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Blasting the bad guys in a Soviet-era tank
By Xu Wenwen |
August 25, 2011, Thursday
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COMING soon to a theme park near you - working replica tanks. Hangzhou Junshi Railway Equipment Company has successfully tested a replica T-62 tank, a former Soviet Union battle tank, that it built from scratch.
The company has an order for 30 tanks from Xiang Sha Wan Tourist Resort, a theme park in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Hao Jinxi, 39, founder of Hangzhou Junshi and head engineer of the team in charge of producing the tank, says it cost more than 400,000 yuan (US$62,538) and took seven months to make.
"We made the tank with ordinary machines such as a lathe, grinder and drill press," Hao says. "It's got a cockpit, ammunition cabin, large-caliber artillery system, machine gun, and everything that a real tank should have."
The machine is 6.24 meters long and 3.27 meters wide. It can reach a top speed of 15 kilometers per hour and has the engine power of two trucks.
For obvious safety reasons, the mock T-62 does not fire real rounds. But, for added authenticity, Hao's team did make it capable of firing a harmless gas mixture of oxygen and ethyne.
The replica T-62 is legal, but is not allowed on public roads.
The weight of the knockoff is around 10 tons, while an authentic T-62 weighs about 45 tons. Most of this difference is due to the materials used. The armor plating is also only 3 centimeters thick, just one tenth of a real T-62.
Surprisingly, operating a tank is much easier than driving a car as it is operated by two handles, one for going forward and one for going backward.
"People can drive it after a three-minute training session," says Wang Dapin, another engineer at Hangzhou Junshi.
Now that the team has successfully tested its first tank, they will start making the other 29 on order for the theme park in Inner Mongolia. They plan to make more improvements.
Hao says he has been interested in military hardware such as tanks, guns and planes since he was a child. He studied engineering in college. In 2002, Hao, and his pals with a similar interest in the military, established Hangzhou Junshi to produce simulated trains, which are also used exclusively at sightseeing venues.
He says it was a big leap of faith going from trains to tanks since there is far less information available online about tanks. But Hao adds, the team was confident they could get the job done.
"We are qualified engineers with professional knowledge about mechanics and electricity, and we have been curious about tanks for a very long time," Hao says.
"After a lawyer analyzed it and said it's legal to produce tanks that cannot fire, we just decide to do it."
Hao and his team relied largely on photographs and video footage to learn how tanks worked.
"We studied and analyzed the tank's composition, and by tracking how it moves, we imagined the principle and theory behind its construction," Hao says. "The team made so many detours that it took more than 20 experiments before we got it right."
In the past two weeks, word has spread quickly about the tank.
"We've received more than 20 new orders for working tanks from film production companies and tourism destinations," Hao says.
Looking to the future, Hao says he and his team plan to produce a replica helicopter that will be capable of flying at low altitudes at 20 kilometers per hour.
Anyone interested in the tank can have a free driving at the Fengdu Industrial Park before the tanks are sent to the theme park.
Address: 12 Guofu Rd, Pingyao Town, Yuhang District
Tel: 189-6805-5692
The company has an order for 30 tanks from Xiang Sha Wan Tourist Resort, a theme park in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Hao Jinxi, 39, founder of Hangzhou Junshi and head engineer of the team in charge of producing the tank, says it cost more than 400,000 yuan (US$62,538) and took seven months to make.
"We made the tank with ordinary machines such as a lathe, grinder and drill press," Hao says. "It's got a cockpit, ammunition cabin, large-caliber artillery system, machine gun, and everything that a real tank should have."
The machine is 6.24 meters long and 3.27 meters wide. It can reach a top speed of 15 kilometers per hour and has the engine power of two trucks.
For obvious safety reasons, the mock T-62 does not fire real rounds. But, for added authenticity, Hao's team did make it capable of firing a harmless gas mixture of oxygen and ethyne.
The replica T-62 is legal, but is not allowed on public roads.
The weight of the knockoff is around 10 tons, while an authentic T-62 weighs about 45 tons. Most of this difference is due to the materials used. The armor plating is also only 3 centimeters thick, just one tenth of a real T-62.
Surprisingly, operating a tank is much easier than driving a car as it is operated by two handles, one for going forward and one for going backward.
"People can drive it after a three-minute training session," says Wang Dapin, another engineer at Hangzhou Junshi.
Now that the team has successfully tested its first tank, they will start making the other 29 on order for the theme park in Inner Mongolia. They plan to make more improvements.
Hao says he has been interested in military hardware such as tanks, guns and planes since he was a child. He studied engineering in college. In 2002, Hao, and his pals with a similar interest in the military, established Hangzhou Junshi to produce simulated trains, which are also used exclusively at sightseeing venues.
He says it was a big leap of faith going from trains to tanks since there is far less information available online about tanks. But Hao adds, the team was confident they could get the job done.
"We are qualified engineers with professional knowledge about mechanics and electricity, and we have been curious about tanks for a very long time," Hao says.
"After a lawyer analyzed it and said it's legal to produce tanks that cannot fire, we just decide to do it."
Hao and his team relied largely on photographs and video footage to learn how tanks worked.
"We studied and analyzed the tank's composition, and by tracking how it moves, we imagined the principle and theory behind its construction," Hao says. "The team made so many detours that it took more than 20 experiments before we got it right."
In the past two weeks, word has spread quickly about the tank.
"We've received more than 20 new orders for working tanks from film production companies and tourism destinations," Hao says.
Looking to the future, Hao says he and his team plan to produce a replica helicopter that will be capable of flying at low altitudes at 20 kilometers per hour.
Anyone interested in the tank can have a free driving at the Fengdu Industrial Park before the tanks are sent to the theme park.
Address: 12 Guofu Rd, Pingyao Town, Yuhang District
Tel: 189-6805-5692
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