A video of the Erin's sea trial. It wasn't very long, perhaps about 10 minutes max. The brushless drive motor is in the ship. While it worked well, the brushless ESC was difficult to put into reverse. I swapped out the brushless motor for a brushed motor and ESC after the first battle Monday morning of the IRCWCC Nats. www.youtube.com/watch The Erin got comments on how quiet it was even with a gearbox. The gearbox is BC's single motor/dual shaft setup. The BC gearboxes are well made. As for the IRCWCC Nats, the Erin did well. Since it was a new ship in it's first ever battle, I had problems to fix on Monday to include swapping the brushless motor system for a brushes motor system, multiple gun problems (all day Monday the Erin went to battle with only two of three guns working), accidently unplugging the rudder servo plug minutes before a sortie, and loosing reverse on my brushed ESC (luckily, Powder Monkey had a spare to spare). About the only thing working well was the pump system which kept the Erin on top of the water Monday morning in spite of taking 30+ aboves and 40+ belows (which earned the IRCWCC's Alien Award for most damage taken and not sunk). Some things were noted after battling the Erin for the first time: - It won't turn as tight as the 3-shaft German Dreadnaughts, but it is close! - It can out accellerate the 3-shaft ships - It was easy to hug the bigger ships and get under thier guns due to how low the Erin sits in the water - The ship might benefit from slightly larger props to increase starting and stopping speeds - Although the guns shot very fast, the gunner needs to work on his accuracy! Altogether, the Erin proved to be a competative ship, recognized in fact by the Axis voting it the Most Feared Allied Battler Award. I am extremely flattered by that. There are a few more pictures to post yet after work today. It's been tough getting online the past week due to a severe cold ... a present from a fun yet rather wet IRCWCC Nats.
I was very impressed by the performance of the Erin, it definetly could be part of the small allied boat solution. I know I didn't want to get next to you when you had ammo!
The Erin is a beautiful ship. You did a great job building her. Out of curiosity, how come I keep seeing allies complain about the small axis boats but it is very rare to actually see anyone build one of the allied small dreadnoughts?
I think there is multiple factors about the Allied adversion to small dreadnaughts. For instance, there doesn't seem to be many Allied small boat hulls available on the market. Instead, they seem to look to the I-boats instead. Maybe the Allies just like big boats? Heh. The paradigm is changing in the MWC though. In 2008, the MWC Allies got blown away in the Nats due to an arguable lack of sidemount cannons and ship reliability problems. NCs and Sodaks abounded. Over the past two years, that has changed with the addition of Iron Dukes and other smaller sidemount ships. In this years Nats, the MWC Allies set what could be a record score of 190,000+ points over the weeklong event. There seems to be two contributing factors to the combined Axis and Allied point score of 330,000+ points: increased sidemounts for the Allies, and high flow pumping systems that kept ships floating on the water longer. Of course, those small Axis dreadnaughts are tough ships!
I may have given away too many of my outlets, yes the boats on average you can see are pumping alot more water than ever before. John's little Westfallen survived one sortie with like 60+ aboves, 10 on, and 61 belows, very impressive. We Scored 190,000+ with just 15 or 16 Allied boats on average on the water if I remember right. During Nats, Fleugel came and sat down next to me and Don, and said he has been fearing one thing over the last 7 or 8 years, and that was the Allieds smarting up and someone making a Iron Duke. It was quite the complement I thought. Don and I was tasked with shooting up Jeff's Yamato on Thursday with our Iron Dukes. He sailed right between us, we got on to either side of him, our ships gun are installed to mutually support each other, and within 1 minute we hit him with 200 belows between us, and then was hitting him with the stern guns. He sailed away with his faster speed, and some of the NC's also shot at him, then he sank. After it was removed from the water, he had over 350 holes from about 2 minutes or so of action. For those with an intrest in the LiFePO4 batteries, we used the 20 amp cells. Had 2 cells in series, and averaged 9 amp total usage over 2 sorties. Even the sorties where I took excessive damage and pumped alot, the max I used was 12 amps. We then charged them right at our table, and was able to fullly charge them before the afternoon battles started, and reused the same batteries again.
People are also getting better hull skins on their ships (It's the vinager). John's Westfallen had holes you could hardly see below the waterline. He didn't look that shot up until you looked really close.
White Vinegar. Soak the balsa in it overnight before you sheet. The acid dissolves some of the cellulose in the balsa and softens it up so it holes better. We've been doing it for years in the MWC. ;-)
Nope, it was Lide, Finster, and I while working in the common room. But it really took place one night we took Tim K to dinner with the Axis. Twas fun.
Yeah, gotta do the white vinegar soak before the silkspan. Also it wont work miracles, bad hobby shop balsa will always be hobby shop balsa but every little bit helps. Some guys say heating the vinegar slightly during the soak helps but its a pain in the butt to do so I generally dont.
You can always tell who soaks the balsa in vinegar by the sound it makes when they put the boat in the water.. Mikey
