Inspired by real life yet again! How thick are your rudders at their thickest points? Multiple selections allowed because many of you have multiple ships.
Hmmmmm..... I may have voted incorrectly..... My rudders are made from (3) 1/8 pieces of plywood. I then came back and retrofitted a 3/8 fishtail to the outside of each rudder. So now straight on they would be 9/16" or over 1/2" wide. They don't seem that wide.....
A 1/2" wide rudder on a destroyer doesn't have the same effect as a 1/2" wide rudder on a large battleship. Also for @Maxspin, if you limit individual rudder width to say, 1/2", single rudder ships lose even more.
More what???? I voted that my rudders were less than 1/2". Yes I could make them fit into a 1/2" envelope, so technically I am correct. However that is not how they are run. They have over 1/2" of drag the way they are attached.
Rudders are this year's "fear fest". Please correct me if I am wrong, but I see this stemming from the Vanguards and the effectiveness of a single rudder ship having a performance that was not seen before in the hobby. High torque motors with a huge leading edge and fish-tails to help in turning. So now we are going to outlaw modifications to rudders and make them for the most part flat. What this does is kill any performance gain for a single rudder ship (I run a QE, so no bias on my part). Would the membership of fast gun get behind a rule proposal that would also make the total square inches the same between dual rudder and single rudder? Meaning, no overage for dual rudder ships. Keep in mind we can be real $%#$%'s and show up with a bismarck to fight on the side of the allies, there is no rule saying one side needs to fight for a particular side.
I wasnt planning to drag that whole discussion here, was more interested in the distribution of rudder thicknesses, but if you guys want to discuss that can of worms, go for it.
@NickMyers - My original point was that rudder thickness doesn't mean much by itself. It should be taken in relation to the rest of the system. The distribution of rudder thickness on say class 6 ships might be more interesting/meaningful than just across the hobby as a whole. Or even rudder thickness vs prop diameter.
