Behold.... The Merkeva!

[RichJohnson]

[SoCalBobS]

Tell us more!

[oldwolf]

Tell us more!

I second that!

[sclui56]

Nice, Hooben came through?

[RichJohnson]

Yes Hooben delivered it about on time.
At this point though, I am so frustrated with this tank that I just cant reccomend it to anybody that is not a die hard experienced tanker.
I have written a comprehensive review on my main forum, RCUniverse. You can read it all there.

I will make this short and bitter.

The tank has awesome detail, and I mean awesome.
To get that, they made the upper hull and turret from some white brittle urethane like plastic that breaks super easy. I have already broken major parts of the upper hull by opening it and handling it all those details keep breaking off in my hands becuase they are not glued very well or the glue is brittle, as are the parts.
The radio system is the same as the Fury Sherman. It is the absolute worst piece of junk I cannot say anything else because Im not allowed to curse here.
I drove it for about 15 minutes total. The system has failed and keeps saying singal lost in english.
The gun barrel pushes forward on its servo rather than recoiling backwards. i cant figure it out, I swore it worked right before I opened it, becuase the wire came loose and I plugged it back in, now it goes forward. Its a darn servo.... no idea whats up.
But at this point, so many things were done wrong or have broken or like the radio are just useless I cant do anything with it. I will have to buy an aftermarket board to do anything more with it as I cannot get the system to rebind to even drive it.
oh it is stupid slow. So is the turret. I listed upgrade options on the rcu review.

My suggestion, unless your a detail nut and going to drive it very carefully and not hit anything, wait for the henglong to be released.

[DavidN]

The infamous Hooben :-(

[Rubicon99]

Yes Hooben delivered it about on time.
At this point though, I am so frustrated with this tank that I just cant reccomend it to anybody that is not a die hard experienced tanker.
I have written a comprehensive review on my main forum, RCUniverse. You can read it all there.

I will make this short and bitter.

The tank has awesome detail, and I mean awesome.
To get that, they made the upper hull and turret from some white brittle urethane like plastic that breaks super easy. I have already broken major parts of the upper hull by opening it and handling it all those details keep breaking off in my hands becuase they are not glued very well or the glue is brittle, as are the parts.
The radio system is the same as the Fury Sherman. It is the absolute worst piece of junk I cannot say anything else because Im not allowed to curse here.
I drove it for about 15 minutes total. The system has failed and keeps saying singal lost in english.
The gun barrel pushes forward on its servo rather than recoiling backwards. i cant figure it out, I swore it worked right before I opened it, becuase the wire came loose and I plugged it back in, now it goes forward. Its a darn servo.... no idea whats up.
But at this point, so many things were done wrong or have broken or like the radio are just useless I cant do anything with it. I will have to buy an aftermarket board to do anything more with it as I cannot get the system to rebind to even drive it.
oh it is stupid slow. So is the turret. I listed upgrade options on the rcu review.

My suggestion, unless your a detail nut and going to drive it very carefully and not hit anything, wait for the henglong to be released.

The “behind the scene” photos you sent me of the tank sure make it look like a super detailed tank. Sorry it is not what we have come to expect from modern hobby manufacturers these days.

I will wait for the HL version coming in late Dec.

[sclui56]

I did see the post on RCU, and there're lots of details, much more than I would expect on an RC, too bad the quality isn't up to standard. I will more than likely get the HL, even though I don't particularly care for HL's suspension, but at least that's of known quantity and can be worked around.

[ArmorBolt]

Tamiya just announced a Centurion tank.. must be expensive though..

[RichJohnson]

So Im going to end this thread with a screw Hooben, those cheating jerks. Read on and you will see why. Do not buy this model.

I was driving for less than two minutes when the crappy radio with crappy controls and I went to turn when passing myself and it went to pivot turn and whacked my shoe. The front corner broke off the tank.
They had added plastic sheet stock under the hull to reinforce the fenders up front and I found that they made it too wide yesterday because it was lifting the upper hull off the lower hull fouling the mating joint. I cut some of the sheet off to clear the mating joint.
Well I opened the tank up to look into gluing the thing and I found it had a glue joint over the crack, and it had been painted over already.
The tank hull broke in production and they super glued it back together, glued reinforcing sheets over the break to hide it and painted it and sent it out and I got it.

This is the worst shenanigan I have ever seen. That was fully intentional to cover up a repaired broken tank and sell it direct from the MFR.
Im done. this thing breaks looking at it cross eyed.

[Rubicon99]

Tamiya just announced a Centurion tank.. must be expensive though..

With Tamiya you get the quality you pay for. So expensive up front cost turns out to be very inexpensive to own and operate over the long term.

[RichJohnson]

Tamiya means no headache, no BS like Im dealing with with this Hooben model. Really with Tamiya, there is nothing more to do than build and go.

[RichJohnson]

I have been having issues keeping the tracks on the tank. It’s a front wheel drive tank, should have no issues keeping tracks on yet they were coming off the sprockets any time I tried to turn.
after some evaluation I performed a temporary mod in the hull and went for a drive, I was able to run for about 15 minutes until my time ran out.
video is up on my Instagram @richjohnson_models_n_stuff

[RichJohnson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWTY7ZpYY-o

This is about it. I found all the wheels were uscrewing themselves after this video and had to pry the glued on hub caps off to get to the wheel screws. Doing one, I broke the whole wheel off the control arm.
Shes done till repair parts arrive from Hooben.

[RichJohnson]

I made the repairs with new control arms I ran through shapeways using the hooben print files they provided me. An absolutely necessity.
I got my new DKTank board installed and set up finally and went for a drive.
minutes after this video was made, I broke off another wheel….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r14q0H_rWZU