These parts are from Voyager. The trumpeter comes with the detail molded. They look okay but this looks better, I’ll make a comparison when I get home

Jakob

Great progress so far

Crazy etch madness! Great to see this kind of detail, stellar work Jakob!

Thanks Steven and Karl, very nice of you to say. I just put together a little comparison of the Trumpeter vs Voyager detail.


Jakob

Hi Jacob! Great worksmanship! By the way, those ammo boxes - did you solder them or did you use the glue instead?

As for display composition - if you plan to show the tank providing an artillery support (the T-80's were very effective in that role and with well-trained crew they could and they did a lot of things. Our tank guys have a tender nickname for them - Lastochka ( means Swallow or Martlet)) - there should not be any person showing off in open hatches. Of course there can be any situation at war, but normally when in fire contact the tank should be in combat mode with hatches closed according to articles of war. Also I think you wouldn't want to stand closer than 10-15 meters to a tank a) with ERA b) in front of it's main gun (the blast energy of a 125mm gun is VERY high - just see videos from Syria what happening with nearby objects when a tank is firing). If you want to show people with/on the tank in a realistic environment I think for the tank in combat mode you should have a bigger diorama - to provide safe distance for people ;-) Or if you want a smaller size it would be a scene on a march or in field camp with the tank hatches and equipment in march mode. Just my considerations concerning realism only - sometimes an expression and composition makes more impact than a realism.

As for a fording/snorkeling equipment - there were/are absolutely no problem with bridging equipment in Soviet/Russian Army. It was just a lesson that our Military have learned a hard way from Germans - tank forces should carry everything with them to provide an autonomy for operational depth maneuvering. The argument about "less care about crews" - doesn't seem right as a) the tank seals hermetically b) every crew member uses his own AT-1 isolating gear. In case a tank is stuck underwater you open slightly the hatch, wait for the water to fill the machine and then open the hatch and go out. But to be honest accidents occasionally happen - as in any other Military forces. The water crossing with a snorkel normally occurs in a places which were previously investigated by reconaissance teams and engineers. Such a reconaissance doesn't take much time - there is always equipment for that in tank units

Normal crossing example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwCgM4UzpuQ

Keep up with great work, Jakob !

Best Regards
Dmitry

First off thanks for the info Dmitry, very interesting. I am seriously considering having the hatches closed, it also gives a very convenient excuse for not painting figures To answer your question, no soldering only superglue

I have a little update too, work has continued on the side skirts. I have replaced the molded on hinges with ones in PE, they look good but making them is a lot of work I have also installed all the mud flaps. The black ones front and back are real rubber and comes from the Tetra modelworks set. The side is a mixture of Trumpeter and evergreen. The reason for replacing the trumpeter skirts with evergreen was:
- It looks better with separate panels
- The trumpeter ones comes with “waves” molded in but looking at the 1:1 version one can see that the skirts aren’t that “wavy” on the real one



So here are some pictures of the right fender which is pretty much done. Only the left one to go :s






Cheers

Jakob

Great work, especially with all that PE. With regard to lack of fording equip on NATO tanks, I think that they were designed for defensive roles during the cold war. As such, maybe NATO could assume that having to cross rivers was less of a factor than it would have been for the attacking red hordes.

Can't wait to see your tank with some paint on it. I'm somewhat fond of the T-80BV. I was a US grunt during the last stages of the cold war and had assumed that if the cold war went hot, I'd be in a foxhole in W. Germany watching hundreds of these beasts coming at me. Not a very pleasant thought, given that the LAW's we were issued at the time would have just bounced off them.

That is some fantastic work.

Very high standard of work....at the craftsmen level, congrats....

That's great! Tetra Modelworks things are quite rare at our place - looks good!

Thank you gentlemen much appreciated!




I agree, can’t wait to get some paint on it, will be great But waiting in that foxhole, I can think of better things to do I really admire the courage of military personnel, I guess it is a bit of“A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do” but still




Thanks Dmitry! I bought it at der sockelshop, it is a little pricey but I wanted to try them out For flat surfaces like the side skirts, the ones I made out of plastic card, the real rubber stuff doesn’t make that much of a difference. For the front mud flaps however it looks really, really good since it bends in the same way that it would on the tank. That is really hard to replicate with plastic card, PE or injection molding.

Cheers

Jakob

Initial T-80 side skirts without the mountings for the ERA were wavy. Trumpeter got it right. When they added the "hardware" behind the initial skirts to mount the ERA bricks, the skirts stiffened up. The photo you show is the late side skirts with the built in step. Any way is correct for a T-80BV but if the side skirts do not have the mounting points, it will be wavy-ish.

Thanks for the info Jacques! That explains the differences between the reference pics I have seen and the actual kit. It seems like Trumpeters research was very good then !

Jakob

Jakob

How is the Build going, any updates I am folowing Keenly as I am going to build my first russian Armor and Modern tank here soon.