Okay now that I have watched all my hard work slowly and gracefully sink below the sea in 5 ft of water [:0] and wondering where the #$@% is my float and than rushing to paddle out to it before the bubbles stop I have to say it is kind of majestic looking down thru the water at your ship and watching a fish swim by and check out your handy work [].so with that said I have decided I need to do some research and develop what will work best for my ship I have some ideas but as always I like to hear yours first for better or for worst lets have them. Thanks again guys
There is always the ole alkaceltzer trick... One other option for floats is to hold them on by magnets rather than a post and a hole.. if you get it right it is far less likely to get hung up.
5 feet? FIVE FEET?! come on, man, the joke doesn't work unless you're SIX FEET UNDER! To actually answer your question, there are several methods I know of for recovery floats. When designing your float, you can either A) consider every possible way that your ship might sink, and ensure that the float will deploy despite that, or B) consider how to ensure that your ship will sink in only one way, and ensure that the float will deploy that way. Anyway, right now it's late and I'm tired, so my brain isn't working quite right. I will write a more in-depth analysis of recovery floats tomorrow, and if you post a photo of your ship I can tell you which type of float I'd recommend for your particular ship. PS: now you know why I love swimming after sunken ships. In clear water, it's like the ship has died and gone to heaven. Of course, if it's murky then it's better compared to the darkest depths of hell, but still...
Well the pond didn’t cooperate with the joke sorry but any who I built in my floats the two smoke stakes are break away and below them are all open to store rope my trouble is the string and its storage I’m going to change too the cloth typ fishing line and a bob on a post below deck straight shot up and it will be neatly wound onto the bob maybe that will work I might try to incorporate on of those with earth magnets to help on those roll sinks I like redundancy that why I have two but if some one has a better idea I could always change [^] Thanks guys
In our club, it is common for most or all of the superstructure to be the float. Te aaditional advantage is that it is heavy enough to remain in place when shot. Short placement pins in loose sockets to keep it from shifting. The soft string/kine is a good idea, the bobbin with axle is iffy, though, set-up correctly, can work. Remember to wind it to facilitate unwinding, whatever you do. Our guys typically use a paint can lid in the bottom of the hull for the line to be coiled in, and then coil it into the outer ring starting from the end fastened to the bottom of the ship. Others just loosely drop it in. Cheers,
Wreno, the superstructure-as-float works great, but if my very limited experience entititles me to any opinion whatsoever, it sacrifices the aesthetics. I want the vessel entire to go down. Seeing the superstructure merrily bobbing about takes away from the high drama. Call me skewed, but there you have it. CWebster
that is very true, the whole ship sould go down, along with all hands and the captain, haha, just kidding. But unless it is only partially submerged, the superstruture shouldnt be visible.
From a safety perspective, there should be a way to retrieve the ship without having to get in the water. A float with strong line securely secured to the hull makes for a very easy recovery from a pretty dry raft or boat. There have been instances (not in our hobby thankfully, but in the R/C Boats) where someone will go swimming out for their boat and not come back... Kinda sobering. I think you'll find for those of us who are NAMBA, diving for the boat is in violation of their safety rules. I'll take safety over any perceived aesthetics issues. Properly done though, you can't tell what the float is. Not that any of my ships will ever going to win an aesthetics award...
I agree admiral, saftey is first, you can always build another ship, you only have one life, and you need to be careful with it
For a reliable recovery float, I agree with Wreno that having a buoyant superstructure is the best way to go. Put the two big chunks of superstructure on pegs, and connect them with string, and you're set. Just make sure the string is long enough for the deepest water you may sink in. You don't need to sacrifice any detail to do this, as long as you're not using lead detail parts. Resin-cast detail parts (especially the stuff with microballoons) are great detail parts on a whole-superstructure type float. Another option for your float is a bobber-inside-smokestack float. That's what I use on my transports. The basic idea is you drill a great big hole in your smokestack (or build it hollow to begin with) and put a fishing bobber inside. The best bobber-in-smokestack floats have a lip that the bobber rests on, which holds it near the top of the stack. Low enough so it can't be seen, but high enough that there is a large cavity of air below the bobber. You then put several venting holes at the bottom of the smokestack, and you create a way to force deployment of the bobber when the ship sinks. The basic idea is that by creating a pocket of air beneath the bobber, and making holes for water to enter the stack from the bottom, you can use the trapped air to force the bobber out of the smokestack, no matter what position the ship is in. This is the float that my little 2-foot transports use, and it's been highly reliable. A third option is the bow hatch float. The basic idea behind this one is you cut out a section of your deck, at the front of your ship, stick a piece of foam to the underside of the deck, and tie it to the rest of the ship with string. Depending on how your ship sinks, this can be a highly reliable float. For example, if your ship sinks by the stern, then all the air trapped inside the hull will rush to escape through the bow, forcing the float to deploy even as the ship sinks. If the ship capsizes, sinks by the bow, or any other way, then its reliability depends on the buoyancy of the float and the position it hits the bottom in. Your fourth option is the spindle-on-deck method. This method involves a spindle-style fishing bobber that is held on deck by four pins. The pins prevent the float from getting blown away by gunfire, but hold the spindle-style fishing bobber so loosely that it just floats off as the ship sinks. This is the most purely functional and reliable float that I know of, but it also sacrifices detail appearance by sticking a brightly colored non-scale object on top of your deck or superstructure. The last type of float (which I would strongly recommend AGAINST) is the hidden hatch method. This is the method I commonly see used by high-detail skippers who can't think of anything better to do. Basically, it involves concealing a little piece of foam or other buoyant material underneath a disguised hatch or other secretive hiding spot on the superstructure. Without a gas-assisted deployment (like the bow-hatch and bobber-in-smokestack methods) and without the high buoyancy of a full-superstructure float, they tend to be highly unreliable and generally deploy 50% of the time or less.
Wow, kotori, that was quite a comprehensive list. If that doesnt answer power monkey's question nothing will.
On my Nelson I used one of the ships boats, when she went down the boat came out of the cradle and floated on the surface just like the real thing, was quite realistic looking actually. The line was attached to the bottom of the boat.
All mine have superstructure floats. I toyed with other, smaller floats on some early ships but there always seems to be a way to get one hung up when the ship goes down in some unexpected way. That big buoyant mass of superstructure has never let me down. Those ships that didn't get built with superstructure floats got converted. One HUGE plus is that the superstructure needs to come off anyway, to get easy access to the batteries, gas, etc. inside. So, making the superstructure lift off without having to undo any attachments makes it that much easier & quicker to turn around a gas fill or battery change. As for line length, I believe that anchor lines are usually recommended to be 7:1 length to depth. I generally use about 1/2 that, or about 3:1, so that for a maximum sink depth of about 10 feet I carry about 30 feet of float line. I use braided nylon contractors' twine with a large snap/swivel on each end to attach to hard-point-mounted eyes in both hull & superstructure/float. IMPORTANT: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS uncoil & re-coil the float line, whenever you put the ship on the water! If not, I guarantee that when you need it most it will either be tangled or turned into a solid blob from having gotten wet & left set for days or weeks. Either way, it'll only deploy a few inches. It may sound like I learned this lesson the hard way - that's because I did! JM
I usually figure-8 the line around my little and pointer fingers then drop it loosely into the void under my float, it helps avoid twisting and snarling of the line. The braided contractors line is excellent, and comes in nice bright flouro colours too.
why not just buy a small spoll, and allow it to rotate freely, that way it will allow smooth movement, and you wont have to worry about winding as much?
When i visited my club meeting there was a ship which used the bobber way by putting it in the smoke stack. But it put like 50lb tested fishing line hooked to the bobber so when it sand he would go to the bobber and pull it up by the string
I used a float system on the Spanish heavy cruiser Canarias (now in the MWC). The float was the cylindrical base of the never installed catapult. The fishing line went through a small hole a small metal spool mounted on the underside of the deck. Bob
Smooth winding (i.e. NEVER binding, under any circumstances) is just 1 more thing to fail - & it will, at the moment you most need it NOT to fail. While it may pay out smoothly 99.9% of the time, it'll be a pain to wind up again. Anything that's a pain to do ends up not getting done as often as it should. You really need to unroll & re-roll it often to keep the line itself (as opposed to the spool) from getting "stuck" in its coiled alignment, which it will if it's left that way for any amount of time. The "bobber in stack" float works fine, until the ship goes down other than level. Again, that's something that happens all the time, especially when you've got a rig that depends on it NOT happening. The stack is also a "choke point" for the deployment of the line, & it's pretty easy to get it hung up if there's anything other than a straight path between the anchor point on the hull, the stack, & the bobber on the surface (or hoping to get there). Large floats have enough buoyancy to easily float free no matter the ship's orientation, plus enough weight to keep them from deploying at the wrong time. Small bobbers, trap doors, restricted openings, etc. all have bigger problems than a large floating superstructure. JM
