This is another one of those long drawn-out projects that sat on the bench, occasionally got worked on, sometimes left untouched for months just like my Hooben T-55. Hooben is somewhat involved in this as well as they had originally announced their intention to release a Leopard 2A4 years ago. Since then they announced and reviewed other tanks but the Abrams and Leopard are vaporware as of 2020.
The reason for starting the project was in homage to my country Singapore's purchase of ex-Bundeswehr Leopard 2A4 stocks back in 2006 which were subsequently updated to 2SG standard, which is similar in appearance to the Leopard 2A4 Revolution. However I wasn't really a fan of the add-on applique armour which made the tank rather wide for IR games in built-up situations, plus the slat armour around the rear quarters weren't going to hold up well either!
I already owned a Tamiya Leopard 2A6 but always wanted to convert it to 2A4 but studying the exterior dimensions of the 2A4 against the 2A6 in relation to the DMD T-07 electronics package quickly led me to realize that it was far from a simple exercise. Tamiya had made extensive use of the interior space, including the arrowhead cheek armour spaces as well as the extended rear turret bustle to fit everything in. In Tamiya's WW2 tanks, the DMD/MFU are located in the hull and the turret merely carries the gun elevation and recoil gearboxes, flash capacitor and battle unit, but with the Leopard the turret rotation motor, battery, receiver and DMD T-07 utilize this space as well.
As you can see, every bit of space has been utilized. The challenge then was to figure out how to retain the Tamiya's excellent running gear and electronics while accommodating all of it in 20% less space. When a secondhand used Leopard 2A6 came up for sale, instead of cutting up my 2A6, I had my donor tank from which to perform the conversion. In retrospect it was great that I had an unmolested 2A6 to compare and study because the cutting process was extensive...... the basis of which was Christian Ludwig's 2A4 turret conversion kit. However it was intended for the Heng Long Leopard 2A6 and much more work still needed to be done to make it work together.
More in the next post......