A friend of mine is building a gun truck, based on Italeri's M923 Big Foot model. The real vehicle has a BFT and SINCGARS radio mounted. Has anybody any photo of M923 with such electronic gear? Where and how is it placed in the cab? Any help welcomed

Hi Kuba

Watch your mailbox


Frenchy

Frenchy again... Boring... Mail received - thanks So the problem of radio rack is solved. Any informations about BFT?

Unfortunately, the only BFT-related TMs I know are for Humvee variants...

Frenchy

I can't say as I've ever seen a BFT in a 923 before. I've seen Dukes and Warlocks before.

What type of cab? The normal unarmored cab, or the armored cab?

I will look around my resources for a TM that covers it, if it's even possible.

This one:

Bigger photo:
http://data.primeportal.net/teasley/1/5%20Ton%20Gun%20Truck.JPG
BFT antenna (in cover) is next to the exhaust. In the cab there is a shape of monitor visible.

I know this won't help you much but I've found another BFT-fitted gun truck :



Frenchy

Thanks, Frenchy

That's not a BFT. It's an MTS (Movement Tracking System). They were used before the FBCB2 (early BFT) was fielded. Same basic antenna (externally), but the screen and keyboard are one piece, mounted on a Ram pedestal. It was used through mid to late 2006 when a lot of the "supply" type units (rather than armor units) began receiving BFTs. Some crappy pictures-





The "cone" antenna was quickly phased out with the flat top one starting around late 2003.

The base stations, and some early vehicle models had tethered keyboards, and then they switched to laptops and the pictured units above.

An article of interest-http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/janfeb06/safe_passage.html

Just based on the timeframe of those pictures Frenchy provided, the FBCB2 wasn't in use yet, and the BFT was even further into the future. The screen unit is also visibly thicker in the first pic.

So, while the BFT typically comes with an install kit, the MTS only needed a place to mount the pedestal base, and a remote mounted computer processor (roughly 8"Lx6"Wx6"H) inside the cab, and it can be mounted anywhere you want. In this festive picture you can see the pedestal mounted behind the tree on a riser (not needed for most mounting positions), and the computer (black box) on the floor to the extreme left-

Thank You, James You've helped a lot!