Yup, we’ll see how the waterchannel works out. If first battle goes poorly then I’ll add some in worked on guns a bit today barrels assembled with locktite setting up. One barrel was a fail when there was not enough clearance, so I made another one printed some SS I had to test out at least one gun to confirm my setup. The old Peter Paul solenoids drilled out from 5/64 to 7/64 orifice. Two did not work out and are now paperweights Drilled and tapped two holes in the 90 degree fitting from solenoid to gun. One at end for the back feed and line to magazine. Piston drilled to 5/64” Second hole on the bottom is 4-40 for a piston position adjustment, since once it’s assembled there won’t be chance for adjustment The gun worked fine, seemed similar to my other recent guns
Deck hold downs. I went mainly with screws through the subdeck, and a few magnets for the forward deck where the SS covers the edge. Deck clamped down, drill holes through both deck and subdeck Aft deck with screws epoxied in installed the two pump posts as well Forward deck I also cleaned the barrels up and drilled gun pin holes
Epoxied the deck pieces put some on the underside of magnets dried pieces. I added support for forward deck piece trimmed down and everything lining up next will be solenoid mounts for the direct mounts. The first one is almost done
Some updates from first week of paternity leave Gun pistons various shots of the T and solenoid to gun piece working of aft solenoid and gun mounts, with magazines for interference check realized that I needed to go with plastic mags to fit them under the deck step and get the deck on and off mags attached Deck sits flush-ish, no pieces hitting the bottom clearance on port side Looking forward more I think starboard side, I had to cut off one of the joining bolts Very tight under the deck step and above motors. CO2 lines for test fit had to make a new elbow holder for Forster breech Step 1 is drill to 5/16 then mill flat with a Dremel attachment then ream out the hole to 3/16 Ream other direction working on forward guns. Tight fit with B turret and the bottle placement. I won’t be able to fit a direct mount, and may need to raise the T up into the turret to clear bottle. Downsides to 7oz which was slightly better forward subdeck is only about 2” wide, which makes solenoid mounts to deck hard to fit within 2” m I figured out A turret by going vertical with the solenoid. Since the bottle is further aft, there is plenty of room for solenoid for A. I’ll add a U bracket to support bottom of solenoid from deck, but it’s just held here by the gun For B turret, I’ll have to drill the barb out to raise the T about 5/16. I made up and end cap today that hopefully I’ll get to keep working on tomorrow
Thanks Steve! Ive been focusing on other boats to get ready for the battle season some recent progress on solenoids and guns magazines for bow
Gun hoses installed. Used clippard fittings for the feed to the elbow wiring distribution is just two bus bars which is nice
I aligned the barrels to desired angles, looks much better now Next I’ll make holder brackets for each I also worked on internal spacing and hoses I was planning to put the main power bus in the bilge which is why I chose the sequence of connectors, but with the bottle in the middle the regulator would interfere with battery wires. I’ll probably shift the bus this way and cut out some of the battery holder to accommodate. It will be very cramped between batteries and the drive motors with the wiring and ESCs I added a post to hold the solenoid wires and hose leaving the deck piece, it prevents straining the connectors for each the full foreword deck piece with hoses and wires I tested the guns, 3 of 4 worked well, 1 had some spurting issues so I may need to play with the hose arrangement next steps are internal armor, taping the hull, canibalize some drive motors/escs/firing boards. Getting sort of close
Installed some guts today Drive gears greased stuffing tubes Flat spot on shafts set gear mesh End result rudders installed, rudder servo as well with gear dropped in electronics and got the radio set up, everything seemed to work hopefully put the sides on this weekend
Catching up on some photos Current weight is just about 23 lbs, so she’ll need some ballast fore to aft balance looks good view of the guts, kind of a mess main bud and drive ESCs. I had to move the pump ESC forward to fit Control on the port side and pump ESC on starboard sheeted, port side came out OK, starboard less so Superstructure glued in I’ll float test in next few days, then finishing touches and sea trials this weekend, battle in NJ the following weekend
Sea trials is in the books. I recorded it for a video for my building warship series that I’m trying to finish up I added 15oz to the bow and 2 lbs amidships, coming out to 27 lbs total. She still seemed a bit high in the water, though I heard other guys ran them at 26lbs. sea trials went OK, a few things to adjust: I ran the boat with props moving with scale rotation, with top of the props going outboard when moving forward. Propulsion wasn’t great so I’ll swap the shafts to the way I normally run with tops moving inwards going forward The boat rolled too much in the turns, even with minimal water, so I’ll add more water channel I decided to do the waterchannel now since battle wouldn’t be great without more. The hull had around 1/8 to 3/16” which is lower than I’ve seen. I tend to go with more waterchannel since the pumps really don’t light off until 1/2” or so of water, with a lot more channeling in the bow and stern to limit pooling/ forward/reverse issues here are parts to a float lifeboat since using the superstructure would have been a challenge. The housing will have a spool, and the boat floats I got the waterchannel in today. Stern is limited by the solenoids hanging down I also added under the drive motors, the sides outboard of the bottle, and the extreme bow, limited by A turret solenoid. Working on the bow is like working on a destroyer, I needed to slide my hand in through the middle because the deck opening is so tight, and couldn’t get the Dremel in there to really clean it up afterwards I ended up pouring more than planned, but the boat should be much more stable with damage now I’ll be putting her back together and doing finishing touches the next couple days, then battle Friday
Float Painted bottom and added waterline just need to test things out again after removing everything for the waterchannel
The boat was battled back in May in NJ. She put some holes in the enemy but had normal first battle teething issues to sort out. Since nats is over I’ve been able to start working on a few of the fixes videos from on board camera View: https://youtu.be/j6ZTQmqZ03g?si=ARvVxvq3h7IIIcKg View: https://youtu.be/ACEy3nyOlg0?si=LFQZzNvXR2R3EFDd first issue was aluminum drive pinions which lasted through most of the speed trials before battle. The idea was that they would be a sacrificial part of the drivetrain, but they were too sacrificial to be useful, so they were swapped for steel gears the boat stability wasn’t great. I moved lead from on top of waterchannel to underside of boat, used bondo glass to fair it in, then covered with layer of cloth. I also dremeled out some of the waterchannel my camera mount fell off after a ram, and was graciously retrieved, but I needed a new mount with holes to feed wire toes through to prevent detachment. Now the whole tripod will need to be taken out the float housing was also not tall enough, in one battle the float was shot off which creates a fouling hazard, so I printed a new one with higher walls, and extended the shaft outside of the housing for easier turning. the float did deploy nicely as shown at the end of one of the videos ill be moving electronics back in the hull from the nats boats and hopefully retest on the pond soon
