Had that one!
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I commanded a M2A1 equipped mech Infantry Company from 1987-88. Iāve always wanted to do one, but I have not found any source that tells what the external differences are from the M2 to M2A1. I donāt think there were many. I do know the bustle rack changed to a vertical one as opposed to slanted one. Anyone have a source?
Internally there were many changes.
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As referenced aboveā¦Itās in there.
M2/M3 Bradley Reference - Reference by Subject - KitMaker Network
In addition to what is listed, there were periscope guards added to the driverās hatch and the BC position in the right side of the turret.
All these parts can be sourced from the Tamiya M2A2 sprue (sprue E) in later M2A2 kits.
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Pete Becerra, who used to work on Bradleys and was a great builder on this site, has a walkaround on Prime-Portal of what he calls an M2A0+. I imagine it was halfway between an OG and an A1.
Online sources will tell you the A1 had an improved TOW launcher (identified most easily by the number of release handles in the rear) an NBC system, and a fire suppression system. Nowhere do they mention the enlarged bustle. While that was an eventual feature of A1ās, I donāt believe it was a requirement. My feeling is that an enlarged rack doenāt merit a change in designation. Witness the gradual changes including the more heavily armored side skirts. You might also read on this site that the A1ās had their ammo can racks removed from the right side of the turret. That is demonstrably untrue,
I have a very comprehensive walkaround that begins with either early M2ās and M3ās, all the way through the A4 models, complete with interior shots. It pays particular attention to the M2A3 and M3A3 variants, so much so that Meng used many of the photos as references for their kits, including decal options. I constantly upgrade this walkaround with new photos added as recently as last weekend,
I also have a walkaround of every variant of the new AMPVās, including interiors, the empty engine bays, and the newer engines. The jury is still out on whether I will offer that as a reference.
If you want the first one I mentioned, please PM me. With some of the newer photos, I donāt offer it to everyone. If you choose to purchase it, youāll receive all of the files today.
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My computer does not like Prime Portal anymore and I get warnings about the site. Does anyone else have that issue?
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It takes an inordinate amount of time to load photos. First you have to load the whole page, which used to be instantaneous. Now it takes several seconds. Then when you click on a photo it also takes a up to about five seconds. Subsequent clicks on the same photo are instantaneous, however. Itās somewhat annoying but it still works. I donāt get warnings on my computer for that site.
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I imagine it has some older operating system. I always get a warningā¦
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Thatās why I not only kept the books from back then (volumes II and V, from the Verlinden Way) but also purchase other old modelling books I come across 
Thatās because your browser will have cached the picture. What happens (basically) is that if you want to look at anything online, your browser first checks if it already has that because you looked at it previously (and not too long ago); if so, it loads that instead of actually downloading it from the site. Only if you didnāt look at it in the fairly recent past will it download it from the site, and then immediately store it locally for future reference.
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I noticed that Francois blanked off the firing ports in his build.
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I think what he did there is modify the M3 kitās blanked-off firing ports to the M2 type.
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Yes mate.Im going to look on e.bay and see what i can find kit wise.Still working on m60a1 and a3 at the moment.
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I donāt like to be too critical of those old school modelers. There are bolts added around the firing ports, but not the additional armor that they secure to the hull. Of course back then these dudes were working from scant photos they had. There wasnāt much of an internet, and rare was the dude visiting military bases getting shots on top, underneath, and inside.
A lot of guesswork went into those builds.
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You aināt lying!
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Thatās a nice understatement There was an Internet in 1987, but nobody outside of certain parts of the military, some research institutions, select parts of universities, etc. had ever heard of it ā let alone used it. What people think of as āthe Internetā today is actually the World Wide Web, which was only designed around 1990 and started taking off by the middle of the decade.
Thatās something you really have to give Verlinden credit for: the Warmachines books he published thirty years ago are exactly that. Sure, not to the extent that modern walkarounds online do, but those arenāt constrained by page count and associated printing costs.
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My stepfather had it. Iām not sure when it started, but certainly in '87. Woe be unto anyone who wanted to use the phone - they had one line. Of course I was still in Germany at the time. Dude was into astronomy, radio telescopes, ham radio. Who knows what he spents hours downloading.
We had an Altair 8800 in the mid 70ās when I lived in Florida. About 10K (?) of memory. Wow, that certainly doesnāt seem like much. We bought BYTE magazine and would type in the basic programs they offered. First you had to machine program the computer by flipping a bunch of switches over and over - using base 8. Then you played the annoying cassette. For actual Basic programs you typed them in and monitored your progress on the screen. Often the Altair ran out of memory before the program was finished, but I was somewhat adept at leaving unneccesary lines out.
The most popular game for me was Star Trek. And eight by eight āuniverseā of 64 quadrants, When you were in a quadrant, it was just a black screen, again eight by eight dots. The Enterprise was represented by the letter āEā and Klingons were represened by the letter āK.ā If you were lucky enough to land in a quadrant with a starbase it was represented by another letter I have forgotten. You could make it anything you wanted really. After eliminating Klingons in your quadrant you could do a long range scan. It would simply show a nine by nine grid (with you in the center, and whatever might be in the other eight quadrants. Then you jumped to the desired quadrant. If a Klingon was there you were immediately fired upon, costing you energy units.
At any rate, I came up with the Kobayashi Maru solution long before Star Trek Wrath of Khan came out. I was running out of energy units, which were for travel and phasers, had no torpedoes left, and was being bombarded by Klingons. I did not have enough energy to jump away before being destroyed.
I simply paused the program and typed:
Let E$ (Energy Units) = 1,000,000
Let P$ (Photon torpedoes) = 100
Of course the game was never the same after that. And I discovered girls.
And yes, I do have the War Machines M108/M109 book somewhere. Not bad for its time,
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I think youāre talking about a BBS (bulletin board system) there ā those were not part of the Internet, but consisted of a computer hooked up to a phone line (or multiple ones, for big BBSes) and running BBS software. To access one, you would need a computer with a modem, and dial directly into the BBSās computer, where you could do stuff like download files, read and post messages, play text-based games, chat live with other others (on a multiline BBS), etc.
Those BBSes then began to exchange data amongst themselves so you had a rudimentary ability to communicate with people further away than your local area, but still, it was basically a poor manās version of the Internet. But because nobody knew there even was an Internet too, that didnāt bother anyone
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Could be. After the 70ās I completely lost interest in computers, although I could write programs in Basic on my own. When he died in '92, I inherited his 286 and did nothing with it until '96 when I decided to get in on the act. I installed more RAM, and took it to the store to get a modem, thinking it needed that phone cradle kind I remembered seeing, They told me it already had an internal modem to my surprise. I met my wife on it in '98 before online dating got real popular. (there were a few sites prior to that, but who knew?) Kept harassing her on AOL (a gift from my sister) while she was doing her homework. I guess they have value after all. Now you can be called names from idiots across the globe.
Anyone remember rec.models.scale?
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I never really got into USENET ā tried it a few times (not rec.models.* but rec.games.frp.*) but thatās about it, for reasons I canāt even say anymore.
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