Lessons learned from a brutal environment know as "NATS". Made a promise to not change anything major, instead all improvements will go into a new hull. Good: 1. Guns were good 2. Electronics did not fry, might have to turn in my alias (Fire-starter) 3. Rudder servo was great 4. Construction, nothing broke due to repeated handling. Bad: 1. Pump sucked, sunk with 20 belows 2. Stern deck needs to be more waterproof, under full steam astern I pulled in more water than I would have liked 3. Water management was poor, developed a list a couple of time 4. Pump sucked (cannot say this enough). 5. Should have been obvious, but the haymaker tank empties more than the bow and this helps induce a list (couple of ounces do make a difference). 6. Blast shield lasted, but needs to be thicker as some guns are just "hard" and almost punched through...
QEs always list Lou. I have never got mine not too. Stable until she's getting close to done then very tippy when you drive around. It's the big bulges.
Ordered new props, holy cow they are expensive but worth it (to me). Now I join that group (when the hell will they send the props), last I heard they were waiting over two months.
Well at least they will arrive before next Nats. Speaking of which, I need to go order some for myself too...
OK, I will fix the few issues before a do a build on a new hull. Issue #1, water entered the deck when full speed astern, this scenario was all to prevalent as I had multiple ships on both sides of the hull and I had to reverse to try and get away. Used a glove with the fingers cut off to make a temporary seal, less than perfect but that is battlefield modifications for you. Removed the back deck, now you can see the hole. I will rebuild this deck to be part of the main deck and incorporate a hatch to reload guns. Time to start building.
Bob, my issue was compounded as I used the gas for the haymaker and induced a list with 2-3 ounces used (until I fired the bow gun). So, while the double bottle worked, not so much for stability. If I did it again, I would put them inline.
Why use a double bottle at all? This fad makes no sense to me. One bottle and regulator works fine even when firing multiple guns, and there is less equipment to take up time between sorties (filling an extra bottle) or wear (Yes orings in regs and bottles wear over time) and break, and the redundant weight of multiple bottles and regulators in a ship is a waste. Versus what is the perceived benefit?
It probably doesn't make much sense unless you are rocking a quads (KGV) or sextuple cannons (Yamato). Then it's just getting enough gas to the cannons fast enough iirc.
I've done two separate sets of quads (Nagato) successfully off a single bottle with no noticeable problems. Granted there isn't much time to notice problems in the ring of death. I'm of the opinion that people are overcomplicating things in their gas system (extra bottles and regulators, expansion/storage tanks, check valves, etc) because they heard it was necessary for somebody else instead of actually testing the simpler system first to see if there is really a problem that needs to be fixed.
Personally I think my trying it goes to your testing scenario. I cant think of anything easier in the boat than the regulator, it works or it doesn't work. Adding in a second regulator did not complicate the gun system, maybe redundant but not over complicate. Same argument with the bottle. My goal was to get a good "tweak" on stern guns, this I actually accomplished. My error was side by side on the bottles as the usage was not the same between due to primarily using the haymaker (live and learn). If the gods of war looked down and decided to have fun with a hose or regulator, I would still have the other one (how many ships can still fire after venting their single bottle). The savings in weight with batteries means we can try new setups and look for new opportunities to further make our ships more reliable and install (new items - keeping in mind the safety rules).
Last year when my Baden was running quad sterns I froze the single bottle doing rapid-fire. Changing to two smaller bottles feeding separate pairs fixed that issue. And with the new batteries (as Lou pointed out), you've got tonnage to burn anyway....
Maybe it isn't necessary, I haven't tried to use a single bottle in my PoW. I can't see it necessarily being a bad thing, the pneumatics are probably the only thing that didn't break on me during Nats. Even if I lose one bottle (burst hose, frozen, whatever) I still have gas from the second to fire cannons with. I didn't weigh my bottles before filling to see if there was uneven gas usage, but if there was I didn't notice.
Second bottle and regulator means adding an extra $70 or more to the cost of the ship, and an extra 3 minutes or more making people wait between sorties filling more bottles. Also doubles the chances you forgot to fill a tank or didn't get a good fill or didn't screw it all the way in or turn it on. Never had a problem with freezing a bottle, I put the end of the bottle in the water channel, also you have to hit something like -10 degrees F before the pressure drops to 150psi inside the bottle. If you get down that low in temperature you probably have a continuous slow gas leak, or live in Canada. The first time you pop a hose you really should double check the pressure your regulator is actually outputting inside the ship, 2 regs means twice the chance of a malfunction. Installing extra cannons in a ship is a much more logical use of the available weight, doing so makes the ship more flexible in combat when you can change your gun setup, speeds up your reloads during campaign by just unpinning different cannons and switching power to a different solenoid, and provides quick-swap redundancy in one of the parts of the ship that is much more prone to breakage than the gas system.
It is just however you want to think about it. Spend $70 on an extra bottle, or spend $70 in extra guns. When we start talking "logical", that has many different meanings for many captains. As long as at the end of the day we encourage each other, we will continue to grow the hobby. So, back to the minor re-build of the frankenship.
The boat originally ran 29+ pounds. Monday at lunch I took 1pd 8oz out of the bow, cut out a cross brace which let me move the batteries forward 3" which helped rebalance the boat. Gained was about another 3/8" of freeboard which helped keep the boat from looking like it wallowed. It was still a bit rocky though, and once a list set the ship stayed listed until something rocked it the other way.
Time to rebuild to get this ship "right" Lets gut it Blast shield was not thick enough, some of those guns are hard hitting. Stern So, a big issue was water management, wondering if the step in the stern is tall enough (about 1/2 inch). Concerned if I made it taller that I will have too much "floatation" under the water (making it top heavy)? Maybe not a concern?
