I think this is a new record! I just pulled ONE HUNDRED AND NINE ball bearings from inside my hull. I have never seen a Big Gun warship take that much damage in one day before.
I know what you mean. HMS Rodney was one of my favorite targets during the battle. Unfortunately I was outnumbered 2 to 7 in battleships for most of the day, with predictable results. Still, I went down swinging Ryan, I remember you said the Johnson was overweight and still somewhat topheavy because of the pump. I was wondering if you've considered installing an ESC instead of the servo/microswitch speed control currently installed. Using a waterproof ESC such as the ones sold by Strike Models will eliminate the need for a receiver battery (thus lightening the ship), and can be placed in the bilge, reducing topweight.
Alot of us are now using the Banebots ESC in MWC. 2 of my boats at Nats used them. They work great, super light, and can easily be waterproofed. They will work great for a destroyer. http://banebots.com/pc/ELECTRONICS/BB-1245
There were a number of things we had to do to get the boat ready in time, one of which was use what we had laying around. The switches I had, and ESC I did not. Didn't want to wait for one to show up in the mail, so we went with the switchs so we could get it done in time for a few pond trials before battle, which we were very glad we did as we had a ton of small issues that we were sorting out even the day of the battle. One of which was that it was perfect wieght, but too front heavy. He relocated the reciever battery during the battle Sunday after almost sinking Saturday due to too much water coming over the deck and into the wholes for the guns. That solved 99% of the wieght/ballast/topheavy issues. The Johnston will get a minor refit here soon, we are going to run and ESC, change the deck to how you have your Zboat (always planned to do it that way, ran out of time again), and just clean up a few things that were done fast instread of right. The Obannon and Tartar will be built a much slower pace and not rushed so much and it will allow us to build them how we want them from the start.
Well, I finally had some time this week to continue work on the second Fletcher. I got a lot of the superstructure done tonight and should have it finished in a couple of days. I need to get some guns bought or built before I can really start going crazy with the internals, but I'm about ready to start getting it all set up and ready to go. This ship is the USS O'bannon and is an early fletcher, actually I believe number 2 or 3 launched so it has the round bridge and the high rear parts of the superstructure. I will be building this ship as it was when it fought in the Guadalcanal campaign. This ship fought from Guadalcanal until the end of the war in most of the major battles and did not have a single man killed. She won the Presidential Unit Citation and seventeen battle stars, and escorted the USS Missouri into Tokyo bay for the surender.
The USS O'bannon had a totally differant camo then her sisters early in the war. It was called a modified Measure 12. I found only a few photos of it with camo, and reading it seems it only carried it for short time, but it's super cool looking and did use it during the time frame I'm going for. Although mine isn't a perfect copy of what the real ship had, it's close. I had 0 photos of the right side of the ship, and only pretty bad ones of the left. So what I can't see I'm making up and making it look about right. Here you can see the early style bridge compared the the later square bridge of the Kidd next to her. I am hoping to have the hull pretty much ready for paint tomorrow and then will finish the funky camo and have some cool photos.
Thanks! A few more photos of the paint finished. I'm sure as I work on this ship fitting the internals next weekend I'll ding it up and have to touch it up, but for now it looks awesome. A few more details will be added once it's finished, but for now I think it looks really cool.
I have not figured out what to do about guns yet. I am going get the motors in there and the propshafts and rudding all hooked up and try to get it in the water this week. I'm TRYING to talk Danielle into the event next weekend, but her homework load is insane so we'll have to see what happens. I don't want to drive three hours by my self that bad. Once I get the motors and rudder and stuff set up I'll start trying to figure out the guns. I still have a lot of work to do this week if UPS has not exploded with Christmas packages yet... this is normally the week works starts going crazy.
Good luck with that. Let me know if you can make it, and I'll bring some parts for you. I don't have a whole spare set of torpedoes available right now, but I'll see what I can provide. At the very least, I'll bring parts for barrels.
That would be great. At the very least I just need to take a look at them while someone is explaining what parts I need, ect. I pretty much understood what Ben was explaining, but it would be a lot more helpful to see what I need to do while it's being explained. I'll know buy Thursday or Friday if she thinks she has a handle on her homework enough to go play for a day. Even if not... I may still think about going alone. Did you get your corelldraw file issue figured out?
Have you got the plan of USS O'Bannon (DD-450) and the USS Johnston(DD-557)? I want to make it very much. Thank you.
Alright! Finally got caught up with enough stuff that I had some time this week to start working on the last of the Destroyers. The Tribal class HMS Tartar. Got the subdeck installed and am hoping to sheet it tonight. I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with how it's coming out though. There are some things that are bothering me, the subdeck and ribs didnt' line up the way they should have, and I made it work but I'm not sure if it's going to cause the ship to wavy when I sheet it. I really won't know until I start... I maybe having to start this over... not exactly sure how and why things didn't line up, but we were using plans that had to be resized and spliced together so somewhere something went funny. Not by much, but enough to cause some issues. I THINK it's OK now, but won't really know until the sides are on and we can see how the hull actually came out. Photos tonight after I sheet it.
if you are concerned about your hull shape, you can check it with a single plank. Run that plank the whole length of the hull, and at a bunch of different heights. If the plank doesn't touch all the ribs, or turns out wavy when it does, you know you've got a problem before you waste a ton of effort sheeting a hull that still needs body work.
I did a little of that this morning. The ribs are lined up pretty nicely.. it's more the subdeck that has me worried. Worst case is I'll have to pull it off and redo the subdeck. It just was "off" a little in a few places. I think I have it worked out OK. We'll see... once my new little puppy has worn her self out and stops destroying the house and goes to sleep I'll head back down and get back to work.
