It's been a while since I have had any progress to post about owing to lack of facilities, however thanks to Gary "the tank man" page and his dinner table I've managed to make some progress.

The firefly was bought from flamme with no electronics, provision for recoil or proper elevation. It's on the Mato chassis which is mechanically crude, so an upgrade was required.

I was impressed with the Mato m36b1 so I managed to get forgebear to get me just the chassis







Next up was replacement of the damaged fender, using the old one as a template I made a replacement out of styrene.



A Mato metal mantlet was added. I had to make some modifications however to achieve suitable depression. As the tank will be a battler the ir led tube has been added in place of the mg in the mantlet. To help assist the recoil I've added a brass sleeve to support the barrel



It looks a bit Heath Robinson but it works well and will be finessed with I detail her





The Mato mantlet looks to support the henglong recoil unit, so the dklm one should fit too.

Here's the tank as she sits so far. The upper is all made of resin cast by flamme, the only of the shelf bit is the engine deck taken from an Tamiya Sherman.

The tracks are proper Churchill tracks, and I'm very lucky to have a whole bag of extra links!