Making some sensors out of pipe, styrene, and repurposed bits. From left to right, muzzle reference sensor, one of the Leopard's stereoscopic rangefinder blisters built up into a commander's independent sight, and something from the M41's turret roof built into a gunner's main sight.



Though, I might not end up using that L7 gun at all. Scratched up a 120mm I figured looked decently nice enough, and I might end up just using that instead. Also reprofiled the turret to add something worth being called armor. Unfortunately that means the turret is ending up about as big as the Leopard 1 turret, but oh well. Height over bore is superior except that a commander's cupola adds a lot of height to clear the gun and get 360 degree vision. I might just end up cutting the ring of vision blocks in half and giving half to each the commander and gunner.



I know it's easy to make up stats for a plastic panzer, but that could be 1.2+ meters of armor on the turret face right there, if I went with side-opening hatches near where the trunnions are. Also final tally for gun depression is "only" 22 degrees. Sure tanks can traverse 40% slopes, but this one could fight on them. Which is good, because the whole idea behind this tank is one optimized for fighting defensively on mountainous terrain. Where tanks generally don't excel.



Mocking up some blowout panels for the bustle ammo storage. Oddly, since the gun is offset in the turret, the shot lockers and thus the blowout panels are different sizes too.



Crew compartment, with a 1/35 figure, or most of one at least for scale. The idea behind the rails is to pull the tank power pack, you empty out the troop compartment, unbolt a section of the firewall, unbolt the engine, and the whole thing ideally slides out on rollers.



Been playing around with the idea of a self-entrenching dozer blade that folds under and becomes part of the lower armor plate, ala Strv 103. I mean, if the tank is designed to fight purely from a defensive posture, it makes sense to give it the ability to create it's own defensive positions, right...? On the other hand it's more front weight on an already very front-heavy vehicle, and visually it looks kind of funny as well. Maybe I'll save it for the add-on package.

Looking good.

A couple of things, don't let the turret get too tall. Your vision would allow for a really low profile. That's a good thing in the tank world. 

Cut the side armor in half width wise. What you show mocked up would make the tank way too wide. Protection can be accomplished with half of that. Look at a modern M1A2 with TUSK, or a Canadian Leopard.

Keep at it.

That's pretty neat! And clever idea on mocking her up with card stock. 

Looking forward to seeing how she comes out.