I learned my lesson... must have at least one fully-operational (or what passes for it in my use) ship at all times, no gambling on 'I'm SURE that I can have this ready by next month' and cannibalizing the good boat. Full disclosure: Lou (VVaholic) and Tim Krakowski told me this many times over the past 10 years
Exactly. Get yourself on the water in an operational ship then worry about the fluff and sparkles for the next ship.
So, on to actual boat progress... Sunday, I worked mainly on the casements. If you look at pics of Evstafi, the casements look like round bulges out from the SS (we're looking at the lower casement deck)... Then I realized that the rounded parts were just shuttersto keep water out,t hat were removed when clearing for action. So, the casements look like expect them to when in action. So below, you can see the stbd casements... The casement deck comes off the ship with the stern weatherdeck. The gaps between the casements will obviously be open. The lower 1/8" part in those spaces will need to be removed since it's not a legal stringer. It's there right now to help locate everything. Likely, I will bevel it from 0" at the outer edge to 1/8" thick at the inner edge vice removing it entirely. Another view, from the bow looking aft... this one with the top of the casements sitting on there. And one form the stern looking forward. This one shows the big aft casement and the one on the corner that isn't fully enclosed yet. More to come soon!
Thanks, can't wait to get the second deck on it and get it painted! Tonight's '10 Minutes For Victory' was making and gluing in the 4 casements on the middle of the port side. Going to spend some time tonight planning the upper level of the SS Work is giving us a training holiday for St. Patty's day... meaning that I have to pay leave to be off, but I don't have any trouble getting the day off, since the clinic will be closed. So that' one more day just before the battle to get things straight I plan on sheeting and ballasting this weekend. The Red Menace grows closer to completion За родину!
Got more done this past weekend... The superstructure is complicated! I got the tops of the casements glued on... And then realized that the big, beautiful casement guns on the back corners... don't exist. I had been looking at the plans wrong! So off they went... The way that the back end of the SS is supposed to look: And so I replaced the empty spot on the starboard side with a carefully-fitted piece of plywood, and left the other hole EMPTY... Why? Because it occurred to me that a carefully-trimmed piece of 1/4" Lexan would make a great window for a gun camera for the stern sidemount! Below, I've hollowed out the upper level, and it's gluing down with a couple of 6V12AH batteries providing clamping force. I also got the solenoids for the twin bow guns installed, way up forward... The platform that the solenoids are mounted to comes out for easy of maintenance. More work to come!
Very pretty work, Tuggy. And the casement / gun thing is understandable. A top-down drawing would show a gun barrel there... the tertiary mount directly above.
Twin bow guns. I used them at first in my Radetsky. They worked well for shooting targets. They were pretty poor for shooting ships. I was hoping to chase and shoot at a distance ships in campaign. What I found is that the small ship bounced around in the water so much from other ships wakes that the guns were rarly on target. I pulled them and went with twin sterns. They have worked much better. Remember this is a slow ship bow sidemounts work better for chasing than stern sidemounts. I am always chasing with Radetsky.
Take it from a Baden driver (28 sec, like Evstafi).... chasing is a very, very bad idea. 1) You're too slow to actually catch them. 2) If you do catch them, it's because they want you to drive into their guns. Bow guns by the nature of most ship designs are going to have very poor depression angles (if any at all) meaning you're either shooting at long ranges (very unlikely to hit) or pinging their superstructure. The only mitigating circumstance in this case is how close the forward turret sits to the bow. I guess with predreads they are more viable an option. I still think that they'll be harder to put on target & an invitation to getting your bow chewed, but heck, I've been wrong before.
Rule #1 Don't chase sterns. My PreDread was only built to be used in campain and Class 3 and under battles. In both of these battles a 28 sec ship is going to chase nonstop. In the class 3 battle it's 99% cruisers that are faster than you. You have to hope one tosses a prop or finds a nice weed patch. In campain things are always moving and no one wants to stop and slug, unless you have someone sucking up bbs guarding targets. Like you note in a normal fleet battle chasing is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to do it.
I'm building for local and regional battling, which is 90-95% of my battles. There's always a furball at a regional That, and room is very sparse in the stern end of this ship.
Got a LOT of work done today. Wiring harness is done and drive is tested (along with rudder). Solenoid wiring (and gun plumbing) is good, the guns fire by remote control. Rar. Even got about halfway done on sheeting. Pics to follow.
Evie is sheeted. Minimal stuff left to do tomorrow, painting and ballasting. Spudsy and Jeffy will arrive sometime tomorrow night and we'll play in the shop
Evie did well at the battle, once I showed up Everything worked, and she handled very well and looked good on the water. I got lots of nice comments, too, which is always nice. Sadly, though, Saturday night while doing maintenance, the drive motor ESC spontaneously combusted... I mean, flames shooting out of the ends of it, and making a godawful amount of smelly smoke. I managed to get the battery disconnected, which put out the fire. So Evie did not return to the fray on Sunday, and she is converting to brushless drive.
Much work has been done since the last post... the brushless drive is in, the brushless pump is in, and all cannons and such are in. So I've been working on topside stuff. I was out of the little cereal boxes that have worked so well in the past, so I wound up with this so far... Still plenty to add, but I'm off work tomorrow! I will be adding a second coat of paint, and adding rigging, boats, the crow's nest, cranes, details on the catwalk (and adding the stern catwalk!), waterline (and red paint below the waterline)... and who knows what else?
