FN Suffren WWII French Heavy Cruiser--23 sec./100ft--3 units This is the first ship I built in this hobby. Construction started in the spring of 2013 when I was only 13 and lasted till the fall of 2015. I'm still making changes here or there, but for the most part she is battle ready. Anyway, lets take a closer look at this ship. The forward superstructure is made of polystyrene foam and plywood. It isn't anywhere near scale because I interpreted the plans wrong, but it looks pretty good so I'll battle it that way till it's junk then build a better one. Barbettes are built out of scale diameter conduit. She lacks turrets because I still need to build a mold to cast fiberglass ones. The stacks are made out of an old aluminum handle from a weed-whacker. 'Em Guns 'Er Mean! Suffren is a 3 unit cruiser, and I chose to run her with two 1 unit cannons and a 1 unit pump. The rear mount is made of two pieces of 1/4" aluminum. The bottom piece is glued to the deck so it doesn't move, and the top comes off by just removing the bolt. The nut for the bolt is glued to the underside of the deck which keeps it from becoming lost. The forward mount is made of heavy duty plastic. Unlike the rear mount, it is one piece and keeps the guns pointing the same direction every time I have to remove them. Moving Inside.... Taking off the front deck reveals the Co2 bottle and regulator. I use a 3.5oz bottle which is quite adequate for the job. You can also see the shower pan liner used to prevent bb's from shooting straight through and/or damaging internal equipment. This is the Co2 distribution center. The two hoses go to the guns, and the valve is for pressure testing. More to come....
Suffren is powered by a 8amp 7.4V LiPo battery. Provides plenty of power for a couple of sorties plus is much lighter than an equivalent lead acid battery. Suffren features all brushless motors for both drive and pump. The drive motor is a 1200Kv outrunner driving the prop via direct drive. Instead of the classic dogbone I made my own union, but more on that later. The ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) for the drive motor is a 30amp car ESC from HobbyKing. The pump ESC is an aircraft ESC rated for 30amps. The car ESC for the drive motor is epoxy potted and the pump ESC has an epoxy conformal coating. The pump is 3D printed by @Tugboat, and utilizes a 2100Kv outrunner. I haven't measure its pumping capacity, but I know that it moves a serious amount of water. Here is a shot with the guard removed. Wondering what that thing is?...it's a homemade dogbone. It's made out of a peice of Clippard 1/8" tubing with 3/16" steel brake line inserted into each end. The brake line is then put onto a shaft with a flat spot filed onto it. Smack the brake line a couple times with a hammer and it's formed to the shaft and won't slip. It has worked great with no issues. You can also see my homemade motor mount. It is made out of 1/8" aluminum angle with slots cut out of it for the motor bolts. The solenoids are made by Spartan Scientific. They are activated by a receiver switch made by Hobby King. The solenoid mount is a piece of 1/8" aluminum flat stock and the solenoids are mounted to it with brass machine screws. The machine screws are counter-sunk into the aluminum as seen below. The magazines are secured with a piece of aluminum that has half-circles drilled into it. That is held down by a bolt, screwed into a nut that is underneath a thin aluminum plate glued to a wooden spacer. It works great and allows the guns to be removed in minutes. The gears are from Battler's Connection. The servo is from Hobby King and has epoxy applied to the board to hopefully waterproof it. The large gear is mounted to an 1/8'' rod that is lightly recessed and glued with a rubberish glue to the rib below it. The two little gears aren't drilled at perfect center and I was having trouble with the large gear binding up. The flexible glue allows the gear to give a little when this happens, keeping everything smooth. The rubberband keeps the gear always tensioned.
I'm using lead for ballast. I didn't end up needing too much ballast, somewhere around 10oz if I remember right.
