Olk officially summer is over Sept 21. Here people think fall has started. Maybe because a hurricane is approaching Tuesday. What ever the case it was a great day at the pond. Took the Yamato and Bismarck out which were squeezed into the Hyundai Accent along with all the cookware so that the Wife could cook up barbecued chicken, potatoes, carrots, turnip, stuffing, corn , gravy , soft drinks, water and tea and coffee. She actually packs more stuff than me when we head to the pond. BTW it was very good..yumm. I played around with Yamato 's ballast. Basically floated it without battteries and co2 and bbs on board. Thing weighs in at 30 + lbs without it. The waterline was about an inch from the water so pretty high. However the model was level and at trim bow to stern. I placed 1 , then 2 then 3 6V 12 amp SLA's but left the 4th battery slot empty. Then I placed the 20 oz bottle filled in the bow. The model trimmed out and the bottom edge of the waterline tape was touching water. I figure the model was sitting at 50 lbs but without a scale I couldn't be accurate. I did the side to side roll test and found she was a little easier to rock and roll. WIth that sailed the model firing it's dual sidemounts. They fired hard with a solid snap of the guns sounding. Captn Cromwell sank a paperplate . First target his sank in a long time seeing that his Nagato is under internal refit. Bismarck had shots at it as well . Unfortunatly Bismarck did score a long range penetration shot against Yamato's port side midships just beneath the armored stringer.Yamato 's bow had a large crack and a small crack in the bow from tight fit in the car with the cookware. These were patched using clear tape used to sail watertight box lids for speed boats. Works well for keeping the water out, though this didn't occur later. I was wondering why the bow was settling al little lower during the course of the run. Go pro on Yamato took some vids of the shooting. Vid camera took vid of Yammer strafing a row of tied up tires against a floating dock. Overall a good day as the season is winding down for running the ships. On the plus side Tom and I discussed the internal refit of his Nagato, Removing the shafts and shorting the stuffin tube lengths, and install Direct Drive system/ Esc. Rotating system in C Turret and rearranging the battery compartment. He has a convoy ship that nees internal running equipment to make it operational. I saw what was left of the old HMS Terror hull which was built , owned and Captn'd by Bob Pottel. It was a veteran of the early Nabs battles and battled Bismarck several times along with the ships of Nabs from the first few years. Sadly the hull is damaged and stripped down to nothing. THe superstructure and components are in HMS Erebus which is in refit. The Nagato superstructure is in good ship and mostly intact. The hull is in good shape. Just needs a fresh paint job but even tehn it's still pretty good. We hope to run convoy ships next summer. I plan to get one for myself for convoy and target practice. Paper plates are boring to shoot at.
There seemed to be a lot of hulls in that region SC was shooting at. There were a lot of bb holes on his starboard side and less on the port side. The sting of the SC still resonates within the hollow hull of the Nagato.
