ORIGINAL: ksoc
Glad you guys are enjoying the hobby and your tanks. The more manufactures the better!
Chief - I'd love to see a breakdown of how you put $2,500 into a Tamiya Tiger. Assuming one spent $100 for a basic HL S&S Tiger, and $900 to get a Tamiya Tiger up and running ($700 for the kit and $200 for radio, charger, etc...). According to your math, you'd actually put MORE money into the Tamyia for aftermarket goodies than you would a HL!
That would be a very pretty kitty!
If you are talking about buying a Tamiya and replacing the electronics with ElMod, remember you could sell the DMD & MFU for a nice chunk of change.
He did say LATE Tiger I. I found that it was more expensive to get what you need to assemble a late Tiger I than it would be to assemble a Porsche KT (when buying both the Henschel full option KT AND the Porsche KT static kit). The late Tiger I wheels alone (at least the Wecohe ones) cost as much as the entire Porsche static kit. If anyone knows of a more cost effective source of late Tiger I wheels for the Tamiya kit, I would like to hear about it. The HL late Tiger wheels are dirt cheap in comparison, wonder if they would work?
No matter how I have crunched the numbers, I cannot come up with a Tamiya Tiger I or II with metal tracks and gearboxes, that is under $1000. And that does NOT include radio, batteries or charger. I think a Tamiya Jagdtiger conversion using all Wecohe parts would probably end up costing about $2500 or maybe even more. That's a Doctor's RC tank there, and the British made Mark I 1/4 scale tanks are for Brain Surgeons (definitely not for lowly peasants). A real 1:1 Tiger, that would be a Bill Gates toy tank, that's probably what he would have if he was even interested in them. There is no computer chip or operating system in a real Tiger, so he probably wouldn't like it.
I wonder if the Führer would have enjoyed chasing Blondie around inside the Bunker with a Tamiya Tiger.. Which tank would he have chosen to play with in those final weeks? I bet he would have gone for the Königstiger. If Tamiya had been around back then they probably would have sent him one as a gift.