Greetings all, I think the time has come for me to start a build thread. I plan to build a 1/72 scale model of SMS Blucher as a proof of concept model for my ideas about a new form of RC Warship Combat. I finally decided on SMS Blucher for a number of reasons: First, the ship is not that big, in scale it will weigh about 90 pounds. The ship is larger and heavier than nearly every predreadnought battleship, so if it is viable, they should be too. Its not that small either, so a jump to a 18,000 to say, 22,000 ton Dreadnought shouldn't be a major hurdle. Second, the oddball layout of the main guns ( in a hexagonal pattern ) should be an excellent showcase for a director fire control system, allow the guns to be easily and effectively rotated through their differing arcs of fire. Third, the ship has submerged torpedo tubes. The ship will serve as an R&D platform for Propel powered torps. Fourth, its a middle of the pack ship. Although probably the fastest Armoured Cruiser, otherwise its just a well balanced, decent all round ship. Its doesn't have the biggest guns or the most firepower, or the heaviest armor, or is it the fastest buildable ship by long shot. I'm hoping that my considerable expenditure of time and money on a "mid-pack" ship will show everybody I am truly serious about starting a new kind of club, not just creating a ruleset that allows me to "fubar the FNGs". I purchased a set of plans for Blucher from Taubman, although a little pricey at $50 shipped, they are of very high quality, much more so than generic "RC Warship Combat" plans. IMO the model should look and act as much like the real ship as possible. My list of goals: Get plans... check, now I need to resize from 1/100 to 1/72 Build hull ( hopefully the easiest part ) with special attention to accuracy in hull form, prop/shaft location and rudder. Propulsion is next, I'm running all 3 shafts, with 2 speed controllers. Also planning on a feature that allow me to switch over the center motor from one speed controller to the other. If an outer motor/shaft becomes disabled, I'll still have 2/3s power availible. Cannons are next, I'm arming all 8.2" and 5.9" guns. The ships' 24pdrs. are too small to arm under my rules set. Once cannons are contructed, I'll turn them against the ship show the effects of my new plan of armor scaling. Torpedos after that. I'll plan to develop the launchers with inert, practice torps. I'll then try to turn them into weapons, my goal is a totally mechanical warhead, aka nothing that goes boom. Weapons will be tested against the ship. Next step is controlling all that stuff. I want to totally eliminate to conventional RC radio. All functions will be streamlined, but nothing will be automatic. Everything will still require user input. If I can get all of that stuff working, I'll invite anybody that wants to build an opponent to my ship to get started []. If everything above fails, well, only I am out time and money with my foot in my mouth... Meanwhile, I'll work on adding details to Blucher, railings, boats, portholes, smoke generators, working torpedo nets, anchors, lights, etc. I don't mind having all my detail wrecked, as long as I can shoot it off your ship too... So there is my general and probably very ambitious plan. Comments, thumbs up, "your crazy" is all welcome. I figure I'd get this out there as it is a good reason to get off my butt and get in the garage and start building. It will probably be quite some time before this ship is even remotely close to done, but I have to start somewhere. So if anybody out there is rubbing their hands together and saying "excellent" with thoughts of sending my ship to the bottom... you have plenty of time to just and kick back and watch this thread. But, I warn you, I'm also planning a dreadnought buddy for Blucher... "cough, cough" [8D]
I think Queen's Own is 1/72 yes. I agree that the Blucher is a fine looking ship. One question, 3 shafts, 2 ESC's? 1 for the center shaft and one for both wing shafts? Or are you just using them on the wing shafts?
I'm going to put the ESC's on the outer shafts, I know you can wire one ESC to run more than one motor, so I'm going to run the center motor off of one of the outside ESCs. I'm going to explore if it is possible ( maybe via relays ) to switch the back and forth between the two ESCs if need be.
At that scale, I would've figured you could use three separate ESCs and use a mixer or similar to produuce the appropriate throttle setting for the center prop...or relays to activate and deactivate each of the three ESCs as needed.
Well Predread, looks like you've got quite a project there. I've got too many projects on my plate right now, but I just added a new ship to the build list. Either a 1/72 Dreadnought or a 1/72 Viribus Unitis. I probably won't get to it for 5 years though I swear, this hobby should be a career option!
A long project I'm sure. The ship will have so many new systems and various ideas that if I don't break it down in stages... it will never get finished. One of my goals during construction create a large, flat "building" surface with as many of the ships ribs as possible. All components, such as motors, gearboxes, cannons, torpedo launchers, etc. will be fastened to this base using sturdy aluminum or steel "bedplates". By building everything in units, I should be able to correct various mistakes along the way in the internal layout. The bedplates will also help to rigidly tie more of the ribs together and strengthen hull, as well provide some ballast. webwookie, I chose to run only two ESCs on 3 motors to limit the ship to two seperate throttles. One of my goals is to have many of the ship's features to be "unit systems" that can be transfered to another ship or copied and fitted to another ship with the minimum of modification. Even though Blucher is not a class ship, I don't want all of its internals to be strictly one-off designs. That way anybody who wants to build to battle with me doesn't have to do all of the R&D again. I want to run the whole ship with micro-controllers, so I want all of its programing to be easily reusable/expandible to cover as many ships as possible.
Sounds like a model combat technological revolution may be just over the horizon. Be sure to keep us posted on your progress!
