Good news, I had just enough mold material and resin to do my casting. I had to reinforce the rangefinder bump on my secondary, but the mold held until the last pull. My masters will go on the model since I rushed them a bit and will not be doing a run after this ship without taking more time on the masters. Here are the cast pieces: And here are the finished pieces: I also did my rear rangefinders, AAA rangefinders, and the searchlight platforms on the smokestacks. Here is my current punch list: AAA Funnel tops Internal Armor Silkspan balsa Attach splinter sheilds, searchlights, 158mm secondaries, 100mm DP guns, anchors, anchor chains, and AAA. Paint Looking at the quad 37mm AAA on the plans they don't really give alot of detail, so I might add quad 40mm Bofors instead.
Not as much progress tonight as I hoped. I spent a couple of hours on prepping and design for AAA only to realize after the first piece was finished that it wasn't going to work out as I had planned. The AAA is scrapped for the time being. I did get splinter shields finished, then I proceeded to mask the superstructure/deck joints for paint. I finished about 70% of above deck painting before I ran out of gas. If I am very productive tomorrow, I might be ready for Sunday, but my chances of participating have dropped to 40% My updated/broken down punchlist: Fabricate/paint funnel tops Finish painting SS, launches, 158mm, and 100mm turrets Attach turrets and launches Mask the deck and paint main barbettes Mask and paint fore and aft decks Attach anchors and chains Internal Armor Silkspan hull Paint hull
Got hit with a stomach virus or something today and have been laid up in bed most of the day. It looks Like I will not make the battle tomorrow, but I might hit the water.
Well, it looks like it was something I ate, so I was able to get some shop time in tonight. What's left: Fabricate and paint funnel tops Finish painting and attach launches Internal armor Deck hold downs Silkspan hull Paint hull I am going to try to silkspan and paint the hull before I go to bed tonight. I might be able to make the battle for a little bit after all.
I managed to get everything but the funnel tops done, so I hit the top of the funnels with some black paint and am calling it good for now. I'm off for a few hours of shut eye then loading up for Hinckley.
The Alsace had it's first battle today. I got to the site at lunchtime and had some brats, then we got her in the pond for speed trials. She was running a little fast and we had to dial her down 4 seconds. Turning was almost as good as Roland's Bismark. The first sortie she ran beautifully until the pinstripe waterline tape came off and got tangled in the props. I also noticed several hits on my rear crane, so I snapped it off. For the second sortie, I had to immediately go on five as my solenoids wouldn't fire. Before the battle started only my sterns wouldn't fire. I decided to fight anyway, but by the time war were declared, I was unarmed. I either have an electrical problem, a twitchy firing board, or the ship's wine stores were hit in the first sortie, and the gunnery crew went on strike. Anyway, it was pushing 4:00, so we all packed up and headed home I still have three weeks before TreatyCon to work out the bugs, and repaint the bottom of the hull. The red paint I chose did not hold up to the water very well on the epoxied fiberglass. Here are some pictures before the first battle:
Thanks! The big score was discovering that Walmart has 90" of "anchor chain" necklace material for $3
I use red oxide spray undercoat from the auto shop for the red section of my hulls, it dries flat, looks very good and best of all, is cheap. Another plus is that it accepts touch-ups very nicely.
Darren, Thanks for the suggestion on the hull paint. I Patched and repainted the bottom of the hull last night. I talked to Stephen about my firing board issue and he suggested testing the output voltage when activated. My new multitester does not register volts for some reason--of course I noticed this a week after the warranty expired. The lights on the board were activating when I moved my stick, so the issue is on the relay side of the circuit. I then pulled out my decades old el cheapo multitester and got a reading of about 10V. I think the current draw from the seized prop may have something to do with the reduced voltage, that doesn't make sense with my battery chemistry, so I will have to test some more.
The turret covers for my mains came in today so I got those dremeled out and painted. No rangefinders for this battle--time is short. I ran a systems check and everything worked, then I turned on the CO2 and my solenoids didn't fire. This seems familiar, I realized I hadn't charged my batteries since the Hinckley battle (busy on that Battlestations boat) and discovered the problem: one of my cells went bad, I was getting a low voltage reading. So, I soldered a Y-series harness for some deans connectors and tested again with two 2300mAh A123 packs. Success! These solenoids will not fire at 10V under pressure. Based on my measured current draw, I should be able to get about an hour out of these, plenty of time for a battle.
Interesting, either you've got another problem in your wiring somewhere, your pressure is higher than 150 psi somehow, or clippard changed their solenoid without changing the part number as I've run those solenoids in my VDT on 7.2V without any problem for years. When Iceman and I tested them the voltage cutoff between firing and not firing was just about 6V.
My recently-purchased 12V clippard solenoids also require 12V+ to fire under pressure, my regulator tested at Nats at 148psig.
Yeah, for Baden I wound up using two of my destroyer 7.2V packs in series. Worked well, but not what I had intended.
I just got back from TreatyCon and I am very happy with the way the ship performed. Turning was excellent for a ship with one rudder, but not good enough I couldn't avoid all herding attempts from more maneuverable ships. Being the biggest target on the pond, I took a lot of hits and was never really pumping hard except for one bad ram when I was on five. I am drawing more current in battle conditions than expected, so I will definitely need the larger battery pack. The 2300mAh was enough if I remembered to charge in between sorties, but if I forgot, I got into trouble in latter sorties. With all the lead shot I put in the bottom of the hull I still had to add about five pounds of ballast to hit the bottom of the waterline. Once I get the 10Ah battery pack ready to go back in, that will add 3.25 lbs that were absent this event. I also figured out why my pump seemed anemic while going over my waterproof box as I discovered the pump ESC positive lead had worked it's way loose from the connector on the terminal block. Overall, the only thing I would change is making sure the cannons hit the same place every sortie by adding the elevation adjustment rod and a way to secure the barbette top to the barbette.
She performed quite well I thought. I was very impressed by how well it maneuvered for a ship that size.
