Back on the tank today along with trying to watch a little football.Removed the main hatch off my parts tiger tank and took off the (not sure what to call it,the tower looking gadget on this Panzer)and replaced it with the hatch off the Tiger.Cut a hole out under the hatch so one of my tank figures could be placed in the hatch.Think this makes it look a lot more apealing,anyway I like it.Color don't quite match but I used what I had for now and it looks better than gray.My next job was on the machine-gun.Have been reading on here about guys using fiber-optics in their guns to make them more realistic looking while shooting.The gun on this tank is pretty big so I did a lot of trimming on it to get rid of as much stuff as I could off it and still have it look like a machine gun.Cut the barrel off and drilled a hole all the way through the main gun body so the wires for the machine gun LED would be able to pass through the gun and hidden.
I cut a piece of (for you airplane guys==the outer tube of a golden rod,just a perfect fit for the LED and the size is about right to use as the barrel I cut off)then slid the wires and LED into the tube and the wires through the gun and out the back of the gun.Next put the barrel in place and used sewing type thread to wrap aroung the barrel and the portion of the gun left in place to attach the barrel to.
Put a little CA on the thread and a piece of shrink tube on the exiting wires from the back of the gun and into the hatch.Painted the new barrel black,then sat back and admired my up-graded machine gun.I think it turned out pretty good.Still haven't tested it yet,waiting to put all the other stuff in the turret and test it all at one time.Pictures to follow---Work bench was getting a little messy,had to do a little clean up before I started on the turret work. BIGMIG