I started work on this oddball Soviet paper panzer on Christmas day, figuring that the Trumpeter kit would be fairly straightforward, providing a relaxing holiday build. Yes, it has FOUR sets ot tracks, but the rest of the kit was pretty simple.
But being Trumpeter, there’s always something. In this case, the turret and commander’s cupola lacked locking barbs. The enormous 152mm main gun caused the unsecured turret to tip forward. So a 1/4" square rod was added and small notches were cut in the turret ring to secure the turret.
The cupola didn’t have enough of an overhang to cut notches into the raceway, so instead a disc of sheet plastic was used as a retainer cap, with a curled plastic strip glued to it to locate it to the underside of the cupola.
The cap will be glued in place from the underside once the model is complete.
With those items out of the way, the hull builds up pretty quickly.
I still have a bunch of small bits to add, but the kit is building pretty fast. I’m going to try really hard not to mess with mods so as not to bog down the build. Yeah, those tracks…
The paint/marking guide shows optional solid green and a 3-color camouflaged machine. I think I’ll go for the 3-color camo.
But apparently, the Soviet army didn’t! Probably due to projected cost as well as complexity. Plus the entire design philosophy was centered around protecting the crew. All of theses things are the antithesis of Soviet Tank Design!
But looking at this 1980s design proposal, one cannot help but see a lot of innovative features that have relevance in modern AFV design, like the unmanned turret and remote commander’s MG. A Youtuber remarked that the Objekt 490B could be the Tank of the Future.
Doesn’t appear to be much room for a crew. I can’t imagine the gearbox required to drive two sets of independent tracks, the thing could have been a maitenance nightmare. Atleast it looks like a tank and not the tracked flying saucer thingy thought of to survive nuclear strikes.
Everyone is riding in the back, enclosed in a “pod” separated from the rest of the internals. Supposedly there was only the commander and driver, but I’m sure a gunner would have had to be included to keep workload to a manageable level.
The front of the hull contained diesel fuel cells, while the two engines were situated fore and aft of the turret, with the transmissions under the turret. Ammunition was stored behind the rear engine, separated from the crew pod by an armored bulkhead. So in order for a frontal shot to reach the crew, it would have to pass through the entire tank!
Why do the bad guys get all the cool stuff? LOL. The 152mm gun was/ is fielded on the DANA platform now in use by Eastern Block countries. Is it just a model design flaw or an actual CG issue on the real " paper" vehicle?
Well, the bad guys are usually cooler looking, i.e. Germans vs Allies, Imperials vs Rebels, etc. But Soviet tanks just look lethal and brutal.
The turret imbalance is just due to the kit not having a breech assembly; only the external barrel is provided. The lack of locking barbs is the actual culprit.
Tcoat - Ha ha, you got me! I walked right into that one! And the Ogre tanks from the Steve Jackson micro-game GEV was the grand daddy of the HK tank!
Gamera - Bolo tank? Made me think of Slammer tanks! I liked the cover art of the first Hammer’s Slammers novel. I also believe someone scratched one of Alois Hammer’s tanks in FSM.
I think the tandem tracks were meant to allow the tank to limp off the battlefield if one of the tracks got hit. At least they are tandem and not parallel like so many 4-tracked designs. I would think servicing the inboard tracks would be really difficult.
I just received the Terminator HK tank kit for Christmas so it was fresh in my mind when I saw the thread.
It is actually pretty accurate to say that the prototype Objekt 490B is the “tank of the future” although the current automated prototypes being tested are even more “Terminator” like!
That looks like something out of a video game. Very cool. As far as not having a gunner, with technology you don’t need one and there are already self-loaders all over. SO, this is a doable build. Don’t think the Russians can pull it off given what we’ve seen of late, but the west could build it. All the defense industry needs is to see $$ at the end and they would be all over it.
Yeah it has its drawbacks in the design, but man what a wicked looking war machine! Very sci fi in appearance! It reminds me of one of the tanks in the old arcade video game Battle Zone. This might be a neat one to add to the collection. I think another way to deal with the turret flip issue would be to put a counterweight in the bustle. Enough lead shot on there would do the trick [;)]
Yes, someone on-line mentioned ballast in the rear of the turret, but I wanted to make 100% sure the turret would not fall off.
No modeling this week, as a friend invited me to the CES in Vegas. I’m back at the hotel with sore feet and 30,000+ steps on my phone’s health nanny app.
Probably a “dodge” around the length-to-witdth ratio envelope all tracked vehicles have.
There’s a ratio to where the tracks get longer than width, and you simply cannot turn. The moment arm to get the yardstick to change course is just too huge.
The same ration also ‘drives’ how wide a track shoe can be–over a certain width, the bogies will just slide off the track.
The real issue is in having twice the labor required for monitoring track tension.
As a guess on this beastie, the shorter front tracks are geared differently to provide more steering force than the rear, main, tracks. Which sounds like a nightmare for transmission maintenance, and for coping with steering linkages.
Kind of spoils the engineering elegance of the thing of needing a truck load of mechanics to follow your track around to keep it running.
That’s one of the limiting factors of Bolos and Bun-Bun–track maintenance [:D]
