wanted to make sure that I knew EXACTLY which ones you were using before I began my hunt...Russian publications can be notoriously difficult to track down. Nice to know that they have PDF downloads available. I see that you think the T-80UD plans are a mess, what did they mess up?

As for SP Designs, I am bringing him along quite nicely. You should have seen the stuff he was originally selling back in '97 when I ran across him...it was the best Russian conversion stuff out there, but that was not saying much. And he was still using Polyethylene...you know, fiberglass resin. It was AWEFULL. And then he went to some poor quality resin from the UK that was crumbly when sanded. Ugh. Now, nothing but top line stuff.

As for detail, that is something that has two sides...the up side is I am getting him to add as much as he can that can be molded properly. The downside is that he is limited to gravity casting and a lot of the detail we might want is not necessary for the bulk of his customers, so it is a waste of time for him to do too much. Not a fun balancing act.

And as for the Engine deck, nope, it is all scratchbuilt. It may have been inspired by the DML engine deck, but all details are hand made. Remember, he made the T-80 kits back around 2002/2003 and a LOT of information on the T-80 has come out since then. He would prefer not to touch the DML kits with a 10' pole if possible.

Ok, enough of that. What progress today? I admit that I am waiting for the T-80u upper hull to arrive before I do any more work on a T-80...I am a big baby about all the work needed to be done to correctly add the rear deck.

Phew, close one. My dislike to his UD drawing is that it's not T-80UD at all. It looks more like experimental vehicle which led to Object 476 which, in turn, later led to T-80U/UD. The turret seems to be one from T-80B with 1A33 fire controls, but with Kharkov bureau remote controlled weapon station. Engine deck seems to be from Object 476, and it is VERY close to one in the Skif kit. There are some dimensional issues as well, most irritable of which is a badly misplaced driver's hatch.

Excellent job!

Hey George,

It seems like you squared off the back of the turret...? That does not seem to match the BP's you have right below. Is it just my eyes or a bad photo?

I see the work you did on the "plenum". It seems there are more than one kind, so both appear to be correct depending on which one you want. (I am not convinced yet, but there may even be three different plenums on the wading trunk.)

Nice work. I am slowly improving my build as well, will try to post photos to compare to.

That's some serious scratchbuilding George. Well done and keep up the good work.

Jurjen

Man... That's awesome work... Can't wait to see it under a paint scheme!