Some Joy for WWI Armor Fans

I won a Tamiya 1/16 scale full R/C Tiger I kit from an online modeling contest in 2001. It is a very big vehicle. It can be equipped with a "laser tag" transmitter/receiver in order to battle your friends. I guess this is popular in Japan. Any way, the original price of the kit was $1000. This did not include the required 4-channel transmitter (about $250) and batteries (another $30). As you suggest, it would be quite an expensive hobby (the tank battling I mean).

Tamiya did release a series of their regular 1/35 scale armor kits that came with radio controls. I bought the M1A1 Abrams, and I think their 1990s Tiger and Panther kits were also released with a radio control. The cost was a little more than $100. This is basically turning your kit into a remote controlled toy.

As to a 1/35 scale FT, I hope the Italeri kit comes out. The old RPM one is a fiddly build. It is quite a small tank in the standard scale.

Here is a link to Perth's site with sprue shots of the kit. It looks very good to me.

http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/newkitnews/takom.html 

I stand corrected. I know there are fans of big scales, I'm always surprised when I look at a Trumpeter sale and see how many 1/32 aircraft they have. Tis certainly true that a 1/32 biplane makes a lot of sense. But in the armor world that would be much closer to the 1/24 scale Tasca has used for its PZIIs which is a tanks not much smaller than the Renault. And a $110? I'll wait for the 1/35 Italeri - can't be worse than a 1/700 warship.

I know there used to be 1/16 and smaller scale motorized tanks. I see them on eBay occasionally. To be honest, I think an electric Tiger would be kind of neat: bring out the inner child. (Course I think you can blow a grand on some of the radio controlled tanks that even fire little projectiles and even more for a RC warship. Rich boys' toys.)

Eric

Just a small clarification, the 1/16 FT is by Takom, not Takoma. It's too bad they didn't go for 1/35 but I can understand why they chose 1/16. It's such a small vehicle to begin with that the larger scale really affords more opportunity/value in terms of an interior and just overall level of detail. Kind of the same reason why WWI biplanes do better in 1/32 vs. the other smaller AC scales.