Under full armour - Challenger 3 with TES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The crew was made first. They went together without any problems. Maybe their helmets are a tad too big. But this is in the eye of the beholder... 

Completed lower hull 

This is the extra armored plate for additional protection of the crew against buried IEDs 

Already looks very monstrous 🙂 

Here starts the first surgery for converstion into Challenger 3. The rubber pads of the gun rails and one support above the engine compartment have to be removed 

Support at the engine deck and rubber blocks removed; made two flatbars at the outsides with Evergreen stripe and made the drillholes.  

Finished the stern of the tank 

suspension completed 

View of the completed underside 

All running wheels applied 

frontal view with full TES installed. There is speculation if Challenger 3 would have a driver´s camera or not (plain vehicle which was officially introduced didn´t showed one but I estimate it will have when fully uparmored during a conflict. 

 

Top view. It looks like a giant turtle with its reactive armor around 

Rye Field provided etched grilles for the forward engine louvres but not for the ones behind. Don´t know it this is correct or not?! 

Rear view - all components are just assembled with patafix just to show how it looks. It will later be disassebled for a better painting of the single components 

Finished the turret; the reactive armor differ at both sides at the the original kit. I had to saw off to reduce the height at the right side and add a flange bar to let both sides look identical. 

The bracket for the rear turret bar armor had to be modified as the rear turret of the Challenger 3 is not angled like the Challenger 2 Megatron 

 

 

 

Single link tracks is, to me, the most boring job at tank modelling. But with the provided jig it went really fast and clean 

I didn´t made a complete track for each side as you won´t see it anyway because of the side shields and the add on armor 

I have no idea if there is a remote weapon station planned for the Challenger 3 too or not. I have glued together the one within the kit to see how it looks. Will decide later if I use it or not 

Tank driver finished - the british national shoulder badge were made out of thin masking tape, paintet with blue, white and red oil colors and sealed with matt laquer 

The black glaze is still wet, thats why you still can see some glossy areas. Will be matte very soon 

 

Tank commander finished. The wires were made with PLUSMODEL 0,3 mm lead wire 

 

Loader finished - also here the black glaze is not completely cured and still shining. When dry everything will be clean matte 

 

 

Finally found time and interest to paint the vehicle in the standart british camouflage. The paints used here were from Alclad 

The paint sheme were copied from accessible pictures of the real Challenger 3 

dusted in and the driver already took place in his workstation. Sadly not much can be seen anymore of his uniform 

Sideview. I am not very satisfied with the dusting of the side reactive armor but somehow the pigments kept sticking and I was not able to remove them as I had planned. 

rear cage armor 

 

Top view; dusting was reduced here to a minimum  

 

zoomed picture of the driver 

Remote weapon station finished and fixed at the loaders position 

view from the loaders hatch 

The big lense was made out of a spare sheet of reflective periscope set from AFV-Club for the M1A2 Abrams 

frontal view of the finished vehicle. I made the distance poles for the driver out of wire and a blob of cristal clear painted in black and white 

 

a picture of the complete crew together 

 

The numbering at the turret´s rear cage armor was salvaged from an old Tamiya challenger decal set I believe 

 

 

I just switched the loader and commander as I think they fit better in the other´s station 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished the diorama base for my Challenger today