I recently received a MABG Club Ship which has been idle for several years. The hull is a Pennsylvania class battleship.I am going to be doing a concurrent build of Pennsylvania along with my Arizona hull. Unfortunately after I removed the old tape from Pennsylvania's hull I discovered a small hole in the bow of the ship. So the first order of business was to repair the hole in the bow and cleanup the extra material on the fiberglass lines of the hull. After the initial repair and cleanup was done,Pennsylvania was marked and fiberglass hull was cut. That matches Arizona's progress to this point. I anticipate that I will be building both ships after the weekend of August 1st. I am considering building Pennsylvania with a cage mast. I will post blogs with the progress of the build. Recently I installed the shaft stuffing tubes, shafts and rudder for Pennsylvania. The process went by the numbers with no hitches. This afternoon, I greased the newly installed shafts and spun the props for approximately 20 minutes. Later this week I will be wiring the ESC, receiver and steering servo.
Something you may want to consider would be to ditch the dogbone universals and go to a more 'attached' universal joint. Those Dumas dogbone universals are nice in theory, but they tend to wear down the little nubs that the brass cups drive against on the dogbone itself, and if you have to disassemble the system at the pond, it can be extremely frustrating trying to get the dogbone back in place while you line everything up. Was that bow hole a hole through the entire side of the hull, a hull into a voidspace, or just a spot of gelcoat that chipped off? From the picture, it looks a bit like a voidspace in the ram bow, made only of gel-coat - if that is the case, make sure you filled the entire void, gelcoat alone won't hold up and you'll find yourself with no ram at some point if its not filled. Also, cagemasts can look really awesome, so I hope you build it with those.
Nick the hole was in the gelcoat with a void in the bow. I completely filled it in with resin and surface covered the patch with some epoxy putty. It is a pretty solid repair. I just need to do a bit of sanding to smooth it out. I would like to go with a more direct drive system. Is it something that I would build or can it be purchased at someplace like Battler's Connection. If you have any pictures, I would love to see a few examples. With regard to the cagemast, I am currently working on my Arizona and MABG's Pennsylvania. I didn't want to build two identical ships so I will definately go with a cage mast on Pennsylvania. Several of the guys from this forum have given me some good direction towards building Pennsy's mast.
In my Moltke I'm trying out these 'Kardan Style Couplers'- the brass inserts on the ends are interchangeable so you can get ones with different bore sizes. I don't think BC sells them, I ordered mine from Cornwall Model Boats in the UK, but they're available stateside as well, from such folk as Harbor Models, and probably others. ServoCity also has a range of couplers available, ranging from the Dumas, to a black universal similar to the ones I am using above, that I believe is possibly made by Raboesch? Not sure. They also have rigid shaft couplers if you're feeling brave and believe you can mount your motors precisely in line with your shafts.
Keep in mind with big gun rules you won't have the frequent hard direction changes that fast gun has lining up a shot. Throw in no combat reverse, and the nylon dog bones should last longer. I know of ships that have used the same set of dog bones for years in treaty without problems. I've seen two replaced pond-side total in my three seasons here in Ohio. Both by the same captain so I think he was using some very old ones each time. There are also steel dog bones out there, but they are rumored to sometimes interfere with 75MHz radios at close distances--which is against FCC regs. Just want to make sure you know all of your options.
Thanks Dustin. I have a total of 5 Big Gun hulls. My first ship was ship was truly a learning experience. The next ship is a club boat so I will build it to the standards of the club. My following ship will be my experimental ship. I will try to do a few things that I think will possibly work better that the standards.
