One of my favorite writers Dan (of Dan’s Data fame) is really into Japanese R/C tanks. (That’s one of the many peculiar hobbies that makes Dan so charming.) He’s recently gotten his hand on a sixteenth-scale Mitsuwa T-34-95, available for about $150 US delivered, about half of its normal list price.

The big advantage of the Mitsuwa kit over everyday large-scale toy-store R/C tanks is that it has proper articulated tracks. Cheap tanks always have rubber tracks. Those are simple and durable, but they eat a huge amount of the tank’s motor power, so even big rubber-tracked tanks are generally an indoor-only proposition.

The Mitsuwa also apparently scrubs up real nice if you invest some work in it. That’s another point of difference with cheap tanks – they’re seldom very good models, scale-accuracy-wise.

Buy a tank! [DansData Blog]