I've got hull no. 2 right next to boat no. 1 and it still blows my mind that Prinz was once just a hull. I miss how light it was before though lol I'm not that good, my photos are really blurry, my terrible phone camera is helping me hide mistakes. Prinz looks nice, let's make sure she works nice too.
Prinz was put into the fray for the first time at the Turkey Shoot last weekend. Had a ton of fun! A quick recap; -No motor failures. -No pump issues. Did end up shooting off the outlet hose when cleaning her out one night though, sprayed the ceiling for a bit. Switched to a tighter hose and clamped it down. -No gun problems, no CO2 delivery issues. -One rudder servo did end up binding and was slow on response after the first morning. I replaced it with my backup and had no issues the rest of the weekend. -Two turrets couldn't be mounted, I rushed making some sort of mount the day before and they ended up failing. The two turrets covering guns were still good. Will devise a better mounting system for the A and D turrets. -Two magnet tabs from the subdeck came off. I didn't glue them down very well, will use epoxy this time. Also need to add more screws to the front and rear decks to fix a slight warp. Over the weekend, 6 BB's penetrated, and around 40 were taken to hard area and superstructure. Prinz only sank once. Got ran over by bigger ships. Not a single hole at that point, no ram damage. Pumped her out and went out onto the water, no problems. Didn't sink in glorious combat though, a big bummer for my first sink. I'm seriously grateful to Ted and John for helping me out this past year getting her built from the ground up, without them I'd never have gotten her working as well as she did. I'd say this build is working but not completed, and I've got things to fix and get ready for the 2021 Brouhaha. I'll try uploading some videos from Wade's later this week.
I thought you handled your ship very well. I saw you ripping up some ships with your stern guns. Didn’t see you get caught and shot up by the battleships ether. That’s not easy to do in a pond as small as Wades. You were very patient at times you had bbs left as most ships were running out. Pretty good cruiser work from what I saw. Now make a list of improvements and maintenance items before the next battle and keep up with them. After being in Wades pond riser your ship and connectors with some fresh water and get corrosion X on the. His pond had a lot of copper sulfate in it and electrical thing spent like that. Think about putting the stern guns in the lower turret and making the single gun in the higher stern turret with some off angle and down angle. You can set it up so if your stern is touching a ship you’re shooting belows.
Matt hell of a job as a captain your way ahead as a rookie. Apply what you learned tweak her we got till March.
I thought you did very well, ship was reliable, and you didn't fight systems all weekend. 2nd what Bob said, good to meet you!
Wow good job! I remember when I built my first ship in college (also a Prinz Eugen). I took 4 years to get it in a battle, and only finished it with help. I think yours looks quite a bit better than mine did! Ron Hunt
Thank y'all for your kind words, I'm not near as talkative in-person but I had a ton of fun and was glad to meet y'all too! Rinsed at the hotel once, but I'll do it again for good measure tonight with a water hose. Connectors still need cleaning, will get corrosion-x clean them out once it's here. The list still needs to be written out, I'll take a look this weekend and see exactly what needs to be done and what replacement parts I need to pick up. To clarify, you're suggesting to set the two sterns in D turret facing straight back, like how they are in C turret but just sitting closer to waterline, and the C turret single to have an angled one, like a mini sidemount within the 15? I built Prinz in a different process than most others probably would have and mounted guns next to last, I need to rework the rudder placement to make D turret a usable location. Will add that to my to-do list.
Computer's been out of commission for a while, now it's up and running, but my videos are gone. I've got some updates on the rework. - Added more deck screws to keep the hatches down tight. Moved servo back. - Changed motor out for a brushless one. Had two brushed motors either burn out or shoot bearings out the back, so I'm gonna try a spare one I've got from some huge plane build I was planning at one time. Water trials at Johns and in the pool on Christmas were good once dialed back. Forward and reverse have better acceleration to speed than before. Just more motor whine. - Still working on how to remount guns, my weight when testing balance on Christmas would have Prinz tanking in the rear. I hard-mounted weight center ship and three guns and solenoids in the rear tip balance really far back, shoving the stern under. I'm going to have to rework some waterchanneling if I'm gonna change gun placements. - I'm planning to recreate the superstructure at some point out of lighter material, been playing with Fusion360 and 3D printing and I'm really liking results. This way I've got less weight overall and more to add below the water, and will help roll be a bit less in turns. Gonna say that this build is working for now but not complete, going to start on boat #2 so I can bring a pair of ships to Nats. The printer's gonna be running a lot this year.
I see that boat #2 is also from Germany : P I've been thinking about modeling that superstructure. Yours is looking good.
Looking great Fridge! I’ve got a PE in dry dock and a DE (US) just arrived today. You’ve built a beautiful ship.
My first battle I used a Lutzow as a loaner, I'm already nostalgic for it. I haven't seen a pre-rework pyramid where I'm working on boats, there's 3 deutschland-class hulls with post-rework superstructure, so I wanted to take a crack at it. I'm modelling a bunch in F360, have two german and one italian ship I'm working on for March battle. My third boat is also German (that's just because I like the way it looks,) but I'm gonna wait until after Nats to learn sidemounts. Looking forward to seeing it! I'm still kinda new to building, but if you have any questions about my build I'll answer them the best I can. Thanks!
I’ll ask questions I may have in a build thread (which I guess I oughta start instead of continuing on in my intro). Thanks for your help as I have questions regarding glasswork already. Hijack over.
This is an extremely overdue update to wrap up the Prinz Eugen build. This ship was almost completely rebuilt after the Brouhaha to prep it for Nats. --- Reworked Internals -The old waterchanneling was chiseled out and new waterchanneling made from a 1-to-1 polyurethane resin. I mixed it with a bunch of microballons to save weight and add internal buoyancy. Ended up making a poor man's featherlite. I like how easy it is to pour, it self-levels and doesn't expand. -Gun placements changed. Went with Bob's layout recommendation. Dual sterns in D and a C stern 15 degrees off-center with down angle. That one could be rotated out of the mount and placed on top of D turret to make triples. This is how I ran them for Nats. Wiring was reran, mounts were remade and internals were rearranged to accommodate for the new setup. New Superstructure -Designed a superstructure a while ago on Fusion360 to practice designing techniques. After the Brou, my balsa and plywood super had taken a lot of love so I printed this out in ABS over the span of a couple of weeks. It took about half a day to construct and paint a light gray. It took a lot of bbs over Nats but held up really well, only taking minor cosmetic damage. I got a lot of compliments for this build at Nats. Last-Minute Lights -Took the night before we left for Nats to design little spotlights and wired LEDs through the super. Made a mild wiring nightmare below the deck to an Arduino board. I coded it with no prior knowledge on how it worked, and after trial and error, got it to function off a channel from the receiver. It was powered by an external battery, but I think I know how to rewire it to power off of onboard receiver power. A 3-position switch controls the lighting configurations. The lights worked great, but I learned the hard way that bright is bad, I need to go back and dial down the brightness. This is probably going to be the last major rework on this ship. I'm happy enough with the ship as-is and I want to work on other boats. Spee is going to become the priority build, and a sidemount ship will be in the works once Spee is complete.
Always had a soft spot for the PE. Beautiful lines. She is a a great looking build, well done. Thought PE was a 2.5 unit.
Battled one for about 7 years in the 80's and 90's. Loved the ship and loved it's looks. Wasn't a bad combat ship either!
