Piranha PWI-GR
- Thread starter Jakko
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Rimmer
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- Oct 3, 2024
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Jakko
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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
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- Oct 9, 2024
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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
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- Oct 9, 2024
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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
Jakko
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- Oct 9, 2024
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I'm partly making this up as I go along All there was IRL was one vehicle converted for trials in 1981, so what I'm doing here is pretty much just looking at other Piranha variants (mainly the Canadian AVGP) and extrapolating what the Dutch Army might have wanted from it. Currently, what's occupying me there is the location of the smoke grenade launchers — there were none on the trials vehicle, but an in-service version would certainly have had those. Trouble is, there is no really good place to put them where they wouldn't be in the way. I suspect they will probably end up on the sides of the nose, for want of a better location.
All there was IRL was one vehicle converted for trials in 1981, so what I'm doing here is pretty much just looking at other Piranha variants (mainly the Canadian AVGP) and extrapolating what the Dutch Army might have wanted from it. Currently, what's occupying me there is the location of the smoke grenade launchers — there were none on the trials vehicle, but an in-service version would certainly have had those. Trouble is, there is no really good place to put them where they wouldn't be in the way. I suspect they will probably end up on the sides of the nose, for want of a better location.
Jakko
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
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- 89
Thanks, I'm almost there now
I've been using my new tool:
6 mm discs of 0.25 mm plate for the covers over the firing ports, with a much smaller disc on it (made with my RP Tools set) for the hinge — on both sides and the rear. On the sides, their tops are about level with the bottoms of the vision blocks, and all are about 2 mm to the left of the blocks (when viewed). At the back, they are about 6 mm below the tops of the doors and 3 mm from its left edge. On real Piranhas, the hinges can be either at the bottom or at the right, and as you can see, I chose to put them at the bottom because that seems to be the older style.
The ventilator on the roof, between the hatches, was also made with my new tool: first a 4 mm disc of 0.75 mm card as a spacer, with a 6 mm disc of 1.5 mm card on top of that, of which I filed the edges at an angle to make a truncated cone. That I had to do that anyway was a stroke of luck, because I found that the 1.5 mm plate is too thick to punch well with this set — it's fine if you want a hole in a plate, but not if you want the disc, because its edges will be ragged. That is to say: the two sides were nicely 6 mm and round, but the thickness of the plate between them was ragged and smaller in diameter than the rest of the disc. Anyway, after filing and glueing it in place, I added four bits of 0.88 mm rod around it, because something like that is visible in Trumpeter's instructions, too.
I've been using my new tool:
6 mm discs of 0.25 mm plate for the covers over the firing ports, with a much smaller disc on it (made with my RP Tools set) for the hinge — on both sides and the rear. On the sides, their tops are about level with the bottoms of the vision blocks, and all are about 2 mm to the left of the blocks (when viewed). At the back, they are about 6 mm below the tops of the doors and 3 mm from its left edge. On real Piranhas, the hinges can be either at the bottom or at the right, and as you can see, I chose to put them at the bottom because that seems to be the older style.
The ventilator on the roof, between the hatches, was also made with my new tool: first a 4 mm disc of 0.75 mm card as a spacer, with a 6 mm disc of 1.5 mm card on top of that, of which I filed the edges at an angle to make a truncated cone. That I had to do that anyway was a stroke of luck, because I found that the 1.5 mm plate is too thick to punch well with this set — it's fine if you want a hole in a plate, but not if you want the disc, because its edges will be ragged. That is to say: the two sides were nicely 6 mm and round, but the thickness of the plate between them was ragged and smaller in diameter than the rest of the disc. Anyway, after filing and glueing it in place, I added four bits of 0.88 mm rod around it, because something like that is visible in Trumpeter's instructions, too.
