PacNW RC Tanker

Just found your forum and am wondering if there are any more RC tankers in the southern part of the state, besides those on the coast in Coos Bay, so I want to make this introduction.

I am the XO of the Northern Division Pacific Armor Corps (NORDPAC) and the CO of its founding Oregon chapter, Keizer Armored Command, having been in this hobby for more than 12 years. NORDPAC is a regional RC tank club of 73 members across three states: OR, WA and ID, and BC Canada. The club has been operational since spring of 2010 and our focus is the modeling, exhibition, and battling of historically accurate RC tanks predominantly in 1/16th scale (our 16th Division) though we do have collections representing 6th, 10th, and 24th Divisions. The club CO is in WA and the club S3 (operations officer) is another OR tanker.

Our annual campaigns begin in February and last through September. Over the past three years our club has conducted battles, demonstrations, and exhibitions from Coos Bay to Arlington, WA usually in cooperation with the sponsors of model hobby shows, military history commemoratives, and RC aircraft events. Depending on the weather our operations have taken place both indoors and out. For the most part our battles are conducted using infra-red technology mounted in the tanks though we do permit air-soft battles with special protocols and procedures in place.

I invite anyone on this forum who is currently in the RC tank hobby, or who may be interested in it, to look over our club web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NORDPAC/. Membership is simply a matter of signing up and will allow you access to the club calendar of events and the photo albums of members' work and club activities at past battle days. As this forum's bandwidth allows I hope to post such pics. Video of club events can be found on YouTube by searching for NORDPAC.

With the persmission of the moderator(s) here I would like to post NORDPAC battle days to your calendar.

Hello KAC6A and welcome to the Southern Oregon RC forums.

By all means, please do post your events to the calendar.  We welcome all genres of RC enthusiasts.  If you are interested I can create a Armor/Tank forum for you if you feel it would be useful.  Just let me know.

We had a couple VS tanks but one let the blue smoke out the very first time we rotated the turret so now we only have one lone Leopard.

Thanks GPS, will do re: calendar events. Thanks also for the offer of creating a Armor/Tank forum but I don't think that's necessary for now unless other members feel differently. If that is the case, then by all means please do.

In your pics that looks like a 24th Division VS, correct? Air-soft or IR? PRO or standard? There are three vendors of 24th Division RC tanks that I know of: VS which had a great reputation for detail, Forces of Valor (FOV) whose electronics package was more flexible and whose products seemed to be more durable, a fact to which I can attest to as I have six of their tanks. Three have given five years of reliable service including use in our club's 'public participation' tank battles by first time combatants not known for careful handling and over all kinds of outdoor terrain. The third vendor is Marui but their product line is modern era tanks. The majority of NORDPAC members are dedicated to WWII armored fighting vehicles both Allied and Axis.

I hope to be able to post pics of 16th and 24th Division Keizer Brigade tanks provided they don't exceed forum max file size.

I don't know of anyone else that have any tanks or armor, others may have some but just not posted.

If my hobby budget allowed I would get a Armortek.  I followed a couple builds after seeing some YouTube videos.  They are awesome but extremely expensive.  Do any of your members own a Armortek tank?

The one we have is a VS Tank Pro Leopard 2, "R" infrared version.  It eats batteries, and even seems to drain the batteries sitting unused since it was sitting on the shelf for a while unused with fresh batteries and after seeing your post and taking the photos I wanted to drive it around a bit but it couldn't drive, just enough to fire a shot once in a while.

We do have a per photo size limit on the photos and a limit on the size of the photos per post.  Once way around this is to make multiple posts with the max size per post.  Another way is to use a service such as Photobucket.

I've been planning a tutorial on photo uploading and sizing for a while, just never got around to it yet.

GPS,

Thanks for the advice in adding photos.

No ArmorTeks but our club CO, and a couple of other members including a Canadian have scratch built fully operational 6th Division tanks from metal and other fabricated parts. They are very talented builders. The CO's tank, a German Panther which weighs close to 300 pounds, has a air soft main gun installed though he's trying to engineer IR replacement components. The Canadian member's tank, a JSU I believe, has a air soft main gun also.

I'd like to see some photos of that 300 pound tank, and any others for that matter.

GPS,

Can't find any pics that I have that will fit forum file size but I did upload a couple to Photobucket. How do I get them from there to here?

Using Photobucket:

First get the photos you want to share uploaded to Photobucket.  Each photo will have a "share" URL or link that looks something like this:
(I'll use one of chaseloc101's photos that he recently shared.)

Code:

 http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii636/chaseloc101/20130312_040439_zps5dbcf238.jpg 

Copy that share link code into the post reply, highlight it, and then click the IMAGE BBCode button here:



The results will look like this:

Code:

 [img]http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii636/chaseloc101/20130312_040439_zps5dbcf238.jpg[/img] 

Image tags look like this:

Code:

  [img]your-photo-URL-link-goes-here[/img]  

Voilà!

EDIT:
DOH!  Golden Child already created a nice topic with Photobucket photo sharing which you can view here:
http://southernoregonrc.com/index.php?topic=669.0

We try to keep tipos on using the forums in the FAQ and Suggestions area here:
http://southernoregonrc.com/index.php?board=18.0

Well GPS, many 'tanks' for your help. Here is the pic of our club CO's Panther (foreground) and our Canadian member's JSU, both 6th Division. In the far background are two of my 6th Division M5 Stuarts. More pics to follow.

You're welcome!  Tank you for posting the photos!  Those are nice looking models.

Are those electric or gas powered?  Are the belts metal or plastic?  Is that chain over the first tanks main gun a hold down?

All are electrically powered and the tracks are metal. As you observed the chain is the retainer for the travel lock for the main gun barrel, and leaning against the building in the background is a dolly used to help load the JSU into its trailer. The club CO also uses one to load his Panther for transport. Both of these are scratch builds, my M5s are pre-builts.

A 16th Division M4 Sherman tank with infra red battling capability, kit built:

Other 16th Division IR tank pics to follow but this one is a M4 Sherman kit modified and converted into a British Sherman Firefly (Mk IIIA):

Great models, they even look real with the weathering and equipment.

I was wondering if any tank commanders have setup FPV (first person view) systems in their tanks?

Affirmative on the FPV mod. Our club S3 (operations officer) has posted a number of NORDPAC vids to YouTube which include them. Other FPV vids posted by East Coast tankers can be found if you search 'Danville RC tank battles'. They have a large, detailed, permanent indoor battlefield at the American Armored Foundation Tank Museum in Danville, VA, that they use for multi-club regional battles.

In the PacNW, beacuse we're a regional club, NORDPAC relies on staging battles in conjuction with local events. My chapter has the only permanent battlefield, an outdoor one, established thru the assistance and cooperation of the local RC aircraft organization. NORDPAC is in the process of securing permanent indoor battlefield sites at the Oregon Military Museum at Camp Withycombe, Clackamas, and at the military museum at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) near Tacoma, WA.

Moodified pre-builts, 16th Division Axis StuG III and Panzer III/L in winter white wash:

24th Division (same scale as your VsPro I beilieve) pre-builts, FOV Shermans: a M4A3 and M4E8.

24th Division Axis, FOV Tiger I:

24th Division Axis, FOV King Tiger:

16th Division, kit built King Tiger:

Nice collection.

Is that Tiger 1 a VS tank?  It looks like the model we had that blew smoke fresh out  of the box.