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Early April 2005:
The drive train module is built to take out of the tank for maintenance or improvement, an idea kindly borrowed from Chris Barthelson (who kindly borrowed
it from Frank Pittelli).
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The EV mounts are made of two layers of 15 mm plywood glued together, simple but effective!
The chain wheel shafts are 12 mm steel tubes of 1 mm thick.
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Click Photo For Enlargement (61 Kb)
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View Test Video (1.1MB, WMV) to see the Stug in action.
Before you ask: there are two reasons I tested the tank on carpet:
- the fuses I used are only 30 Amps and they blew immediately once I tried a neutral turns on pavement.
- I don't want to wear the tracks out too much, as they are made of plastic conveyor belts. We don't have a lawn or sand in our garden so I'll take it to the forest for further testing at a later stage.
You'll notice the tank only has forward/off/reverse steering now, the SSR's are not connected yet. I chose the simple way to test the tank first before connecting the SSR's and thus providing proportional steering.
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I installed the Anvilus controller yesterday night and it performs really
well! The accelleration of the tank is really frightening, considering
it weighs about 40 kilos! Also the proportional speed control is
fascinating. Can't wait to battle...
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Click Photo For Enlargement (76 Kb)
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Late April 2005:
This afternoon I tested the T035 in the forest.
As can be seen in the
field-trial video footage (WMV, 6.2MB),
it drives very well.
It threw a track once a branch was caught between the track and
the road wheels, caused by the fact that the outer sprockets
are not fixed to the square hub. I will modify this later.
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The tension on the V-belts has to be quite high so I may have to
reinforce the back plate of the hull because it bends quite a bit
under pressure.
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Click Photo For Enlargement (72 Kb)
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Click Photo For Enlargement (77 Kb)
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The battery is tied down to prevent any problems when going over rough
terrain.
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The motors are securely mounted with some homemade wooden mounts. You
can also see the three fans installed to keep the motors cool.
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Click Photo For Enlargement (70 Kb)
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Click Photo For Enlargement (44 Kb)
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The SSR's became quite hot during a previous test drive so I
installed a couple of CPU cooling fans just for the SSR's.
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May 2005:
I chose to install a high pressure air tank. This has lots of advantages
compared to CO2: can be mounted horizontally without any problems, it won't
freeze in cold weather, you get about 600 shots from 1 tank and it's
clean and dry, so it won't get the marker too dirty. And best of all:
compressed air is cheaper than CO2: It can be filled at any diver's shop
for about 2 euro's (6000 US Dollars at the moment). A larger tank and a
filling station is also available, so that completes the whole set.
The air tank is mounted in a bracket made of perforated stainless steel
sheeting and wrapped in a rubber layer for protection and
anti-wiggle-out-of-the-bracket-thingy purposes.
Please note the Dutch Army Special Forces straps used to retain the tank.
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Click Photo For Enlargement (74 Kb)
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