Tank biathlon 2014 final round

[John Kettler]

For some reason, repeated searches under "tank biathlon" and "biathlon" aren't turning up my original post, hence the new thread. In any event, here's a long vid of the conclusion, including a look at crash munitioning, in-turret views, firing on the sort of move (practically a crawl), China's Type 96A MBT, novel camouflage jobs (Type 96A in mix of blob and digicam, for example, and another country's in what looks to be an urban paint job), tremendous looks at ERA configurations (in some cases quite sparse), visionics, countermeasure dispensers and other goodies.

Not sure whether it's a microphone overload issue or what, but there's no audio when the main guns fire. Perhaps the ultimate in high powered, real time noise cancellation?! Amusing notion, but that's about all. Not so amusing is that the audio keeps cutting out completely and that, unless you know your flags and pay close attention, it's not readily apparent from the small turret flashes just who's shooting. The big stiff triangular banners, not to mention the color rotating lights atop the banner poles, are positively surreal looking and denote which tank team it belongs to. Fortunately, there are no pink tanks or pink banners, as seen in "Tank Girls" and such. Have to say, too, it's quite a sight to see a 45-ton tank at speed slide around a turn, just like sprint cars do! Also of interest is that track skirt mounted ERA seems to suffer from the same woes as Schuerzen did for the Germans. Bad things can and do happen, exposing great chunks of the tank which once had ERA protection. Pity it's all T-72s and derivatives, NATO having withdrawn over that Ukraine business.

Regards,

John Kettler