We are in the middle of a three-day battle weekend, although there will only be a morning battle tomorrow. I'll be in my shop next weekend if you want to come up to Statesboro and see the boats. I will also be assembling a 3D printer on my tablesaw (since it's the most reliably flat surface around these parts). But I think I can show you some stuff that may be useful for when you present to the board, and talk about tools (only a few are critical, and they're not expensive). I also have a ship that I made from a $7 piece of cheap sand pine plywood. One 4x8 sheet of 1/4 plywood could probably yield 6 to 8 ships, properly used. I also have a crap-ton of open-source (and hence free of copyright) plans for ships. Might be a fun day if you can make it up here Not sure when the next local battle will be; We might do one in June, but I'm having carpal tunnel surgery soon and won't be able to lift anything for a bit.
If you can make it to Tug's I highly recommend it. I just went back to the first post and read your plans for size 60cm long, 12cm beam, 10 cm tall (no particular draft listed). This answers a question as to why your boat 'settled' into the water when you put the bits in with its square cross-section (and thus additional displacement). I apologize for not catching this earlier, but I first glanced over that and it went to "inches" in my mind instead of centimeters, as a 60" x 12" by 10" ship is a reasonable size for a beginner. You are talking about a 23.6"x4.7"x3.8" hull (basically, a smallish, fatish, destroyer). In Big Gun, that is considered an advanced build for an armed warship, as there is little room for error due to the diminutive size, and the equipment is a very tight fit - that is close to the size of my unarmed 3 island tramp steamer, which, for years was the smallest ship in our club, and quite a tight build even with a fiberglass hull. Just wanted to clarify. Most armed ships are larger than (roughly twice the size) your original specification - and double the size gives you quadruple the volume/displacement to work with. Another point I noticed - you were talking about purchasing entire kits from BC - did you consider just purchasing hulls and doing the rest in-house? This would allow you to go with smaller, less expensive, motors, wiring, etc. And, one last thing - though it would not be quite the same, have you considered using a standard hull design, but simply sheathing the penetrable area in doped tissue? and using airsoft guns as your cannon. Yes, it would be pretty fragile and easily damaged in a ram, but easily repairable a well. And, if it is a standard ship, the student could just install "real" combat guns and sheath it in balsa to be able to battle in contests. Cheers,
Visiting Tugboat--plans TBA Metric--I use it more than I use American. In the old days, I used Pica (1/10 of an inch) Kits--I have been getting parts for the experiement from them--they have been very helpful with their castoffs like mal-formed turret covers. A standard hull shape is preferred. I do not konw an optimal size yet. The Armstrong seems to be in the right direction. The boats I have built are very small. Armstrong drew 4.5 cm of water leaving 5.5 cm of ship above the water. I found this to be quite satisfactory given the one cannon, motor, battery pack, and filled CO2 bottle (smallest one). A
Dear Astrosaint, In response: Visiting Tug - good. Metric - while you use it more than Imperial or (US Customary, not American, though technically USC is based on the pre-Imperial British standard), most in the US still do not. I do use both, just misread, but it is always good to consider your audience. When speaking to my friends overseas, I try to remember to use metric, but generally do not expect it on a primarily US board. Again, my bad. Kits - you avoided the question - did you consider just hulls, or hulls and decks, as opposed to complete kits? Price is much lower for just the hull or hull and deck. There are other fiberglass hull suppliers too, like strikemodels.com and dreadnoughthulls.com/ that offer additional selections, not that I an particularly recommending fiberglass hulls (again, I do both). And, back to wooden hulls: Did you ever look at the www.jenkse.us/rcengr/Kits.pdf site for their laser cut hull kits and instructions? The Bogue, at $65 (plus $22 shipping), for instance, would allow you to not only add a cannon, but the students might want to try to figure out how to launch scale planes as well. The Golo transport is close to the size you were originally talking about, but is probably too small to arm without expensive internals. The Baltimore, Takao, and Texas are a bit more costly, but probably not that much if you are working in teams. Just the instructions on these kits would probably help you a lot in your presentation. Again, building a hull that could be used as a legal combat hull would be a really good idea. In fact, there is a market for assembled hulls that are quality built (check out this forum - the for sale section). Alternatively, if you were to assemble a fleet over time, of course that allows earlier classes to use their ships to compete with the current class. Lots of possibilities open up if you go with compliant ships that can help your bottom line both instruction-wise and dollar-wise. Cheers,
Greetings captains: The USS Armstrong (renamed "Bebop" at my wife's insistance) has completed testing and is now cruising the local lake. Manuel Mejia, Jr.
I was having issues with the scanner. Perhaps someone can better crop this image. I was noit able toi upload the color image for some reason. I did put it into the data base. I need help here. A
To Beaver: Thanks for the suggestion. I had to fiddle with the site buty I succeeded in uploading a much better picture . A
Glad to be of service. USS Behop looks pretty cool! Does she float at the marked waterline, or does it just look like it's floating high? Beaver
Does Bebop float high ? It does. This is even with the BC regulator and bottle installed. As for its scale size, I pulled this boat design from a pencil drawing I did onw day. I do not know about the 1:96 scale reference. A
looks like you could put a larger battery in, get more run time and drop your center of gravity a bit. She looks like shes barely in the water as-is.
Greetings: I am only using a single 7.2 volt Nicad pack to run the motor. I have gotten well over an hour sailing time on one charge. The image is a bit deceptive. Bebop's draft at the bow is 2 inches. Since the single shaft is angled slightly, the ship tilts slightly forward while underway A
Astrosaint, I have referred you to Mark's laser-cut kits a couple of times, but had not built any yet. At NABGO, that changed. I framed out a Bogue and a USS Texas and helped a newb frame out a USS Texas in a little over an hour. She tack-glued the joints that evening and the next day. There is not a set of instructions for the Texas yet, but the Bogue instructions will walk you through most of it, and a lot is just plain common-sense and easy. A little balsa in the bow, stern, and bottom, some sanding of the balsa and excess areas to get nice shapes, a bit more covering of the bottoms and perhaps glassing the keel and the main hull will be done. The main hull could probably be built by a teenager in a week or less of classes, so allow 2 weeks. The fit and finish are incredible. He even has holes for stuffing tubes pre cut, as well as motor-mounts, a servo tray for the rudder, decks, deck access hatches, etc. Having built several wooden hulls from just plans, I can say that this took dozens of hours off build time and gave a very nice result so far. The USS Texas/USS New York is nice sized with plenty of room for all the internals. Please look them over. Cheers,
Hrm, with my Texas I'm pretty certain Mark emailed me a set of directions, though it looks like a pretty straight forward assembly ( I haven't built mine yet).
Yep, pretty simple. Most pieces go one way only or are interchangeable, and the ribs are numbered. A mystery was two "Y" shaped pieces (deck cranes, I guessed and had confirmed by Mark). I did have to look at the picture once to confirm the placement of the casemate bottom piece, but was pretty sure it was correct before I did. The rest is pretty obvious if you have read the Bogue plans. One hint - the stuffing tube holes are tight. I chucked the stuffing tubes lightly in a drill and spun them in easily - did so before any gluing, so I could make sure the stuffing tubes helped align the stern ribs. Worked a treat. Cheers,
Thanks, Tug. Wasn't sure it would work at first, but was having trouble squezing the tubes throught tight tolerance holes and didn't want to pound on them. Came to me that it might work as I was kind of rotating them by hand (if you can do it by hand, just add power...) to get them in and tried it - voila! Of course I had the ribs mounted on the keel and subdeck first but it was easy to make small adjustments to get a good "spin in." Cheers,
