HMS Agincourt for Big-Gun with DIY Fire Control System

You live within 4 hours of the most active Battlestations group in the US. Too bad you have already cut wood, the Agincourt in 1:96 would give you more room. Plus I don't think that Battlestations rules restrict anything that you plan to do.

 

Great point! The larger scale would make your project easier, and you will have opponents just a few hours away to battle with. The second part is even more important than the first.

Whether or not you decide to change scales, stay away from mines. They are not fun, period. Our ships suffer enough breakdowns and failures without artificially causing them. Trust me on this one, I used mines actively for two years, and I was the first person to propose banning them. Don't even get started.

 

Mimes, I hate them as well.

 

As I am caring for an elderly parent, long trips anywhere (more than an hour?) are out of the question for the foreseeable future.

I am not really interested in Battlestations because of it's larger scale. It's true that building and especially equipping a larger Agincourt would be easier, but that would make it too easy, and nowhere near as satisfying when done. In fact my future builds list is composed mainly of ships that get smaller and smaller as I try to cram in as many guns as they are allowed. I really am starting an arms race. With other formats. Make the point of entry as small and cheap as possible until it's the cheapest format to get into, as well as the most interesting.

Also, of the scales people are building model warships in, 1/144 is the smallest. Anything I make work in this scale should be easily scalable for other rulesets. And it's hard enough getting people interested in 1/144. I can just imagine trying to interest people (and their spouses) in buying a trailer or van to haul a new set of toys. 1/144 is also the most popular scale. There are far more operating ships and ships sitting on shelves awaiting refit or completion in this scale than any other, and so far more groups than any other scale. It may be that we start a multi-format group in this area, since it is encompassed by Treaty and there used to be a group in Erie- I forget which small-gun format and don't know if they are still active- but with the presence of small-gunners in the area it seems like it would be a better idea to build in a scale that could more easily accommodate multi-format ships or converted "harbor queens" to interest this group of potential recruits.

All things considered, for me personally and at this time, Battlestations is a non-starter.

Mines will be legal in any group I am a member of if I have anything to say about it. They are the least expensive way for a new skipper to take offensive action against an enemy. There are also countermeasures that will render them useless. Just as there is a reason only Big-Gunners (and Big-Gun wannabes) have developed fire control systems - read the small-gun rules- there is a reason no club has developed mine countermeasures - read the Big-Gun rules. If mines had not been banned by now they would be only an occasional nuisance, instead of unbeatable weapons. When something is banned no work gets done on it. I will not be the one to stifle individual creativity and technological development in this hobby. For me to do so would be the height of hypocrisy. On the other hand at future events I will take no action to prevent all and sundry from turning a discovered minelayer into a colander, and may even contribute a few 29 gun salvos of my own, but only if it's an axis ship.

Most of the rest of the ribs are done. I still need to copy the new drawings.

 

Go for it. Interesting to see if you can cram all that in there. Possible that you come up with new ways to make guns (lighter please if you can, I have a light cruiser that I need to shave weight off)

 

In terms of scale, it is nice to have a ship that is 3-4 feet long. 1/144 scales allows this for most boats. The 1/96 scale is good for the light cruisers and destroyers that become those tiny (and often less built) ships in 1/144 scale. That said, the Gin Palace (Agincourt) was the largest of the WWI super Dreadnaughts. This will help a little on internal volume.

I find that after you account for batteries, servos, wiring etc., current technology leaves the ships @ 1/144 fairly filled up with gear. I am awaiting a pump for the the BB-27 Michigan I am working on and I already see a snug fit once it is added.

I am cheering on this rocketeer turned boater. Mechanical parts do better with water than electrical. It is the other way around with rockets were water is not an issue (especially after sending a payload to 10,000 feet AGL)

Manuel Mejia, Jr.

 

VVaholic> What ship is your cruiser? What format? Yes I'm considering doing a build of one of the Alberto di Giussano class cruisers- one of the worst warship designs ever built- as an exercise in stability control. These ships are known to have heeled over 30 degrees in a rough sea, and in the first video of the internet show "What's Up With That?" about the WWCC you can see a model of one flopping around like a beached salmon trying to reach the spawning grounds. I have an idea for a system to simulate counter flooding and preserve stability in turns and I don't think I'll be able to fit it into Agincourt, which probably won't need it anyway. The fastest ship of this class, Alberto Da Barbiano, at 42.05 knots (briefly) in trials, would be the choice. As a test-bed for ideas to control stability, including lighter guns, this would be the "best" choice. Of course the ship would get the Agincourt treatment, and would also be a test-bed for gun stabilization using heli gyros. As I said I'm still considering it. It would definitely be a challenge, and I like challenging projects, but it's such a _bad_ design. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and I'm going to try to keep future builds to a "let's build it together" format.

So many ideas, so little time. I may just post a description of the idea and let someone play with it. If you're interested let me know.

Astrosaint> Michigan has a good layout with all the main guns at both ends. What ruleset? If Big-Gun, and you can use batteries between the ribs, you should be able to free up enough room for a fire control sys for the mains. I'd have to look her up in Jane's to see how do-able her secondaries are.


Oh well. Time to make lunch and get back to work. Lot's of errands today so we'll see if anything gets done.

 

Atlanta class

 

My Michigan is 1/144 with a single fast gun in the stern. I wanted to build a small dreadnaught and get a feel for a simple gun setup using small Co2 cartridges. I need to post a build thread since I have images and (hopefully) an easier way to post images.

Manuel Mejia

 

What's so bad about the Giussanos? I found they made great torpedo-boats. Sure they're more lightly armed than their younger relatives, the Capitani Romani, but their instability can actually be an advantage. A good skipper can time his shots with the roll to hit both closer than and further than he'd be able to with a rock-steady boat. Also, a well-timed flick of the rudder can present your impenetrable deck to an opponent's broadside.

The ship you saw in "What's UpWith That" was an excellent object lesson in ship stability. Although it was almost uncontrollable when it first arrived at our shop, we made numerous passive changes to the ship to keep the desirable parts of its instability while resolving the undesirable parts. From bilge keels to lighter cannons to better superstructure to that little weight we put in the mast to limit its roll rate with minimum effect on roll magnitude, we learned a lot about theoretical and practical ship stability. You can see exactly how much more controllable it was in the video. Compare that to several years earlier:

 

So you're saying that the pic is before and the video is after? It's hard to imagine it used to be worse. From my point of view It's still not good enough, but then I would be prioritizing guns over torpedoes. Since you are intimately familiar with this ship I hope you can answer some questions.

Do you have any photos of the internal arrangement? If you could post some it would make several questions about type of equipment moot. Did you employ any active measures to achieve stability? Was the depth of the hull increased at all as allowed in the rules? Is the ship still in use? Has anyone else in the club built one?

I had forgotten it's also in the second video of that show, not doing much turning and a few sinks, and seems much more stable- probably from the mass of water taken in from damage. I think if I were to build one, and the ship you worked on did not have a deeper hull, that would be the first thing to do.

 

VVaholic> Yes the Atlanta is one I would like to build, but it may need the draft increased to get all the guns and torpedoes to fit. I am interested in several "light" cruisers of fairly large size like Helena and Belfast, and there axis and "swing state" counterparts as possible beginner ships. With .177 guns and 1/4" torpedoes, ammo is readily available at sporting goods stores and so they would be easy to feed. And with their large numbers of guns, high rate of fire and relatively high rates of speed they may be very attractive. Of course I am looking at this from the point of view of ships equipped with a fire control system.


No work on Agincourt today, but I did get the _final_ drawings copied.

 

Yes. The guns are the standard Indiana style cannon with slightly modified parts for ease of "mass" production. Just as I have an "old school" fire control system, I am using old school manufacturing methods as well.

The current thinking in the hobby seems to be to take a fairly "high tech" approach to making gun parts, usually cad designs taken to a machine shop where parts are milled out. Sometimes an order for a club, to get a volume discount. Most home builders also seem to machine parts from raw stock. In the past however, when it was necessary to produce large numbers of something it was usually cast. Since my background includes working with extremely hot metal- including liquid- I will be casting the parts in aluminum.

The "magazine" consists of two parts, the main body and the breach plate. The breach plate consists of the settings for the barrels, molded feed ramps and gas porting for the number of barrels it is made for. It extends over the gas inlet in a molded recess and bolts in place to retain the rotation bearing. With different patterns I can make guns to use either sealed ball or bronze bearings. Breach plates for the same size magazine with different numbers of barrel sets are interchangeable. The ball-valve actuator is the standard design, to use the MPA-7 Air Pilot. I am going to use copper pipe accumulators held in place with radial screws and an O-ring for Agincourt, but I can cast the valve body to suit whatever system anyone else wants. The final piece is the barrel keeper to hold the gun barrels parallel. I did several test castings before I had to re-order my priorities after my mother's first stroke. There were no problems.

I have a few more tool setups to finish to reduce production time as much as possible and then I will begin making guns for Agincourt, Bismarck and Rochester. After that I'll just make a casting of every pattern during each foundry session, then make whatever turns out to be most popular. Since most ships seem to use sets of 3 or 4 turrets I'm setting up to pour 2 dozen molds per session. I'll be making available raw unfinished castings, machined castings, parts kits and finished cannon assemblies to accommodate the varying skills/budget/available time that anyone wants to work around. Finished units will be test fired with my shop compressor unless the accumulator design is something exotic I don't have. I still have to determine the costs of consumables like propane used per session, cerrobend loss rate and the cost of some raw materials like stainless steel tubing, but I'm shooting for a set of raw castings for $20 -$30, Finished guns for about $100 and the various parts kits in between. When I'm ready to make the guns for Agincourt I'll post the procedure in the weapons forum. When I have some stock to sell I'll let you know to include me in the vendors area.

In addition, Rob Wood of the WWCC recently announced that they are almost ready to release a design for Indiana cannon using 3D printed parts. They will be making the plans available so people can have the magazine parts printed in plastic. They have also come up with a valve body that can be made with common hardware items. With their permission I can make available cast versions of their, or my design in raw or finished form to mate with their valve design.

So it looks like the great Big-Gun cannon drought is about to come to an end. As the saying goes, everything should be ready for Christmas.

The future of Big-Gun finally looks bright.

 

Reading over the previous post I think I should post a clarification, rather than just editing it. I should have said I'll be ready to start pouring castings for Agincourt by Christmas. Sorry for any confusion. I'll try to be more careful when posting in the wee hours at night.

 

Sorry for the interruption in posts. I've been over on the Big-Gun page helping to thrash out new cannon designs. After seeing a negative pressure quick relief valve and the work that had already been done, I came up with a couple of new designs and drew concept sketches, included here. One is of fairly conventional design. The other is a "drop-in" design intended to fit in the barbette.Work continues, but I think there really is not much left to do before prototyping. Looks like I need to make some new casting patterns, and gun parts will be even less expensive than I thought . Your regularly scheduled Agincourt updates will resume shortly.

 

Wow, neither of those designs looks very "traditional". Would you mind answering a few questions for me?

First, how exactly does the firing mechanism work? I cannot tell if you're using a solenoid valve directly between the accumulator and barrel, or if there is another, higher-flow valve being actuated by the solenoid. Also, is it one valve per barrel, or one valve overall? Have you looked at airflow requirements?

Second, have you done the volume calculations to ensure you have air in each accumulator? You usually want 1.5 to 2 cu.in per barrel, in standard Indiana-style and Arizona-style cannons.

Third, what are you planning to do for rotation? Have you considered how to keep wires and gas lines from becoming tangled as the turret rotates?

Fourth, what's up with the funky multi-layer magazine layout in the second drawing? Usually, multi-layer magazines are left open, so you can stack more ammunition in. The trade-off is that many-layer magazines can jam if they are loaded to capacity, which is why most Big Gunners go with larger diameter and fewer layers.

 

The fourth question pretty well answers itself- that is why. The gun designs will get their own threads in a little while. If you want to follow the design discussion or participate go here:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BigGunsModelWarship/conversations/messages

 

I will be away for a while longer deciding whether to continue on this site.

 

so....... did this go anywhere? I'm just interested from an engineering standpoint.