What're the part numbers of the QEVs you're looking at? I also looked at the MJV-2, it flows 25cfm at 100psig.
I was considering the MEV-2 miniature exhaust valve for firing individual cannons. It's got almost enough airflow to fire a single bb from a straight barrel, without an o-ring or restrictor. I will order a few this week, to see how well they work with Big Gun-style bb cannons. They are smaller and lighter than MAV valves, and have about 1.5 times the airflow. They work on a negative-pressure concept (remove pressure to fire) instead of the positive-pressure concept that most firing systems use, so your plumbing will be a little bit different. Still, I think a couple banks of MEV-2's on a single big accumulator would work better for our purposes than a couple banks of MAV-2's. If you're going to try multiple cannons from a single valve, then any of their JEV series jumbo exhaust valves would be worth trying. I just tested a JEV-(classified) with a twin Big Gun cannon. A mere MJV-2 valve lacked the airflow to get the twin cannon up to full power (shots were bouncing off the foam) but the JEV-(classified) powered those bbs clean through the test foam at around 130PSI. I will have to turn down the pressure before installing this experimental anti-torpedo-boat cannon in my friend's classified super-top-secret super-battleship. I'd love to try my JEV-(classified) for firing banks of Fast Gun cannons, but alas I seem to not have any. And with me getting ready to put the Mikasa project back in gear again, I doubt I'll have the shop time to build my own. It looks like you'll have to do all the testing on that front.
I just took my shopmaster out sailing today. He enjoyed sailing the Moby Duck and is interested in building a ship of his own. It'll be a while before he's ready, though, since he's rebuilding an old british sports car and still has to finish his battleship. I think the Duck is proving a useful recruiting tool, though. In other news, I just discovered a most delightful set of plans for the USS Constitution in an old, old book called "The Great Age of Sail" by Edita Lausanne. It also has plans for ye olde medieval Round Ship, the Vasa, a Dutch Flute, HMS Victory, a French 4th-rate cruiser Belle Poule that closely resembles Tugboat's ship, and that German behemoth the Preussen. This wonderful book is filled with pretty pictures of sailing ships, starting with medieval artists' embarrassing attempts to rennaissance marvels to photos of clipper ships in full sail. There are also a whole lot of words, but who reads those when there's so many pretty pictures to stare at Anyway, I own that book so when I find time I will enlarge the plans and maybe even make a Delftship model of the Constitution. BTW, did you know that the Constitution carried courses, topsails, topgallants, royals, and even moonsails? That's a **** of a lofty rig!
Hey Carl, I have The 50-Gun Ship by ShipShape (http://www.amazon.com/50-Gun-Ship-Chatham-Shipshape/dp/1861760256) at the house, if that's of any background interest. It has the HMS Leopard 1790 featured, plus a lot of other info. Let me know and I can set it aside for loaning at Maker Faire if you'd like.
Maybe they were trying to harness the Solar Wind @Keri, I'm not sure I'd want to build the Leopard because of its history, but it might be interesting to razee it and rebuild it as a generic frigate. I think I'll stick with the Constitution, though, since now I have a good set of plans to work from.
If I read this entire thread right, it sounds like you guys are considering building at 1/48 scale? I saw a 1/96 scale USS Constitution kit at my local hobby shop that looks like it could be fun to make as a pond sailor. A good website on this subject, at least for large-scale square-rigged ships is: http://www.modelsailingships.com and they build in 1/24, but not for combat. Monstrous vessels. You think the Iowa and the Yamato are big ships? Heh. These ships need special dollies to tote them from car to pond, lol.
Ahoy there Miller, those 1:24 guys are actually local to my area. I worked for a summer at the pond they sail at. I never saw them though, I always had battles or build sessions when they were around. Yes, we using 1:48 scale. It may be tempting to go smaller but remember that displacement is a volume (cubic) measure, and sail area is an area (square) measure. Thus if you halve the linear scale of a ship, you quarter its sail area and reduce its displacement to 1/8. After a certain point, you simply don't have the displacement to carry enough ballast to keep your ship upright. The 1:96 USS Constitution that I converted to RC (probably the same one you're looking at) sails pretty good, but it tips the scales at 6lbs and it needed every last ounce of weight as lead on the bottom of a 8" extended keel. There's simply no spare weight for armament of any sort.
That's what I was wondering, but that 1/96 Constitution would be a good practice boat for folks looking to ease into square-riggers rather than jumping in whole hog. Even so, 1/48 isn't bad, since a Constitution heavy frigate would be about 51 inches long and 55 tall, and probably weigh sixty pounds fully loaded. Sounds to me like you're also considering arming half the rated guns for a given class?
Not quite half, but enough to be fun I got the masts in, subdeck is already cut and the whole shebang is approaching readiness for epoxying. The little torpedo motor got here from Tower a week or two ago. Took 5 minutes to put together (woulda been faster but for the kitten intervening a bit). I need to figure out what I want to plank it with, and make the rudder.
Carl, I'm still pretty new to pneumatics (see what I did there? ), so I'm not sure I fully understand how you actuate on the "negative pressure" MEV-2. Outlet to accumulator. Exhaust to breach. Inlet to ??? (MAV-3 backwards?)
Seems to me that these boats could easily have two bow chasers, two stern chasers, and three broadside guns to either side that operated, and that would be more than enough firepower to engage in some interesting combat, yardarm to yardarm, at least, particularly the Constitution-style heavy frigates and comparable British and French ships. HMS Java was a 40-gun frigate, I think, HMS Shannon was 38, Euryalus was 36, as was USS Constellation, USS Congress, and USS Chesapeake. Not up on any French ships, but I know they had some pretty heavy frigates of at least 36 guns. Lots of flexibility there, and to hear Patrick O'Brian (of the Master and Commander/Aubrey-Maturin series) tell it, the French and the Spanish knew how to build beautiful, well-handling ships, but couldn't sail them.
The belief in the Royal Navy was that their captured French ships were beautiful sailers but they were very poorly constructed.
Hi Dustin, the QEV valves activate when you remove pressure from the input line. So to charge it, you send air in. To fire, you vent that air. A MAV-3 cannot do it, because MAV-3's are NO valves. You need the NC valve MAVO-3. The hookup is fairly simple. When the MAVO-3 is not pressed, it sends CO2 to the QEV valve. The QEV valve charges up and stores the gas in a small accumulator. When you press the MAVO-3's button, it vents the CO2 in the firing line. The QEV sees this, and dumps all the CO2 in the accumulator out its outlet and towards the gun. This is great for Big Gun cannons because QEVs are high-flow and very fast-activating. It can also work for Fast Gun cannons, but I'm not sure if it would be simpler or cheaper than a basic MAV-2-and-MPA-3 setup. It would be lighter and more compact, however, if that is an issue. Miller, 4th-rate warships like the USS Constitution would get 12 guns under the proposed armament chart. That could be 2 bow chasers, 2 stern chasers, and 4 guns to each broadside. Or it could be 6 guns to each broadside, or a 5-gun broadside with 2 chasers. Tugboat's frigate also falls under the 4th-rate classification. I think there's plenty of room there for personalization and fun. I can't wait to start on my own 1:48 scale frigate.
Working on Minerva today; also got a brief phone call from Gascan, who stepped off the plane in Charleston, SC, on his way to NPTU Charleston... on his way to becoming a man among men, a nuclear-trained electrician's mate Not that I'm biased. I told him that he needs to come help build a second AoS vessel in my shop before he gets to Nuke School and has NO free time If he's exceedingly lucky, I'll finish Minerva and a stablemate, and drive up to Charleston sometime to at least sail and such. I can at least get on base now, now that I have a DOD decal on my car I noticed that Ft. Stewart has a bunch of lakes and ponds, too Need to find a practice pond along my commuting route!
Rumor has it I'll be in Indoctrination for a week or two, working in the morning and nothing to do in the afternoon. Too bad I can't get off base on weekdays, and have a 75 mile limit on weekends for the next few weeks or so. I'd love to help out in construction, test-sailing, or even just see the vessels.
Soon, young padawan, soon. You are entering the gentle part of a year and a half of difficult study, which you will look back on fondly as either 'the easy time' or 'not so bad'. I fall into the latter group The keys to success in the nuclear navy are: 1) Always tell the whole truth. It's the core of the Navy nuclear program, and if you break this rule, you will not be a nuke anymore. There is nothing more pathetic to meet than the guy on the boat who says 'Oh, yeah, I used to be a nuke', then proceeds to offer a rehearsed, lame-sounding story about how he was too smart to stay in nuke school, or something equally stupid. You do NOT want to be that guy. The sub pay and sea pay are not so much at first ($50 each per month I think), but that and the nuke pay (it was $175/month when I was in, it's gone up) add up after a few years. With diligent study for the promotion exams (not an issue till after nuke school) and reasonably good electricianning (make your chief happy), I was making like $60k a year as an E6 with a high school diploma. 2) Do exactly what they tell you (in that sense, it's a lot like boot camp. I promise in the future that you will have more leeway on blowing people off) 3) For the love of God, don't try to carry Classified out of the school building to get in extra study hours. 4) If it gets rediculous and you can't take it any more, call Tugboat and don't do anything stupid, like throw your Classified textbooks out a second floor window. That wasn't a pretty time 5) The Night Duty Instructor (NDI) is sitting in his/her office WAITING for freaking nubs (not noobs) like you to come in and ask stupid questions. I say stupid because I was a dumb@$$ and didn't go see the NDI till after I failed a math test in A-school, because I thought I had stupid questions. 6) Study your @$$ off if you want less study hours assigned. Better test results = more free time. 6a) Just because you're not obligated to spend 5 hours a night in the classroom studying, doesn't mean that you should study for 2 hours and go play. This way leads to 45/5's. You will know what this means soon enough. Suffice to say, it's what WILL happen, if you don't use the NDI, who is bored in their office, waiting to help you. 7) I know a guy (he was in my A-school and power school class section) who put in 60 hours a WEEK in honest study time. My theory is to do 5 or 6 hours a night during the week, so you don't have a weekend to spend studying. 8) Always tell the truth. I repeat it not because I think you're dishonest; I say it because sometimes when we screw up the temptation to prevaricate a little to lessen the punishment occurs. Happens to everyone. In the nuclear world, punishment can be swift and harsh. BUT! I can guarantee you that whatever you do (when it happens), the punishment for a given act will ALWAYS be less if you fess up and tell someone right away. ALWAYS. You will hear this probably 50 million times in your nuclear career, bnecause it's true. Indoc will not be very exciting. Grunt through it, and A-school will be more interesting. And graduation is nice because hey, you'll be a petty officer! Making more money! When your free time picture firms up, give me a call, I may be able to drive up with a boat or something on a weekend, it's only 2.5 hours. I really want to get sailing Minerva, and get you sailing a boat too because that'll grow our club by 50%!!! (from 2 to 3 members lol) Surf the intarwebz and scope out age of sail ships that look/sound interesting. No, I don't want to build that giant one that capsized Think frigates or a little smaller, you do have to be able to transport them There are more, but I'm still drinking my first cup of coffee. Hopefully these will still sound good after I'm fully awake.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_fasterthanwind/all/1 A truly epic story. I wonder if one of those spinney-windy-thingies would help make Moby Duck go faster?
I just got back from sailing the Moby Duck at our regular battle pond. I sailed from the Allied port over to the Axis port, made several convoy runs, and chased villainous Allied pirates out of the Axis port. I then launched an offensive patrol outside the Allied harbor, where I intercepted and engaged HMS Tree Branch in a half-hour-long gun battle, culminating in a ramming and fierce boarding action. Yes, I've been practicing my battle tactics I will be sailing there again on Monday, starting around 3pm or so. Anyone who wishes to sail with me is invited. Hopefully I will have a camera with me then, too. A few interesting things I found out about my ship today is that with my basic sailing mix engaged (mixing the two sail servos so they're parallel), they share the same endpoints and center, but my foremast requires more movement of the stick to reach full throw. At center and at 100% over, all yards are parallel, but the main and mizzen reach their full throw with the stick about 75% over. I spent some time playing with this, and actually found it quite useful. By not moving the stick all the way over, I could get the main and mizzen masts sheeted in tight and thrusting sideways, but still have the foremast somewhat loose and thrusting forwards more. This would help point the ship into the wind, so I could find my best point of sailing, and then I could tighten up the foremast also once I reached it. Totally unintentional effect, but very useful. I also experimented with using the same effect to help tacking. When pointing as far upwind as possible, I would throw the rudder over for a tack, and then loosen the sheeting on the foremast a bit. The foremast would back, pushing sideways against the ship and also blocking wind to the main and mizzen, helping to spin the ship about. When done correctly, it made tacking noticeably faster. If I screwed up, I would have to back off for another try, or wear ship instead. More practice will help.
