Hi Guys, I've been posting for a while and should do my intro. I read about R/C warship combat in the early 1980sand built the small WWII 15" gun monitor HMS Terror, in 1984. No one else in Halifax was interested in the hobby. Same thing when I moved Saint John, New Brunswick in 1987 and joined the local R/C ship club. Everyone thought shooting at each others' models was nuts! Back to Halifax I met Curt Stokes at a local model show in 1995 and a few days later (Nov. 20) watched his HMS Bismarck sink HMS Invincible in an almost frozen lake. With Curt as my inspiration I was hooked. For some reason I wanted another monitor and made one from my first fiberglass hull mold. It took a few years of lobbying to get the British WWI&II coastal monitors added to the official IRCWCC Ship List but the WWI version of Terror fought many battles and was sunk in most of them. Great fun nevertheless. Always a fan of weird combat models I built HMS Courageous in 1996, my second hull for R/C combat. After several years of battling Courageous was sold and battles on south of the border with Mike D. at the helm (check out the photos on this site). After that I went on a hull building frenzy, producing molds for HMS Hood, Kent Class and Canarias Class heavy cruisers, Z23 DD (sold to Battlers Connection), 15" gunned WWII monitors Abercrombie and Roberts, Spanish dreadnought Espana, WWI monitors Gorgon and Glatton, Warrior and Duke of Edinburgh Class armoured cruisers, and HMS Vanguard. Ralph Coles and I collaborated on several mold projects: his newest, more accurate HMS Nelson hull, battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable, seaplane carrier HMAS Albatross, and Russian CL Krasni Krim. Over the last 9 years Courageous was followed by models of the Espana, Canarias, Warspite (my most successful combat model), the 4.5 lb. Gorgon (my favorite), Minotaur (a stretched version of the Warrior hull), CLAA HMCS Prince Robert (an Eric Broderick hull), and an experimental static diving and shooting I-400 (deepened BC hull with new superstructure) which has probably incurable stability problems. Canarias was sold and is active in the MWC or IRCWCC. Terror, Espana and Warspite were sold locally but none are active. My time for the hobby decreased after returning to medical school for specialization in psychiatry (1999-2003). Ralph Coles took over my molds for a while and continued to produce the hulls. In 2003 I finished school and attended NATS in Rhode Island - had a great week there and hope to return next year, wife permitting! In 2005 house renovations cost me my hull molding area, so Ralph helped out again. My interest in R/C combat waned in 2004-2006 due to competing interests but I've never missed the annual Can-Nats event. This spring I got the R/C naval combat bug back and am making new hull molds and models. Under construction are HMS Vanguard and HMS Rodney, to be followed by Krasni Krim and Albatross. Making hulls on the front porch doesn't cut it so I'm selling my molds to Tugboat, who's built a proper facility. (The Espana and Courageous molds went to Rich Wands of the OAF.) Having the hulls made in the U.S. will make them more affordable there due to UPS jacking up shipping charges from Canada and charging "brokerage fees" for crossing the border. More hulls are in the works and I plan to collaborate with Tugboat in making more molds for our hobby. I'll do the molds, he'll make the hulls. Bob Pottle, NABS
As I presently own his old HMS Courageous, I can attest that Bob makes gorgeous models, and the hulls are very accurate. One of these days, I really hope to make it up to a Can-nats and will have to battle the Courageous of course. Mike D
Hey Guys about 8 yrs ago I bought a USS California from Mike Deskin that was one of the famed Canada hulls and lovwed it!I sold it ot Plato and it is some where on the east coast wish I had it back!
