Piranha PWI-GR
- Thread starter Jakko
- Start date
Rimmer
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2024
- Messages
- 189
Jakko
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
- Messages
- 84
For the headlights, I took a look at the Canadian Piranha, the AVGP. I had some lights left from a Hobby Boss Leopard 2, and scratchbuilt the mounting from some plastic card and punched discs:
They're not 100% accurate, but they look good enough, if you ask me. Maybe I'll add more detail later, we'll see. The lights should actually "float" above the armour, but because I made the backing plate from 0.25 mm plastic card, I doubt they would survive for very long if I had replicated that, so I glued them to the armour instead.
On the back, I added the hinges for the hatches:
I wanted to make the hinges from plastic strip at first, but eventually went for sawing a slot in a piece of 2 mm square rod, using a small hacksaw because the blade of those is much wider than of modelling saws. I then filed the top to be half-round and sawed off the finished hinge. After glueing them in place, all it took was adding a piece of rod between them and some strip cut at an angle for the part of the hinge attached to the hatch.
The filler cap is just some scrap of plastic that happened to be 3.5 mm diameter with a 3 mm disc on top, and some more strip etc. for the hinge and lock. The pieces of tube on the rear plate are for the lights, but those aren't in them yet.
They're not 100% accurate, but they look good enough, if you ask me. Maybe I'll add more detail later, we'll see. The lights should actually "float" above the armour, but because I made the backing plate from 0.25 mm plastic card, I doubt they would survive for very long if I had replicated that, so I glued them to the armour instead.
On the back, I added the hinges for the hatches:
I wanted to make the hinges from plastic strip at first, but eventually went for sawing a slot in a piece of 2 mm square rod, using a small hacksaw because the blade of those is much wider than of modelling saws. I then filed the top to be half-round and sawed off the finished hinge. After glueing them in place, all it took was adding a piece of rod between them and some strip cut at an angle for the part of the hinge attached to the hatch.
The filler cap is just some scrap of plastic that happened to be 3.5 mm diameter with a 3 mm disc on top, and some more strip etc. for the hinge and lock. The pieces of tube on the rear plate are for the lights, but those aren't in them yet.
Jakko
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
- Messages
- 84
Thanks. I'm still looking for a good way to make a slightly conical ventilator to go between the hatches, though I did find a solution to making the circular firing port covers — it's just that I have to wait until Wednesday for it to be delivered 
Jakko
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
- Messages
- 84
At the back, I added the typical antenna tuning box used by Dutch Army vehicle radios from the 1970s on:
It still needs the antenna added on top, but I'll only add that after painting. The dimensions come from the parts in the AFV Club YPR kit, and I had actually made two, but one came out crooked so I decided to only put an antenna on this side instead of on both.
At the front, I completed the hull hatches:
The commander's hatch is really just a copy of the Grizzly's hatch based on Trumpeter's instructions
It still needs the antenna added on top, but I'll only add that after painting. The dimensions come from the parts in the AFV Club YPR kit, and I had actually made two, but one came out crooked so I decided to only put an antenna on this side instead of on both.
At the front, I completed the hull hatches:
The commander's hatch is really just a copy of the Grizzly's hatch based on Trumpeter's instructions
