Each tube has 10 oz of sealant in it. So Justins 3.5 tubes would be just a little over 2 pounds total.
Cool, well there you go. To a cruiser, it is a major difference between 1 & 2 pounds. But to a 40lbs battleship... eeeh, close enough. []
Justin, I love the magnetic Co2 retention method. What kind of magnets did you use, and what size are your bottles??
The CO2 bottles are 9oz.. so the ship will have 18 oz of CO2 / load. More than way too much for a fastgun ship. The magnets are flat bar magnets available at any home depot AND lowes (depot had 7 & I needed 8) [] I should have taken pictures, but what i basically did was: Slap the magnets to the CO2 bottle then put the bottle in the ship. Then I just arranged the magnets so they got as much 'ship surface area' as possible. & the bottles would sit at a slight angle "tack" CA'd the magnet as well as I could (on the ship side, hehe); so the magnets would hold to the ship After dry, I pulled the tanks off carefully & CA'd the CRAPPPP out of those magnets. CA has is my little sticky friend.
AAHHHH.... More than way too much sounds like it's exactly enough.... I wish my middle name were "overkill"[}]
OK, SO now I'm considering cannon arrangement. This is what I'm considering: Tirpitz is a 6.5 unit ship; take 1 away for a pump & that leaves 5.5. She is a fast & heavy ship, but I've heard she could be quite manuverable as well... (Believe it or not) I've never encountered a Bismark before, Scharnhorst is about the closest I've come. So I really don't know what she is capable of, yet. So any recommendations are much appreciated. The way I plan to battle her is most likely run and gun with a touch of melee. My typical strategy will be along the lines of wait at the outskirts and snipe until someone comes after me & then run. SO the stern cannon will be paramount. I've already described I'm using the close barrels so they'll be closer to the deck, fly straight with the water for range, & hopefully will tear balsa instead of punch holes. This will be a twin. Additionally, the C-cannon will be a twin angled short range offset more than 15 degrees from center to provide standard sidemount tactics. So that's 4 down, 1.5 left. The B cannon could be a one unit reverse mirroring the C-cannon (close range, etc); I'm thinking also pointing aft. I've seen the forward aft facing gun arrangement work well on cruiser melees... Not sure about on a battleship. Additionally I'm thinking of "wasting" that last .5 unit in a forward mount facing directly forward. I've never used a forward mount before, so I thought I'd try it. If it stinks, I simply exchange the hose barb to the B-Cannon's second barrel. I'm fully arming the ship either way.. so it wouldn't hurt to try. Opinions?
The NC's will be on you like flys, so trying to snipe at sombody will not work very well I think. When I get around to making one, I plan on putting a gun in both the A, and B turrets facing the same direction, and having the stern elevated turret with a 75, facing the other direction, with the twin guns off the stern. Of course all the side guns will be rotates. That way in any side mount battle, I will have 2 guns to 1 on any target. And as either ship sheers away, I will swing over the 75 round haymaker, and give them a few parting shots. Of course this will lead to a future arms race, as people try to figure out how to re-equip their ships, but I will have fun for about 6 months, till their industrial empire's catch back up. Now where did I hear that before?
djranier, What you said about people trying to figure out how to re-equip their ships is even more so in Treaty. With the ability to split units you never know what you may come up against. An Alabama may no longer be the "three stern guns and one each port and starboard sidemount." Interesting.
I guess its not a terribly big decision. I have mounted these cannons so they would be configurable. 1) The ship will be full armed (all 8 cannons); because... well... it'd be cool. I'm not loosing any true weight, nor space. But mostly, the TIME it would take me to fabricate a dummy gun that looks like the other 3 is more valuable to me than the TCO cost of one gun. 2) These cannons & mounts are built to rotate, which I will do... but NOT this season. This season is all about getting a active ship & making it reliable. So if I don't like where they are pointed; well then, I'll just rotate them. 3) I'll have 6 pneumatic valves (5.5 units) in my ship which I can attach to which ever individual barrel I want. (Talk about high flexibility) So maybe the NCs are all over me and my stern isn't doing me a lick of good; well then I'll just turn it off & apply those units to my side mounts. Maybe later in the day all the NC broke down & a good aft would be very useful; well, just change it again. (I think the rules say I can do this, as long as I pin the non functioning barrels & I don't swap mid-sortie.) So, I think what I'll do is try your config (although, the one limit of my system is all guns must be 50 shots or less); then I'll try my config; then I'll try another config.... and on and on. My hope is I'll eventually learn to assess the situation before the sortie & choose the best config based on the players..... OR I'll just get a particular favorite pattern & stick to it. Either way, I can foresee a bunch of discussions about cannon arrangement in my future.
You do know that one of these days you'll have to do a "fully armed" challenge, with your fully armed and rotating tirpitz battling it out against the rest of your club. If the club sinks you, they win. If you sink them, you win. Sound like fun?
Absolutely, however... I'll need to add an additional 2 valves to accept that challenge. I guess that's not too tough. & then I'm going to have to come to cali & sink your transports!
Finally Cannon Testing! YEAH!! After a month's leave, I'm finally back (part time) on building my boat!! YEAAHH!!! I must say, Greg, your design works perfectly. It was literally plug and play I was completely amazed; no dumbfounded... in that happy-giddy kind of way. A little about the setup, as I only have the video player from my phone... I still need a couple parts, so at the moment I can only fire one barrel from one cannon... Which in itself is a useful test. The barrel is about 2 feet away from the board The board is 1/4" of that cheap 'Walmart furniture fiberboard'. Here is the result from day one: Visit this site A couple things to note: #1 Obviously, the speed & reliability. I fired as fast as I could & it simply kept up without breaking a sweat. #2 Accuracy, at the slow rep/rate almost every shell hit within an 1/2" of all the rest. At the high rep/rate, the barrel was shaking very violently but I'd say most hit within an inch. Now, if I were to secure the barrel at all it would probably be just as accurate as @ slow speeds. Tweaking, The cannon was very simple to tweak.. just a Allan wrench. Not sure how often it needs tweaked yet, only time will tell.
damn, now I have to make more I got hung up here with my girlfriend getting laid off, but I hope to be back to making parts by next week... -Greg
OMG Greg, is everything OK? You never mentioned anything on the phone? ---> BTW: My company is always looking for good engineers, what exactly is she trained for?
She is a program management person. We were actually talking to John last weekend. She is a MS in international buisness who speaks chinese mandarin, english, and german -Greg
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Cascade needs a PM (very badly). I'll talk to John next week when he gets back. Can you send me her resume? I'll give it to a few others around.
Nice to see combat paying off in other areas. [] Can you post some info on the guns? Might get a few sales out of it (especially after that video!).
