Cool. Sounds like you've avoided that potential hazard quite nicely. Have you considered gluing a powerful rare-earth magnet to the barrel, in place of loading cotton balls? A small magnet where the barrel and the elbow meet would hold the 1/4" bbs in place while you sail around, and not need to be replaced after every shot like cotton balls.
It's starting to actually look like a Fletcher. Tomorrow hopefully I'll get the propshafts in and the rudder in, as well as the super structure finished roughly.
90% of the internals have been fitted now. I need to find the servos I just bought.. I seem to lost 2 of the three brand new ones I bought about two weeks ago... Sigh... If only I wasn't such a messy worker. No matter how hard I try I just seem to destroy my work area after a few minutes of work. Ha ha. Odd thing is... I HATE clutter.. and yet, I'm a messy person. Wierd. Anyway, back to the boat. I am happy with how everything is coming together. I have the rudder in and working, motors are ready to be mounted, guns are in. Tonight I am going to silkspan and finish the hull up so I can start float testing it Sunday... tomorrow, touring the USS Hornet with Danielle and her dad (who served on the USS Ticonderoga during Vietnam).
Hum... is there a trick to silkspan to get all the nasty bubbles and such out? It looks like CRAP! I got some of it out.. but now I just kinda want to rip it all off and start over. I'm having a heck of time getting it to look purdy.
sand them off and hit it with clear coat or lacquer put a piece of silkspan if its a big spot its all good i cant see it at 10 feet get a fast gun ship and come battle with us 1st saturday each month or just bring what you have we sink all or get sunk by 1 http://www.scrapcombatships.com
There are two tricks I know of to getting good silkspan. 1) start from the very middle of the balsa and silkspan sheet, and work your way out. This significantly reduces the number of bubbles. If you do get bubbles, you can keep brushing at them and move them around, hopefully completely off the sheet. 2) use plenty of dope and thinner. Occasionally I have used too little dope, and my silkspanned balsa became hairy. It maintained the hairy texture even after being brushed with a heavy coat of primer. Now I use lots of dope, and I don't get the hairy texture anymore. This also gives me more time to work the bubbles out of the silkspan.
Hum, I used a ton of dope. It seamed like it was working, but once it dried there were tons of nasties on there. I sanded some out and then just wet down the whole thing and hit it with another super thin layer of pudy. It seems to have smoothed out a lot of it. I'll see in the morning how it looks. I think it will sand out enough to be ok... hehe... this one isn't mine anyway. I'll try things a little differant when I get to my hull.
Almost done with the USS Johnston. I need to add the small part of the deck on the front. Paint the hull. And drill holes in the deck/sub deck for screws. We should have that stuff done pretty quickly tomorrow and pond trials will be Wensday. 5 weeks since we laid down the keel we built one of them... the next shouldn't be too far behind. Sitting next to the USS Kidd...
Ryan, be aware that we added torpedo barrel length restrictions several years ago. Torpedo barrels may not extend more than 1/2 inch beyond the edge of the hull. I'll bet you can simply reposition your torpedo barrels, so you don't have to reduce their length. I gotta say, though, that's one spiffy little boat. I'm taking my fleet out for sea trials tomorrow myself.
Ah yeah, I am aware of the rule change. Triming them down is on the list of "clean up" stuff I am going to do today. I'm excited... I should have some photos of it on the water by tomorrow. ... uhhhh... that means I have to clean out the pond a bit I guess... yuck.
Oooh, spiffy! I assume they did more than just float, right? I look forward to seeing those boats at the Campaign Game. Err, wait... cancel that. No, no, I do NOT look forward to seeing those boats at the Campaign Game. Yeah. Go Axis!
Yeah, they do more then float... I'm really happy with it, we drove it around a while and are still working out some "new boat bugs" but otherwise it's running really nice. Tomorrow we'll do some gun testing now that they are in the boat, they worked great on the bench, but haven't been fired while installed. Cut down the barrles, make something to hold them to the deck, I'm giong to build a few AA guns for the empty tubs... little stuff. The Dreadnought is good... has a nasty leak which I'm going to need to track down tomorrow, but shouldn't be anything major... both ships are looking good. The keel was laid on the 17th of July... today it hit the water under it's own power. Not bad. Could have been faster even if I didnt' get distracted by the river on hot days... he he. We're really looking forward to the campain game, I always used to love the campain games. The Kidd still has a campain ribbon on it's stand from 1998.
Did one more day of pond testing before battle. Everything went pretty well, still had a few small issues we are working on, mostly minor... until Sheep pulled too hard on something and when the glue finally broke he smashed a huge hole in the side of the hull... he he. We tried to patch it but didn't have much to patch it with, I glued it up but it was leaking pretty bad and causing the ship to roll really bad back and forth as the water moved around it there. We finally just gave up trying to get it water tight with what we had with us and went home. Other then the idioit move, the ship did really well. We were very happy with it. We had found that the funnels we had on it were way too heavy, it rocked and rolled around way too much and was unstable with them on there. Danielle built one foam funnel but I didn't have time to copy her awesome one and frankly, don't know that I have the skill to copy her work... so it's only got one funnel until she can make another one for it.
"Sheep" and the USS Johnston were awesome in their first battle! After some all night hotel room repairs and a last minute pump intstall, the little ship did great. Sunk a small transport even in his first ever battle. 2 hours of going hard fighting left some marks on the destroyer, however she did not sink and dished out way more damage then she took.
Thats awsome to get a kill your first battle. Bet he was pretty stoked after that. Nice boat.. Wish i could put torps on my fast gun zboat legally. haha
Hey Ryan, any chance of seeing a zoomed-in version of photo #2? For those of you following this thread, the USS Johnson fought in the single largest battle I have ever seen. 32 ships, and nearly that many skippers fought for two continuous hours of combat. The battle was so big that both sides employed full-scale strategies and formations, rather than basic ship-on-ship tactics. Torpedo-boat attack formations, convoy-escort formations, etc. And the entire time, the courageous USS Johnson kept zipping in and out of the Axis torpedo-boat squadrons to attack transports and even (as shown in the photo) SMS Prinz Eugen. Considering how Johnson was one of the high-priority targets for the Axis torpedo-cruiser squadrons to sink, her survival is even more incredible. Here's a group shot taken before battle: http://www.westernwarshipcombat.com/images/stories/campaign-sept-2010_IMG_1628_full.jpg
Wow that sounds like a really cool event. I hope some day I can come out and see one of these nice long big gun battles. --Chase
