Would be nice to see a recap of what worked for you and why, I know the baden went through a lot of changes
Yes you are right. Well in the previous pictures.. the nice looking regulator setup... always leaked and was the beginning of my extreme dislike of the small clippard fittings. It was especially frustrating, due to the thickness of the buna rings, Here are a few pictures of this particular version of the ship. I call this one Version 2 and I believe much of this work was done in 11/2009. Here is an overall view of the ship. None .. NONE remains... I used the blue gasket maker which DID help but I didn't do it right. I used saran-wrap and it left wrinkles that allowed water to pass into the ship.. water seal that leaks=fail I later used clear silicone and applied Vaseline to the underside of the deck to prevent sticking = WIN - deck seal with no leaks.. also I didn't CRANK down the screws like I did before either.. just enough to make the deck level with the subdeck, no lower (Thanks Doug!) Here you can see the single pump and single motor I used. Also note the dual 12AH SLA batteries... they would be come a big source of aggravation but that is another VERSION.. haha This was the rudder setup. It was so tall that I had to mount the hardware on the underside of the servo horn. I never liked this setup due to the circuit board (bottom) in the servo sitting low in the stern where water tends to accumulate. It was changed in a later version. Solenoid connectors still in use today.. I just splice them in as needed. This is the new radio box I mentioned. I didn't like the 'Octopus' boxes with lots of wires coming off.. (changed my mind on that again) so I thought ... what if I could route all the solenoids and other small stuff through a ribbon cable.. COOOL!!! While it worked for several events.. it eventually all failed for one reason or another. This box was retired due to a leak in the yellow box gasket... with all the stuff I did... the factory gasket leaked... sheesh... Power switch... cool!!! failed... gone.... Another view of the radio box... still a bit of an 'Octopus Box' BUT I did at least use color coded Anderson power poles.... I later made changes to how I do connectors. Anderson power poles for large batteries and deans ultra plugs for loads like motors and pumps. I use deans plugs for cruiser batteries due to size... but I might change in order to match up with the local group. We will be discussing standards soon. Firing Buttons - C&K Clickers as I call them... I don't use them unless I have 4 or more firing positions.. its not worth the work for fewer than that... AND in the end the switches had no place to mount in the subsequent versions of the ship... so I like them but not using them now. Also you can see in the picture the other end of the ribbon cable that runs to the radio box. This ribbon cable carried the lines for the solenoids, pump relay, and I forgot what else. The purple wires were 'battery negative' and the red was 'battery positive'. I do color code my guns/solenoids but don't stick to a particular wire color scheme on each ship due to lack of certain colors when they were made. However yellow is usually my haymaker.. orange and green were sterns.. white and blue were bow guns... grey was the stern side mount. One other note you can see all the concrete sealant I poured into the ship... OMG What mistake. I know lots of you guys like it because it ie easy to pour and self-levels .. BUT... when you need to ballast your ship... and you need more weight to do so than you are allowed by the ship list.... you have a problem. In addition it made the hull very very heavy and took out ALL of the reserve buoyancy.. Let me also say it is next to IMPOSSIBLE to remove... it takes a long time grinding it out . Some folks say they just slice it and pull it out.. well the stuff in my ship would never peel off.. it fought me every Milimeter.. it would just tear off. I don't use concrete sealant anymore primarily because it is so hard to remove. I also prefer to ballast the ship in fewer places .. like closer to the center of the ship to assist in turning. Well that is the V2 tour. V2.5 coming soon.
Version 2.5 didn't introduce much in the way of change other than some wiring changes... as far as I could tell. At this point I was using the stinger pump, a single standard BC 550 motor, and I believe the same air system as before. I had switched to Parker fittings early in the game.. it paid off well. So it looks like I reworked the perf-board I installed in the ship to have fewer wires on it. I have no idea why anymore. That was pretty much it for the changes. This was taken just after the Brouhaha 2010 the first time I took it out there.
Verson 3.0 of the Baden saw some major work go in. This work took place in June and July 2010 just prior to my hosting MWC Nats 2010 in Houston. Removal of concrete sealant and new water channel. This task is what really made me dislike the sealant ballast... hours and hours of grinding it out with a dremel ... with hot sticky sealant burning my forearms, it stunk, and as you can see in the picture below.. does not completely come out. BEWARE!!! Here is a view of the now ground out stern. I had ground the hull paper thin in a few places so I had to build that up as well. Turns out I had already removed the sealant from the middle of the ship and replaced it with balsa. You can see it under the battery brackets. You also see the new pump mounts. Some of this water channel remains today.. but not much. I had been given an idea to keep the stern area flat and slanted towards the pumps as well as having it step down towards the pumps to prevent water from sloshing into the extreme stern of the ship. This was my first initial misguided attempt at it. In the end .. it didn't allow the internal armor to overlap the bottom of the window which let bb's go under the armor and bounce around in the stern. It was complicated and took forever... I later used the K.I.S.S. principle and fixed it. Also in the picture you will see the foam I used in the servo mount. The idea was to keep the water off the bottom of the servo.. another misguided attempt while I learned how to use my brain for this stuff... its all gone now. Ha I just looked it up.. these pictures were taken on July 4th... Nats started on the 18th... I love punishment apparently. You can see how the edge matched exactly to the bottom of the window. I then put a foam nozzle inside it and filled it with foam to keep water out. New pump mount.. I wanted to be able to remove the pump easily for cleaning.. Fail.... But it was progression in my learning.. so that was good at least. That was a lot of work and ultimately... this was done the year I was hosting... OMG was I crazy or something?? SHUUSH!!! So I missed the first battle due to lack of time to finish it but I sat down at lunch and the Baden made Campaign in the afternoon as well as the rest of the week. The ship did well but the massive gaps in the removable casement deck required tape to make a good deck seal, I switched to a titan pump and the two SLA batteries just could not handle it. Its funny I could drive and pump, drive and shoot, but not pump drive and shoot. In the 2010 Nats video when I shoot at the South Dakota, you will notice that I have to turn off my pump in order to 'make hay'... then I turned it back on. The ship also had a bad list, a pump outlet that kept going underwater because it was on the outer edge of the ship, pump was still hard to remove, radio box leaked.. deck seal, etc. I will try to get video of this incident posted soon. Here is a link to a video of this version of the ship being sunk on youtube.. again.. (sigh) So V4 started in Sept 2010. Watch for the post later this week.
Heh...I wish I had pics of all the various refits I've put my Baden thru in the last 14 years.... Only one that got documented was the complete overhaul Spudsy did for me a few years back (thread here: https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/sms-baden-refit.442386/ )
2003 I remember dumping a haymaker from my Colorado into your Baden (and almost rolling over Ted's QE while doing so....)
