Hello, my name is Ryan. I used to be into Rc warship combat about 10 years ago or so... desided to get back into it last year and have been very slowly rebuilding my ships. USS Kidd: Scratch built this with my dad when I was about 12-13. Major pain in the butt as the Fletcher turned out to be so much smaller then other DDs. HMS Dreadnought: First ship I ever used. I loved it so I bought it. Badly damaged from it's last battle plus ten years of sitting upstairs. Repaired and test floating. Cruisers: Also have a US heavy cruiser and a Hipper class that are damaged/unfinished and I will work on getting them back into the water once the other two are working again. 10 years of neglect has taken it's toll on them. Lots of stuff missing or broken. However, the Kidd is now repaired and as soon as I get a radio (ordered one today) it should be ready to fight again. The Dreadnought has a lot of gun parts missing, but I'm working on getting it back into the water as the ship I will fight with.
sweet to bad you are so far up. we battle the 1st sat.each mounth so come down sometime. Brandon Smith is up there he comes down so may be you and him can come down
Hey there! Good to see someone getting back into the hobby! I am over here in Reno NV, so not very far away at all. We just had a battle about a week and a half ago, and I am going to the MWC nats in Houston TX in about 2 weeks. We are having a battle the first saturday in August, I forget the date right this second. I am also available to help work on boats any wed-thur-fri night. Give me a buzz or an email and I'd be happy to add you to our mailing list to get info about events and battles we are having in the hear future. seaviper_2001@yahoo.com OR (775) 722-9850. Hope to hear from you real soon!
Yeah, I sorta lost interest as I got older. Got too into girls, 4x4... whatever other things kids are into in high school. Plus having moved away from the bay area I was now far away from the club I used to battle with (WWCC) and it just got hard to keep going to events. Last year kind of on a whim my girlfriend and I drove to San Jose for an event, mostly becuase we were bored that weekend and it seemed like something fun we could do. Once there I quickly remembered how much fun this hobby was and when I got home I started working on the Kidd again. I've been laid off for over a year now so the repairs were slow due to lack of funds, but the Kidd is ready for war again and the Dreadnought will be soon as well. My girlfriend has also expressed interest in battling a ship, so she may end up with the Dreadnought as it was a great ship for starting out with. I've got a friend who is going to be working on getting the Wichita back into the water as well. He came over the other day and saw them and was totally excited about getting into the hobby. He's flown R/C airplanes for a long time and he never knew that this hobby existed and now he's very interested. The Prinz Eugen was actually my dad's, however once we moved to Grass Valley he had way too much work on the house and property to do and never had time for fun projects. Someday it will get finished, I'd actually like to battle with it as it's a pretty ship.
Hi Ryan, welcome aboard! I'm a regular battler with the WWCC, and I sail a Prinz Eugen. Not quite the same one you're thinking of, though, mine is an Austro-Hungarian dreadnought battleship of the Viribus Unitis class Last year I went to school at CSU Chico, and before that I attended UC Davis. It's a long drive for monthly battles, especially with California gas prices, but it's worth it if you can make it. If you can't make every battle, at least try to make some of our annual special events. We've already had this year's Maker Faire battle, and that was a smashing success. The Bay Area Maker Faire is a huge two-day battle on our awesome Portable Pond, in front of thousands of cheering fans. This year we had visitors from San Diego and even Utah. One of them even got sunk while borrowing my battleship in his first battle ever! It was a blast, and we got in as much battling as three regular battle days. There was lots of other stuff to do and see there, too, from talks by the Mythbusters gang and a giant mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex to electric cars and a huge display by the LEGO club. Our big summer event is the Campaign Game in September. It's a pure Axis-Allies battle that lasts for two hours of continuous combat, with the coveted Arizona Cup as the prize for the winning team. The Axis have won the last few years, so the Allies need all the help they can get. Methinks your USS Kidd and HMS Dreadnought would be welcome additions to the fleet. We wrap up each year's battling season with the Last Man Standing event. This is a free-for-all endurance battle inside a caged-off section of the pond, to ensure that nobody can escape their fate. The winner occasionally survives, but just as often his ship is too damaged to make it back ashore! I was the last ship afloat in 2007, by a mere 30 seconds, and have sunk in almost every LMS since then. You may also be interested to know that the WWCC recently adopted new torpedo rules for ships armed with single-barrel torpedoes. If they're representing multiple torpedo tubes, as is the case on Fletcher-class destroyers like your own, you can load up to three 1/4" balls down the barrel (as per historical ship). This means that your USS Kidd, with its single-barrel torpedoes, will be throwing the same weight of metal off each side as the deadliest torpedo-cruisers in the WWCC. I personally got an up-close look at these new torpedoes during this year's Maker Faire, where I was the first ship sunk by them. In 15 minutes of daring battle, USS Juneau and the Russian destroyer Tashkent put more than 18x 1/4" torpedoes through SMS Prinz Eugen's hull, mortally wounding her but getting themselves sunk in return. All participants agreed that the new rule was successful, allowing simple destroyers with MJV-2 cannons to be competitive without eliminating the incentive to build bigger, more powerful battleships.
I actually believe that I met you last year when we came down for an event. My girlfriend I and I went to round table after the battle and were talking to Rob a lot. The drive to San Jose isn't too bad from GV, once a month or so isn't the end of the world for me. I am looking forward to the campaign game actually, I've sort of set that as my goal to have the Wichita and the Dreadnought alive. I used to love the long campaign games when we used to do them. They were a lot of fun. Very good to know about the new torpedo rules, I was actually thinking that the Kidd may just have to retire as it was hard enough to get any guns in the Kidd, let alone two more tubes. Plus, I don't have to modify an already 99% working boat. I am very excited about rejoining the group and starting to battle again.
If you are ever down this way you must pay the Kidd a visit. She is very well looked after here in Baton Rouge.
I was actually lucky enough to get to tour it back in 2005. I was in Baton Rouge helping run a temp homeless shelter right after Katrina, on one of our last days there we didn't have much to do as our replacements had already come in and taken over and we pretty much had nothing to do. One of the guys running the show asked if there was anything anyone wanted to do in Baton Rouge before we left... he happened to be a Vietnam Navy vet and was totally excited about the idea of touring the Kidd, so we all got to spend the day on the Kidd. I was absolutly amazed at how great they have restored her. It really looked and felt like it was still 1945 on that ship. Truely amazing job they have done taking care of her and getting her back to her wartime look. It suprised me how small those destroyers really are. I had been on the Hornet and a couple other carriers, a liberty ship, a sub, I had seen the Iowa every time I went to my grandma's house, but I had never seen a ww2 destroyer until the Kidd. It was cramped and much smaller then I expected it to be. Those guys who fought on those little ships were something else. Everywhere that there was room to put something there was some equipment stuffed there. The battleships and carriers get all the glory, but it was really the destroyers who were the workhorses of the war. They were the first ones in and the last ones out.
i'd like to see the kidd, i stayed the night at the U.S.S. Yorktown. it's not WWII era, that one sank. this one is a pre-vietnam era though.
Lake Charles, La. Has gotten USS Orlek, a Gearing class that will be opening soon. Not so compelling to me as it has been modified. I will have to visit her as well. Perhaps they need an education program written for it.
Welcome aboard, nice to hear some one coming back to the hobby. Good luck , also nteresting in seeing a Dreadnought again! Buddy
Haha... the return of the Wichita is not going well. Got everything all in there and working, tested it in the pool last night and it seemed to be working well. Desided this morning it was working well enough for a pond test... 30 seconds into the test my friend who was driving it made a hard turn, the battery shifted causing a bad list... it quickly took on water and sank in the middle of my pond. Wow... serously??? I swam out and got it, we dried it out and everything is fine, but I was pretty horified to have sink during it's first time back on a pond after 10 years... it wasn't even being shot at. Dreadnought is having some troubles as well, I had both prob shafts twist off the motors last night during it's pool trial, and the rudders have been acting funny as well. Fixed everything this morning and took it out for another try... it still managed to twist a shaft, however, I figured out some of the rudder issues and have fixed them. Once some batteries charge I'll go back and retest it again this afternoon, but I think it's getting squared away as well. I still have to get the guns figured out, but both ships are getting there. Almost back in action.
