History of R/C Naval Combat

Please post what you know about R/C Naval Combat History.

Please remember, the point of this thread is to capture the reasons for the two Fast Gun organizations... NOT TO START A FLAME WAR! I will close & delete this thread if it degrades to that point.

 

Ok, I'll start.

From what I understand; MWC was formed because of "personality differences" within the original IRCWCC organization. A faction decided to separate & form their own group.

The reason I have gotten for the succession was something along the lines of "the rules were changing to accomodate specific people's ships".

 

I also want to know which was first IRCWCC or Big Gun?


I believe Queen's Own used to be IRCWCC, and then decided to move to a larger format. Anyone from Queen's Own want to comment why?

 

This came from the SCBG site. I don't have a date for it & can't vouch for any of the content (I wish there were more dates embedded):

A History of Big Gun Combat
by Kevin Walker

History

Stan Watkins who originated this hobby (and what became IR/CWCC), originally tried to construct a destroyer in a larger scale which I believe was 1/96. The ship was unsuccessful at the time (1978) because of the technical level of equipment back in the "old days".

Eventually he settled on the scale of 1/144 because it's size would allow the construction of the largest battleship, which could be transported in a car and be carried by one man. Stan's first 1/144 ship, a USS Houston class cruiser which was eventually armed with 4 BB cannons and one pump. This "4 gun one pump" cruiser was the "standard" combat ship for many years although eventually many people built battleships as the game matured.

Later of course the "small gun guys" got a little crazy and started running their ships at high rates of speed. Seeing a picture of the HMS Rodney up on plane with it's bow raised out of the water ended my interest in playing with the small gun guys. Although they have reduced their speeds, their ships still travel at high un-scale speeds and their battles do not resemble the type of scale combat we have in our game.

IR/CWCC has almost always used a "unit system" to determine a ships armament. The thought behind this is that it keeps the armament levels of similar ships the same. This way the game does not become a contest about who can squeeze the most weapons into a ship and/or who has the most money! Arming secondary guns, torpedoes, AA guns, etc. was not an option even if you had the room in your ship the rules limited you to X amount of guns and that's all you could have.

One caliber (BB) was used for all guns because there was really only one type of gun! This gun was originally manufactured by Stan Watkins and it is (was) the single biggest factor contributing to the growth of the R/C Combat hobby. Worries about safety also was a factor in retaining the BB cannon to represent all calibers of ships guns.

Although the IR/CWCC rules change every year many things have remained the same over the years. The retention of BB guns for all calibers of armament. The unit system which limits how many guns a ship can have. Un-scale speeds (including in reverse).

BIG GUN Arrives

In the Pacific Northwest a group known as NASCWA was formed from clubs that were fighting using the IR/CWCC (or Texas) style of combat. This club was the first (to my knowledge) to start BIG GUN R/C Combat as we know it today. They abandoned the unit system and instituted different calibers to represent the various size guns carried on real ships. They also used a speed chart to determine each ships speed based on the speed that the real ship traveled. They also slowed down the speeds to a more "scale like" rate. Different hull thickness' were also allowed depending on the armor thickness of the real ship. Ships could now be "armed to the teeth".

When the South Coast Battle Group (in Southern California) was formed almost all the "good ideas" were taken from the defunct NASCWA rules and used by John "J.C." White (and others) to write the first South Coast Battle Group Rule Book. This rule book was the basis for all current Big Gun rules and practices. It should be noted that the Washington State based Queen's Own club, which rose out of the ashes of NASCWA, was extremely instrumental in providing advise and generally helping to get our club started.

1/72nd Arrives

It's really interesting to realize that while we (the SCBG) were just starting to play BIG GUN R/C Combat, the guys who started it in the Pacific Northwest had all but abandoned it in favor of 1/72nd combat! In fact the Queen's Own sold our club a lot of their old 1/144 ships which really helped our club

 

Not sure how relevant this is, but the WWCC is one of the oldest clubs around. There are some ships in the club actively fighting that were built before I was born.

From what I have gathered by talking with several founding members of the WWCC (Dan Rygasewicz and Steve Krivey), Big Gun combat evolved completely independently from Fast Guns combat, at around the same time, with the primary difference between them being the weapons technology. Fast Gun rules are built around the o-ring restrictor cannon, while Big Gun rules are intended for use with Arizona, Indiana, and other accumulator-based designs.

What would eventually become the WWCC (I don't remember the name, maybe NASCWA?) was founded in the very early 1980s. The rules were based around the weapons technology at the time, what we would nowadays call an Arizona gun. It was capable of firing several different calibers of ammunition, and pressure was supplied by air compressors, which took several seconds to repressurize the system after firing. When people began using freon gas as propellant, the delay caused by air compressors was formally written up in the rules to become the modern rate of fire restrictions.

As for 1/72 scale combat, there were people doing that in the San Jose area with the WWCC for years. Several people moved north, to Washington and Oregon, and brought their 1/72 scale ships with them. Eventually, personality conflicts between several members caused the northern clubs to sever ties with the WWCC, and the Queen's Own became their own entity. The primary reason for the 1/72 scale ships to limit guns is the large diversity of armament among the destroyer classes. Some ships had 4 guns, others had eight or ten. Weapon restrictions based on tonnage were enacted in order to level the playing field. It's interesting to me that the Queen's Own severed ties before the widespread use of the rotating Indiana Gun, and so most of their weapons today are based upon rotating one or more Arizona guns chained together.

One of the other WWCC club members did a detailed look into the history of model warship combat. I'll see if he's got anything to say on this subject.

 

That's interesting, because I met someone who said they were part of the queen's own before it separated from IRCWCC... Not separated from WWCC! hmmm... I'll have to try to get him to post.

 

From what I understand the IRCWCC FORMED FIRST, THEN BIG GUN, THEN QUEENS, THEN MWC. MWC was formed from a split within the IRCWCC due to personal indifferences and rule proposals that did not come to pass. Mostly due to personal. The IRCWCC was very large at the time of the split. By the time of the split the members that did form MWC used the same rules so that those who elected to stay with IRCWCC but still wanted to battle with thier friends in MWC with no anomisity can do so and vice versa. MWC has made some slight rule changes not so much that it would require you to adversely change your ships components to compete. When clubs get too large or too competitive within each other there are bound to be elbows rubbed wrongly.Politics unfortunalty ends up taking over and the real meaning of the sport is lost. MWC is more techincally advanced than IRCWCC. IRCWCC is beginning to catch up in that regard and they have loosened up a bit on some rules for the betterment of the hobby. Here at Nabs we use IRCWCC but we have adapted some of the MWC rules and have our own small niche of rules.

 

History is in the past man. Let's compute everything like a story and have everything in one spot for people to read the evolution.

 

Same Philosphy we have here in Canada Tugboat.Now if George Bush decides to build that transcontinental fence across our common border than it's going to be difficult to get a 6 ft combat ship over the wall without being seen. lol

 

There ya go !

 

Fantastic info here guys. Is this written down anywhere? Perhaps a coles notes version?

 

What are you looking for EEEZZACTLY?.

 

Well, wouldn't it be good to hand the story of the evolution of the sport, to those interested?

 

I could do that I have the actually article from Scale boat when Swampy submitted his article on how the sport developed. Our old Nabs site explains how it developed in Nova Scotia.

 

I know you are swamped with typing and such, but, just a reminder, you were goingto update that to be more current. Just reminding ya.

 

Have to look at it again and reread it. Shouldn't need much more updating. As far as the history goes.

 

HI my name is Buddy Friend I am the one Juston was talking about . I joined the group in washington state when i saw an article in Scale ship modeler done by Dan Dees. ASnd after talking iwth him meet Paul Fleming and bought plans and a ship from him in 1/144 scale . This was in 1984 and they were at that time part of the IRWCC.Now the split you are all talking about happened after a series of unfornate events at a Nationals event. I agree that there was some hard feelings from the group at that time, I was in Florida helping to form the Florida Attach Squadron with Don Cole and Leif Goodson and we had traveled a lot up to battles with others in Alamaba and Georgia and Maryland. I still have a lot of friends in both clubs and have started the Buckey Battle Squadron here in Ohio. We too have tweaaked the rules a little bit to make it easy to get into the hobby and to keep it fun and light and not so much of a contest. In this idea we have quit counting damage holes and only go by sink points.