Progress Made stacks, tripod accessories. I’m loving the ‘good enough’ approach Build area is becoming tight with the Courbet project haha. Will be better when the parts come together. Had to get creative for epoxy rack Other side, turrets ready Coated in epoxy, thinned it a bit with acetone for weight, spread out nicely Drying Looks like work is back on tomorrow, so I’ll try to finish up wiring, and maybe a couple other things, complete for sea trials Saturday
Looking more like a boat Zip tied on the forward side mount finally, very simple mount with magazine protection The aft float is brought to you by the number 8 Three layers on mat, fiberglass top. Was planning for a internal spool but geometry it tight. Might be not attached for now, or I’ll tackle it in a couple days All superstructure in place From stern Now just need to paint and it’ll look like a boat. Also need to mount turrets after paint. Getting CO2 now, will probably paint when I get home
Painting upper portions complete SS and deck gray first. This is post gray Then deck. Can never get the color quite right Pulled tape and paper Now with turrets in place for show No barrels yet, those will come tomorrow with gun testing Overall only a few spots to touch up Another aspect. Red will come when I float it and mark waterline, need a pond Final touches on wiring, co2 hoses, motor install, lots of other small things tomorrow
Yes, that’s the plan, Statesboro first. Put in barrels Stern The T to line up the stern guns. Took idea from better builders. Also added gun pin and turret tethers. One of the things don fisher told me on my first trip to his house about 15 years ago. Have everything attached, not too long that they can foul props, but makes for cleaner recovery if you sink out from shore, no parts floating away Ship Fed sidemount. Might adjust more to the side in the future Too much light Comparison to Seydlitz. Similar size Sterns. Turrets are further aft Needed to canab the control box, other one will go back in Missouri Hot swap Done Wired up motors. 550 variant Tight with pumps, planned for out runners Gearboxes, good access to motor screws is nice Float anchor Spacing was planned Hooyah Spiral wrap on wires Fully loaded. Pump batteries in parallel Bow, one bat for drive Came in 24 lbs 10oz which is good, max is 26 so battle weight should be near there Balanced on a level to anticipate trim. I think that’s right at center of floatation I measured at the beginning, so it should only require minimal tweak on the pond Turret mounts, one tube inside another, generally works for me, isn’t a home run and typically might take a few tries to get all the turrets good Taped down while the hoop on the lower tube dries I think co2 lines are the only thing missing inside, will do in am. Sea trials tomorrow. Also gun test. Oh I did a full operational bench test, all SAT. Good day overall, should be set for Statesboro unless major issue tomorrow
Initial sea trials photo dump Dropped in co2 lines this morning Kinda just made it work Bottle removal should be painless Gun hoses too. Everyone follow? There will be a quiz on connections later Here is the turret mount up close, large tube gooped to barbette Draft markers to judge freeboard during float test. Too big for the tub Pond 1 was mossed, so I went to backup Float test was good, very level, bow was high so I had to add a good deal of weight to get it down I think I added a wrench after this picture, still too high here Looking better Looks like an iron duke kinda Stern aspect. Axis might have soggy depends now, allies aren’t supposed to have two stern side mounts. Performance was good. The backwards props make reverse acceleration ‘axis-like.’ Turning isn’t horrible for the length/1 rudder. Didn’t leak much which is a good start. I shot a video that I may post later if I get around to it. Off to dry it out and test guns. Also need to add more permanent weight on very bow, paint bottom, add waterline
Thanks bob. A few more pictures from this afternoon. Tested out guns, had one small co2 leak to fix but overall guns were good. New chrono worked really well too. Mounted float spool. Line here is 50 lb braided fishing line, should theoretically be able to lift boat with this. Didn’t use my normal 3/32 line because of space E6000 to hold it on, should be good enough Here are the lines to the mounts in the hull, generally around center of gravity. Painted the rest of the bottom. Looking better on the bench Will tape waterline tomorrow, I have some battery holder pieces to e6000 to the hull, should be about it, might run some more rounds through the guns
Added waterline, the spool mount dried, just have some battery guides to goop in. I always like the look with the waterline Not a ton of freeboard aft Other side Aft, dark
Kevin, you coming to the October shindig in Saranac? It'd be cool to see that rig in person if you are
Thanks Chris, I will get pictures. And yes I am planning on making the October battle, probably bring Agincourt and Seydlitz, don’t want Kas to be able to run away
First couple battles are in the books at statesboro. So far so good The big axis boats couldn’t make it so Missouri stayed in the car, and Agincourt got the start Waterline was a little high in the bow, filling the bottle helped bring it down She looks pretty good, everyone thought my iron duke looked funny Port speed trials were good, ended up around 45% throttle which was kind of expected. She makes a nice wake through the water. 24 sec would be nice First battle was axis vs allies. Allies were Brian (qe) me Phil and John (gearings) vs Chris (Baden) mike (veritie) and Wes (PE). Took some time to get the operator trained to shoot the correct gun, my square button pattern isn’t great, and with the extra stern sidemount I ended up swapping my normal lineup. I ran the ‘all stern’ lineup with bow sidemount pinned Took some damage, but gave some too. Believe this was mike, we had some good side by side exchanges (with Chris also) I got Wes pretty good with the stern guns, they were a crowd pleaser Chris’s Baden The scores are probably close, mike sank late fit to pump failure which might have swayed the outcome. I ended up with about 50-10-34, fresh balsa was holing nicely so she was fine with just one of the pumps, but having the extra half unit is a morale boost for when she was looking low at one point. Barely put anything back into the pump batteries, about 2500mah total between the two packs Second battle we got 3 more ships out, generally the same sides. First sortie Brian and I sank the other team (well sank Chris, two other mechanical failure sinks). We squeezed in a second sortie before thundershowers came through, again good outcome for the allies. Chris was beating up on one of the DDs that got stuck on shore, so Brian and I got him back. Here was the aftermath This is just one side, it will be interesting to hear the numbers tomorrow Plan is to mix up teams tomorrow, hopefully weather holds. Two of the DDs and Wes all had on board cameras so hopefully that video makes it out at some point.
Shoot KP, I dont care what Steve T. says about your building skills, that is a great looking ship(even if its allied, Im axis so i might get lynched for this) Looks like it functioned close to as planned. So, congrats on another great Build. I appreciate that you share your Builds and battles with all of us so we can learn from your experiances as well. Hope to see you on the water.(not under it) Craig
Hey tell Phil and John to shoot me an email when you see them. trying to coordinate a winter battle with them while I'm visiting family for christmas
Thanks craig, she turned out pretty good. Phil and John headed out earlier so I missed passing your message, they did talk about needing to find a spot in Atlanta. And yes that was empty bottle and no BBs, but I’ll probably lower the waterline 1/8” on the next resheet. Got 3 battles in today. Here is a view of the pond from the pits Nice level ground Here is Brian’s Ajax with quad .5 unit sterns. He has nice 3D printed solenoid holders for an offset patern. He ran the Ajax today, quite successfully Some pre battle shots Starboard quarter Most of the fleet minus a couple First battle was a pretty even matching. The other side had one capital ship (Bayern) that sank pretty early due to pump issues, so I faced off against mike in the veritie and Brian in the Ajax. The worked well together to get me into T arrangements and Brian got some good passes in (I didn’t want to pull a Kas and drive 9 hours to just run away). My full unit pump outlet clogged and she sank with just the half unit going. She did sink nice and level which was good. Float deployed, only was in a foot or so of water. Here are some of the refrigerator shots Mainly above, but once they became belows with the half unit she was done Whole side Totals were about 80-15-25 if I remember. After unclogging the outlet I put her out again and she was fine to pump out from almost decks awash in a relatively short time Battle 2 was good, I tried to spread the love to some other ships, one of the DD’s found itself stuck near shore. So I got a solid pass in on it. She ended up with 14 belows but stayed afloat with the little half unit Second sortie we put a hurting on Chris, he was pumping full bore but hanging on for a while, I was on 5 but decided to give chase for a prop wash. Mike did a great job putting his boat between mine boat and chris’s, it was quite entertaining watching the on-5 prop wash defense. Eventually I was able to approach from the stern and get some water on the deck and Chris went down. We took down the PE earlier in the sortie, cruisers don’t belong near shore haha. Still had decent damage, about 50-15-35, balsa is still holing well for belows which meant all I needed was half unit pump. Still had some decent holes Third battle was free for all, I think I traded some with mike, Chris, some pot shots at Brian. I had to take this picture on the way out from the lake, Brian has been keeping a lot of boats running (along with running an excellent event) Plan is for a quick battle in the morning before hitting the road. As of now the list of things to ‘fix’ is pretty short and minor
Looks like a great event! Glad to hear the Agincourt did well, speaks volumes of the man behind it. Is the Tromp still a virgin?
