Started putting things inside. Here is motor area Midships. Amp hours for days. Rudder installed as well I also drilled out gun pistons this weekend. Today I set the piston height and glued the magnets on. Pump screen is drying as well. Next step is boat wiring, gun/pump board wiring, then sheet. Not as much progress this weekend as I hoped for, next weekend should be better.
Good progress this weekend, not too many pictures because of phone issues I prepped gun and pump boards for this boat, missouri, and box spares. Conformal coating drying, I used a dip method which was very fast for the 11 total boards. Also made turret molds since I prefer fiberglass turrets. Plugs prepped Scotchkoted pump relays and esc leads as well. Missouri is a multipurpose work area accessory I think this is the molds drying. They came out pretty good, minor bondo needed for the seydlitz turret Also completed boat wiring. Here is a picture of how I placed the diodes, so the diodes will stay with the boat and won't need to be added to the solenoids if they have to get replaced. I put a large piece of heat shrink over the whole thing after this Wiring harness complete. Less of a rats nest than my last build, but I didn't do test switches this time After this I put everything in the boat and hooked it up. seydlitz has a pulse now, motors turned, relays and solenoids clicked, no smoke. I put CO2 hoses in yesterday, very simple layout w/o expansion tanks. I'm shifting to a 3.5 oz bottle so I can get it in/out easier, and to give more room between the bottle and the box for the esc and pump relay, since there wasn't a ton of room in the stern for them. I will be making turrets throughout the week. Next step is untangling the wire mess in the boat and adding hangers/zip ties, then testing the guns. Once I verify the guns are good I will install them, since the aft guns will stay in the boat I need to make sure they are good prior to mounting. After that check, the boat should be ready for sheeting, while I will also put down the magnetic deck tape. I'm hoping for sea trials by Sunday. Only others thing will be spin guards for motor and gearbox, which my plan is to form the shape with thin aluminum, then fiberglass over that to have something semi rigid
Another good weekend of progress. I made a small change to the wiring, but it's all in the boat. Guns were tested and installed, ran out of CO2 before I got the bow side mount good, so it will require more testing. Sheeted the boat last night. Superstructure is mostly done, I need to clean it up and add a few more things to it. 4 of 5 turrets are made, still need dummy barrels then mounting. Also made the gearbox and motor covers from fiberglass. Most deck magnets are in. Had initial sea trials today. The boat weighted 20lbs 11oz with everything but turrets. I weighed it down to 22.5 pounds. Floats well, generally good trim fore/aft and port/stbd. Acceleration is good, turns OK. Unfortunately one prop came unsoldered pretty quickly so trials were cut short. Pump and outlet work well. Phone doesn't like pictures so I'll try to get some of the end product once it gets there.
That stinks losing a prop. Ever try silver soldering them on. Might hold a little better. What boat are you bring to the regionals, Kevin?
Fortunately the prop stayed on the shaft ($$ kort prop). I use silver solder, this one I think I reheated which might have weakened it. Right now one of the setscrews on the gears doesn't feel like coming off easily so I stopped with shaft removal until tomorrow. Once I get the shaft out, I will remove old solder, re-prep, and redo. The plan is to battle this boat, but the California is ready on standby (needs to get patched, reinstall the motors I remove after every use)
Are you soldering onto stainless shafts? If you are, are you using the right flux? Stainless take a different flux for silver soldering then brass or copper. It takes a acid flux that can clean off the tough oxide layers on the stainless so the solder gets to the actual metal. Might be your solder formed around the shaft but didn't really create a good joint.
I think I used the right flux, its non-electrical liquid that I think said worked with stainless. I had some successful repair efforts today. I used the butane mini torch to heat up the set screw hub without catching the boat on fire. This allowed me to get the setscrew loose using an Allen wrench held in mini vice grips. Turns out I used red lock tite, which has now been hidden to not be used again. Here is the shaft and prop with flux. Looks like it was a poor joint last time that only fused on one end of the hub I dremeled off the old solder and cleaned out the inside of the hub. I re soldered and feel a lot better about the amount of solder in the joint. This method has worked on my other boats, so I'm hoping the failure was just a result of reheating that joint previously. Turns out the damage wasn't limited to that shaft, the gear on the other shaft had become a little loose so the prop could rotate slightly, and with the interwoven props I think that is how my issue started (the loose gear prop rotated into the other prop, causing the solder joint and a shaft strut to break. So I removed the other shaft and made the setscrew flat part deeper, and reinstalled. To fix the shaft strut (and a slightly bent stuffing tube), I added a diagonal piece to push the affected shaft back into line. Here is Seydlitz assuming the Jutland position So I filled the area around the struts with epoxy and milled fibers for reinforcement, I will grind the excess away tomorrow afternoon to not inhibit water flow to the props. This should prevent future movement. I plan to test the drive system by sticking the stern in the tub since the boat is too long and alternating fwd and reverse. I will probably get wet but it should let me verify that the drive system can handle moving water without having to drive to the pond. The interwoven props and gearbox will get three strikes, it's at strike 1 now, if I keep having issues I will probably chop and swap (as we would say in the real navy).
Sea trials round 2 went off today with better results. Took some pictures this time. Still needs some paint and other minor accessories for battle. Trimmed out at 22.5 lbs, about 1.25 lbs of lead weights to get there. Stern is a little high, but the aft deck is at water level when moving forward Action shots. Cuts through the water nicely. Plenty of power with 1100kv motor on 4s, running at 75% here based on a visual speed check, still maybe a little fast Starboard pass Boat accelerates reverse to forward well, forward to reverse not so much (but less important for the gun configuration). Turning is OK for a long boat, about 8-10ft diameter circle. I tried to look at the thrust hitting the rudder to figure out the issue, seemed like a good amount of thrust was going over the rudder, so I might add plates on the top and bottom 7/8" wide. She does well in reverse, my 'stern plane' drag discs provide enough upward force to keep the stern from being pulled under, aft turret is filled with foam, and magnetic deck seal is solid. It should serve the haymaker and the water-level stern gun well. The boat still sounds like a blender. The gears held together, but i will probably adjust one of the shafts to add a collar to prevent the gear from moving from reverse thrust. The blender noise was from the shaft gear reaching the starting point of the teeth on the pinion when moving fwd since the gear slipped forward slightly from reverse thrust. The other shaft was solid so I'll probably not touch that one. I just painted the bottom to the waterline level, and the last two turrets. A few odds and ends left (some deck magnets, fishing line tethers, masts, waterline tape, bow sidemount test). Will hopefully wrap those up Tuesday or next weekend before Hagerstown.
Don't worry about it, Kevin. It's part of the psychological aspect of warfare. "Blender Boat - Striking fear into the heart of the Allies since 2017"
My boats are always loud, maybe it needs more grease. As long as it works / doesn't bind or eat itself then I'm happy. I got some work done today. I trouble shot the bow sidemount that was firing intermittently. The likely cause I settled on was a T with larger than normal holes, that required the piston to be too high to not spurt, sometimes preventing a good feed. I replaced the T with a much better one, the old one will become a grease port or something. I used to do pre-purchase inspections of the T's and elbows at Home Depot/lowes when quality was more questionable, but at $7 a pop I will inspect future purchases. Tested all of the guns successfully in the boat. This is my first boat with 'big boy' solenoids, and I am very happy with the results. Figuring out how to get guns to shoot hard with poppets ends up making guns that shoot really hard (for one of my boats) with solenoids. I also played with the gearbox again. I moved the drive pinion back away from the drive gears to get a cleaner mesh. I also added a collar to one of the shafts, and flipped the drive gear around to hopefully get a more solid set up. Here is a picture, port shaft was the one giving me issues. Here is the gearbox cover /grease catcher over the top. There is a similar one for the motor. I'll get pictures of the full interior when it is sunny out to show the final arrangements I did some painting as well, starting to look more presentable Going out of town at the end of the week, so I will finish up over the weekend. All major systems are ready for battle now which is a good thing. Need to locate my waterline tape that has been MIA for a while...
Kevin, check out this place for gun parts. Very reasonable prices, Tees are like $2.30. https://bspcompany.com/
She is now ready for battle. I painted the waterline, finished deck magnets, added tethers, and added more internal armor for the batteries. Here are some pictures. I always like the look with waterline. Gave up on locating tape so I painted it on. Next to California that is prepped as a backup ship Bow sidemount. The mounting if this gun isn't optimal as I would like to get it closer to the middle of the barrette, but it will work for now Forward inside with 3.5 oz bottle Midships. I added 1/8" fiberglass rods to underside of deck to stiffen it up Motor area with fiberglass motor cover for the brushless outrunner. Pump slides out from its holder for pump screen cleaning between sorties Aft guns with foam in aft turret. Both aft guns stay in the ship, aft deck is removable but will stay installed on battle days pending any rudder or gun issues. Foam is a friction fit and keeps the water out for long reverse runs. I will have to add a second stern gun in later in the season for killer dual sterns like Charley's new setup. This setup should still be good with 75rd haymaker and the stern gun as a semi-stern sidemount since that aft deck hangs out at water level Props, rudder, and 'drag props' haha. The 'drag props' are shaped to provide upward force when going in reverse to keep the stern from being pulled under. They seemed to work during sea trials, as they keep the boat pretty level to allow for a long reverse engagement. I didn't get around to adjusting the rudder since I will probably end up making a new rudder all together to get the leading edge closer to the props. I'm looking forward to getting her out on the pond Saturday in Hagerstown. I worry slightly about my gearbox eating itself, but hopefully it holds together alright. Unfortunately it looks like battling will get in the way of typing for the month of May, 3 events over 4 weekends if everything goes to plan. I'm planning to use Seydlitz as the work horse for those battles, but I have California on ready standby. Had to replace another ESC, it was showing loss of control signal which sucks. Maybe a victim of copper sulphate, but who knows. Thanks for following along!
Looking good as usual. Question, on your drag disks, why so much thicker at the top vs the bottom? So it has less drag in reverse, and helps keep the stern from going under, by deflecting the water down?
Main objective is to push water down/stern up to keep the stern from going under, without impacting the forward drive. My drive shafts came out more angled/less leveled than I would have liked so I think that the boat would go straight under in reverse without them. I modeled them after stern planes on the sub sort of. I don't think the boat is close to 24 sec in reverse at 100% throttle so I think the drag difference is negligible /outweighed by the directional thrust difference on Kort props
Thread split. Please take all debate of drag props and legality to: https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/drag-props-and-debate-split-from-seydlitz-build.445238/
Thanks Nick for moving the thread. Seydlitz fared alright at the first battle this past weekend. Rained all day Saturday which was unfortunate. I had several component failures, a rudder servo immediately before the first sortie (that caused me to miss the sortie), and then loss of drive about 30 seconds into the second sortie. Swapped out the servo and ESC for a much better Sunday. I had the boat trimmed by the bow slightly, that caused water to pool in the front vice in the back by the pump. This gave the spectators some excitement as the boat assumed the 'post jutland' look, but after moving around she was able to pump out fine. I need to get used to the gun range. The aft deck is essentially at water level during battle, so a lot of my haymaker shots were going under or hitting hard area. I will have to snuggle the boat in with the allied ships a little closer next time. Changes I plan to make 1) Get a 5oz bottle vs 3.5. Ran out of CO2 twice after decent fills, so an order is in for a bigger bottle 2) Adjust trim to get the boat level 3) Eventually add a second stern gun. The other two Seydlitz's at the battle were set up that way and did massive damage. I've broken down the task of adding the solenoid/changing wiring/making gun/gun mounts into a series of smaller tweaks to chip away at the project. I might get it done before Ming's based on how productive I am during the week Overall Seydlitz is a great ship. I think several allied captains needed to change their shorts after being surrounded by three of them. I think I might have to build a Tiger next to help out the allied cause
