Military Modelling 04 1997

Having finished most of the work on the rider, I now turned my attention to the horse. Sorting through my collection of Historex horse parts, I chose two body halves and a head that gave me the galloping pose I was looking for. The first job was to hollow out the underneath of the hooves and fit Historex horseshoes. I detailed the fetlocks with a pyro-gravure, and then glued the body halves together. A hole was drilled up the rear left leg from the hoof and a length of aluminium tube glued in to act as a peg to secure the horse to the base. I now turned my attention to the head. First, the lower jaw was cut away and it and the upper jaw were hollowed out. Front teeth were added from plastic card and a pro-trading tongue from Milliput. Some years ago, I read an article in Military Modelling March 1986 by Dr. Mike Thomas about reworking and improving the harnessing on Historex horses. I decided to use his techniques on my model. The exact methods are fully described in the article, and basically consist of removing all the moulded-on detail, and replacing it with individual straps cut from electrical insulating tape. It was a lot of work, but it certainly-improved the appearance of the model considerably and I was very pleased with the final result.

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Military Modelling 06 1998

In 1944, the Red Army began development of a new generation anti-aircraft gun system which for the first time used radar for fire control. In 1950, the Soviet Ground Forces began to field new air defence regiments with the tank, mechanized and rifle divisions, equipped with the new S-60 57mm air defence gun and its associated SON-9 (Fire Can) radar fire controls. This was the first divisional level, radar-directed air defence gun in Soviet service, and considerably enhanced the anti-aircraft fire power of the divisions receiving it. The main drawback of the S-60 system was that it took considerable time (25-30 minutes) to fully deploy the guns, PUAZO-6/60 predictors, generators, cables, and their associated fire control radars. In this configuration, it was useful to protect relatively static sites such as command centres or major communication and transport lines such as bridges. It was not very practical to protect fast-moving armoured columns. As a result, in 1947, work began on a self-propelled version using a new twin-barrelled derivative of the S-60, the S-68 Model 1952, 57mm gun. This vehicle was manufactured at Factory No.174 in Omsk in 1955-1960 as the ZSU-57-2. By Soviet standards, it was not built in large numbers, though precise figures are lacking.

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Military Modelling 12 2000

The horse harness was made from metal sheet cut out with a sharp roller blade. These blades have the advantage of not pulling up the cut material and distorting it as the cutting pressure moves along the edge of a steel rule. Buckles were added from Historex spares after they had been thinned down by rubbing them onto carborundum paper. Officers' horse decorations were added from the spares box and others were made using small balls of Magic-Sculp, such as on the crupper. The decorative metal on the harness passing behind the horse's ears was a sheet of Magic-Sculp that was embossed with a very fine 'C' shaped tip of a syringe. When set the depth was carved in using a scalpel. A difficult aspect of the horse furniture to make was going to be the chain around the horse's neck leading up to the chin. I thought about using twisted wire or Duro, but really wanted something that looked like real chain . In the end I spent hours searching for some very fine chain in jewellers' shops. The gold chain I found was just about fine enough to be realistic. Once it was on the horse I tipped the horse to one side and let the chain hang off to one side and then ran some thin super glue over the links of the chain which set to appear as if it was bouncing through the air. On the horse's chest the original musculature was a little understated so I reworked with more Magic-Sculp.

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Military Modelling 05 2002

With all the items ready, construction can begin. The front suspension assemblies comprise moulded plastic arms and various metal parts, and at the rear comes the motor and gearbox. True to the original model there is no differential, but there is a choice of gear ratio. The rear suspension arms are also plastic and mount to the cast alloy gearbox. The hub carriers and gear shafts run in bronze bushes, but these are prone to wear and also create quite a lot of friction, so 1 replaced them with ballraces. I was lucky enough to have these already from another Tamiya model, but they can be bought from a model shop if you want to add them too. The ball-races are far smoother running and allow the car to run faster and help the battery last longer. A 'U' section aluminium rail fits between the front and rear end which acts as a battery tray and mounting for the receiver and speed controller, as can be seen in the photos. Suspension is of the torsion bar type, and here is one of the very few changes for the new model - the torsion bars are now metal as opposed to plastic ones in the original. One important point with radio-controlled cars is to keep the wiring as short and tidy as possible, as this reduces the chances of interference and it also looks better. It's also a good idea to wrap small plastic bags around the receiver if there's a possibility of it getting wet, as water and delicate electronics do not mix!

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