Halinski PzKpfw V Panther
Jim Nunn
Fourth article in the series Photos by the Author

Interior Construction Continued


Having given considerable thought to adding electrical, hydraulic and fuel lines to the fighting compartment I went and took my medication and returned to my normal sane self.  I did decide to add the radios and the fire extinguishers.  The standard radio set used in German tanks is the FU-5 set which consists of a receiver and a 10-Watt transmitter.  Command tanks used the FU-8 set, which has a 30-Watt transmitter and in some cases would have an additional receiver.  I designed both radio sets but only used the FU-5 set in the Panther. 

A special thank you to Mike Kendall who is the person behind AFV Interiors for supplying me with the dimensional information on the radios. 

I could not find photos or dimensions for the extinguishers so these are only representations of what they could look like. 
The radios and fire extinguishers are in the zip file Panther Parts


The final interior details are the 75mm rounds and we need to make 70 of them.  I did not want to use the supplied the paper cone for the projectile so I made the projectiles out of wood.  Using 1/8-inch (3.2mm) wood dowels I first sanded the dowels down to 3 mm diameter and using a small rotary tool and sand paper shaped the dowels.  The two groves were made with a thin jewelers file to represent the compression bands on the projectile.  After priming the projectiles they were then finished painted with watercolor paint.  Armor piercing rounds have simi-gloss black body and a white fuse tip, tungsten dart AP rounds have a silver tip.  High explosive rounds have a dark gray body and a red fuse



With the interior finished we have about one third of the model finished and we will stop here for this month.

Next month we will finish the hull and add the outer skin to the model.
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