Well I got the hull Friday. I confirmed she is 50.5" long. So went to Kinkos to shrink the plans I have to the correct scale after some calculations. She had a void in the bow that cracked during shipment. So I waited to meet Mark Roe at the pond near us that he does sea trials at. I got to use my loaner FN Gloire to get a feel for her. Due to REAL choppy waters due to the wind the FN Gloire already had her first sinking due to a swamping so I am officially inducted into the hobby had to go int REAL cold 5' water to get her out. The main reason I went was to have him see the bow. I thought I could fix it but wanted his opinion before I even thought of emailing Swampy w/ my woes. He confirmed my thoughts and pointed me to bondo instead of my thoughts of others techniques.. I had already received the following from BC's Cleveland Hardware Kit, Cleveland Cannon Kit, 2 Clippard Solenoids, Bilge, and 3.5 ounce bottle. I got dope, sigment, 1/8th 5ply birch, 5 sheets of contest grade 1/32 balsa, West Systems resin, Traxxas water proof servo, and decided on a Futaba 6EX 2.4 ghz for the radio. So here is her bondo'd bow I guess and some of the plans and first gander of what I am thinking of layout.. based sort of off the Gloire. The sterns may get interesting w/ the rudder...
It is nice to see a Gloire again. Having it around to look at while building the Indy should be a great help, as the two ships are rather similar. Nice choice in the Indy. Mikey
The Indianapolis will do well for you. Her sister ship the Portland is my second favorite cruiser (behind the Salt Lake City). She's just got such a history with her two surface actions, both at night against capital ships is awesome...not to mention her presence in most of the great carrier duels as well.
Here is the rib lay out I did. 16 1/4 ribs and one little under 3/8th rib. My calculations were 15% of 50.5 is 7.575 minus 3 for bow and stern. 4" = 16 ribs. I could of gone 18 1/4 ribs but thought having a 3/8th at the step would be a good idea. I sorta have a 1/8th "stringer" on the near the water line near the stern to allow me to attach the skin. Is that kosher? Else I would have to grind down to the lip and have little area to glue on the skin.
After a do over here is the new placement of stuffing tubes w/ the new props. What is your take on them?
I would try to bring those props right up to the bottom of the hull. It will hit the rudder better also. It looks like they are spaced well, just hanging a bit low
Looking good. I have always liked the early U.S. treaty cruisers. My first boat was a Salt Lake City. I would like to build a Chester when I find the time. It will be a while though. Keep up the good work. Mikey
Well went to Chris Au's this weekend and he showed me how to do the secret-trick-which-he-wouldn't-take-credit-for-and-said-some-one-else-does-it-this-way-trick instead of a jig he is using circular cut out a bit bigger than the props. I want to say he got the idea from Chris or Bob.. can't remember will show some photos tonight w/ my stabs at getting them right. He soldered my props on at his place the solder I had wasn't up to snuff in his opinion.
Well had a good build session last weekend alot of things at the almost done stage. Radio box and electronics nearly done (just need to afix the cannon test switches to it somewhere), cannons nearly fully installed just need some tweaking of their mount to the subdeck ect. In process of doing the electronics we found a very odd thing with my motors I got from BC. The cans are hot thus if they are touching the short out. It almost seems that the cans are designed to be grounded or the like. Dave Au said I could maybe wrap them in electrical tape but even then he did not have a good vibe about that. I ordered some motors from Tower's Hobbies.
Sounds ilke one of the motor windings is shorted to the can. I've never seen it in one of our small motors, but I did once see a guy use too long of a bolt to install a new alternator in his truck. The long bolt actually went too far into the alternator and shorted against the field windings, thus causing the new alternator not to charge at all.
One of the locals here in SCRAP had the same thing happen. The motors from BC were hot and shorted. Fortunately he noticed before a fire started but it's an interesting fact as I tested the motors with a multimeter and confirmed that one the of leads shorts to the case. Not ideal.
Well checked my one motor that I did not mount at the build session. This time I just checked for continuity between one of the leads and the can and got continuity. Did the same for the mounted ones (granted I already know they are hot) and got continuity. Some of my motors came in from tower hobbies and checked them as well and there was no continuity between the can and the lead. I now think I will always be checking this. We were lucky when it happened we were just checking our wiring of the motors to ensure that they were counter rotating.
Rick and I checked his 500 series motors. The negative, black lead is grounded to the can in all his 500 series motors. We checked his 380, and 280 motors, and they all have isolated leads, both positive and negative. Rick said that it is the same motor BC has been selling for the last 6 or 7 years. Looks like Gardengnome was the first to catch it. Really should not be a issue. unless your battery leads come in contact with the motor can.
But, we put the+ wire to the - lead on one of the motors. Also the + and - flip sides every time we go reverse/forward. So at times the can is in a + voltage state. Again this should not be a problem unless you got the two motors in contact. Mounted really close, or have a ground wire connecting them or a few bbs get between them.
