Having enjoyed building and battling my SJS Malaya kit I had to have another one. I decided on VDT because I wanted a semi smallish ship I could loan out and have less boat to patch while also having 3 guns with decent speed and turning. I wanted to do a detailed build thread like I did on Malaya but progressed too quickly. The ship has been float tested but not ran in the water yet. All systems check out and these guns may fire slightly better than my last ones. Ether way thrilled to get it on the water and battle since I had to stay home from NATS this year due to a family emergency. I still have a few more items left. Barrels have been drilled for pins they just need to be added, waterline tape and more details but she’s pretty much ready to blast balsa. I really love these kits, I got the kit from shipping box to this point in less than a month just putting in 10minutes to an hour in the evenings after I put the kids to bed. If I had everything in hand and cannons built ahead of time this could be accomplished even faster. Kudos Will at SJS.
Dummy barrels added to main armament last night. Next post should include internal layout and possibly some water shots and video testing cannons.
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QIhWo3Vn5XU First test run in “water”and shooting guns with gas in boat versus with a compressor. Bow sidemount needs some work I think I may just drop the piston a hair and see if that helps since my magnet may be a hair lower than I would like it. Or I’ll move it up ether way, I’ll get it sorted. I’m very happy with the other guns. I would like to weigh it since I added around 3lbs of lead to get it to sit where I wanted in the water. All it really needs now is the gun tweaked a bit and barrel armor, drag disc added and that’s a wrap.
Nice to see this build. Kit looks great. This is a very good ship. mid size, complexity and speed. I battled one for 4 Nats with original tech. very survivble. Good luck with Maiden battle and enjoy!
Added some mast and rigging to make it pretty before its first battle in Georgia this weekend. She won’t look this pretty for long.
What are you using for your magazine tubes? I cannot find 1/4 tubing with large enough ID I have the Tiger,Langley,Suffren and Machenson kits and I love them.
this is a @Beaver question. he came up with the tubing idea. I think he may have done a thread on how to build them and where to source the tubing (McMaster-carr). at minimum, he'll have the product number for M-C
I did not come up with it. Credit goes to @SteveT44 . This is the tubing. https://www.mcmaster.com/5173K36
the only feedback I have is that he was too busy scuffing paint with Vanguard in Malaya to spend much time running around with me sowing chaos. I only got him as a wingman for like two sorties!
Sorry man, I was having issues with reverse. I didn’t program the esc’s with 100% reverse so I pulled her out of action after the first battle. I fixed the issue within minutes the night after I got home. I programmed it looking at the wrong esc programming sheet and only had 50% making vdt not very effective since I couldn’t stop or reverse even remotely close to speed. VDT did however turn good for a battle cruiser I thought and should be a potent package now. Guns shot great just had a hard time without enough reverse power lol. Malaya still works just fine though I have good confidence in these boats.
