I am gathering data, and being a good scientist, I want to take the mean of a number of measurements and remove any personal bias.
You can help:
Can you measure the length (minus the tracks) of the Airfix Tank Mark I (1/76 or HO/OO or 1/72, male or female) and the Emhar Tank Mark IV (1/72 male or female) in millimetres, and report your findings in this thread, please.
I dont want to influence how you do the measuring, so I wont say how I did it! But I am very interested in seeing everybody else's measurements.
That makes 103.65 for the Airfix, and 107.15 for the Emhar.
How long were/are the rhomboids in real life? Swinton, in Tanks of the Great War, states 26ft 5in, which converts to 8052mm. The Tank Museum states 8050 for their Mark I. (It's possible that the tank museum is simply quoting Swinton, and Swinton is simply regurgitating what Fosters told him.) Mk1 Nut makes the length 7950mm. The average is therefore somewhere around 8000mm. (I'm not confident with that figure, and would enjoy tabling everybody's measurements of whatever rhomboid they can get to and measure, out of the Marks I to V, and excluding the V* and V**.)
So for this sole dimension we have a scale of 8000/103.65 = 1/77 for the Airfix kits, and 8000/107.65 = 1/75 for the Emhar kits.
I have an actual measurement of 7849mm (25'9") measured from the Mark IV at APG measured front to rear minus the tracks. The center to center from front sprocket to rear sprocket is 7162.8 mm (23"6") . This matches a 23" 6" dimension from a general layout from one of David Fletchers books (title escapes me). I also get an overall dimension of 8001mm (26"3") over the tracks front to back, which is close to a reference dimension of 26"5" from the same drawing. The measurements are a summation of each measured panel on the Mark IV. I feel these are good dimensions.
Had a measure of my plans, and the MK1 without her tracks is 7823mm.
As I've said before, I am not 100% confident of my measurements, but I know they're close. This means that the scale of the two models is as OWGY said... very close.
I measured between the the rear sprocket and front, and came up with 7142mm.
As the front sprocket is adjustable, I took the centre of the front sprocket to be radius of the circle that gives the front horn its shape. I think that makes sense!
It was a very hot day in the mid 80's (mid May) and no shade at APG where the tanks are (oops where) displayed. I did take measuremets on the shady side. There is fitment gaps between the plates that where almost zero to maybe 1/8". This should have no impact on the overalls as all units would have this same fit up with the gaps.
