This has been a hotly debated topic. Art Buckland, of the NZBG, had initially built his Shimakaze with twin rudders as he was convinced it had two. Art, though, is a tireless researcher, and he eventually discovered a Japanese source that let him view (but not make public) private photos from WWII. As I recall, one of these was a drydock view of Shimakaze, and it showed one rudder. Art had announced this on the Battlestations! mailing list, and that he ripping out the twin rudders and put in a single rudder. This has never been confirmed by another source, the photos have never been made public, and no Japanese documents survive showing Shimakaze below the waterline. I have no doubt that Art is right, however, and that the Shimakaze had one rudder. Art has unearthed enough research over the years on other topics for me to know that his research is impecible, and his sources authentic. Carl
the only reason I ask is that there are several ship-list that say one rudder while other's say two. but if you're good with the info you have I'll do the same (one rudder is easier to do anyway and no, tug, the plans show the profile but when it shows th stern you can't tell if its one or two rudders.
Mark, I understand completely. There are always discrepencies with some ships due to conflicting sources. I just happened to know about the private photos for this one (although I've never seen them myself). So many documents were destroyed to prevent the US from getting them, and even more lost or discarded as old news over the years that there are many questions we'll never know the answer to. On the flip side, it's suprising sometimes how much information is still in the hands of private collectors, and more of it comes to light each year as these veterans die and their families kindly make these private collections public. So there's always hope! But yes, I am building my Shimakaze with a single rudder. Carl
up-date on plug...got ruined, need to re-do but have wood and frames ready to cut just need to be home long enough to do it. will also be trying to build it out of woo just for ha-has
Uploading som pics of the nearly compleated framework, still need to cut out the rest of the sub deck fit the bilge keels, but for the most part the cutting is done. Some thoughts on how I'll set it up. Propulsion-1 motor with a gear box turning 2 counter rotating shafts to cut down on weight along with a Mtronics esc. 1 rudder and the smallest low-profile servo I can get away with. Power source, whatever will fit after everything else is in and will give me the greatest powere to weight ratio. The 5" gun turrets will be armed but will be fiexed (no rotation or depression at this time), and will be a standard home brew piston type gun. Will most likely use clippard valves to fire them to save on wieght. The torp problem... how to make them all fit?? well I'll be doing more research but for now the lightest thing I can come up with is to arm the center TT bank with a single barrle Arizona type cannon with rotation and load it up for 15 shots. The other 2 TT banks would be decrative only. with all that being said, what size CO2 botle will be needed to fire all the guns without running out of gas before all the ammo is spent? and what are the dimentions of those 3.5oz bottles?
pics are in the filemanager under my name in subfolder Shimakaze. BTW, Carl hows you boat comming along, any tid bits of info on the weight issues? I'll be sending Art (down in NZ) an e-mail tonight to see if he finished his and how he was able to set it up.
added some more photos of the compleated frame, I built in the bilge keels to give extra support to the frame for the batteries and wepon system
Looking good, Mark! I finish the current round of clinical rotations in 2 weeks, then it's boat-building madness! I can't have you being the only man with battleships and destroyers! I like that you have the bilge keels as structural members. Snazzy, may have to steal the idea
I build all my boats that way (including subs), it makes placing the keels easier than if I did it later
I expect so! I've not put bilge keels on to any of my ships that had them in real life. But with the bigger scale, I want to look more scale, and I think that a bigger scale will give more real-life hydrodynamic effect than the small ones.
Hey Mark, To keep the weight down I'm only arming one set of guns and one or two of the torp launchers. I'm drawing up plans for a home-brew TT launcher made out of machined PVC, but haven't fully worked it out yet. The torpedoes will be plastic, too. Also, I was planning on using Li-poly batteries to keep the weight down, as well as a Palmer Pursuit regulator. However, I may give up on my 3.5oz CO2 bottle and go with a 25g cartridge instead, again to save weight. Regrettably, I haven't set foot in the garage since September. But I have the whole week off next week (forced shutdown at work over Thanksgiving), and I'm hoping to get back to work on her then. Keep up the good work! Carl
hull is now sealed with WS epoxy all over and is glassed with2oz cloth on the bottom. Carl we should put our heads together to come up with a way of fully arming these babies, I'm ordering a light wieght composit reg soon and have some mold being made up for the gun turrets and TT launchers (let me know if you're interested and we'll work something out)
some more progress made, will be ordering all running gear, speedcontrol, motors, light wieght reg tomorrow (sorry about the size, used a different camera) the SS is about 90% done and the ship wieghs in at about 2#s
. Hey Mark - I finally find your build and now that it's found, I can't see a thing. Wuz up wit dat? Interesting the way you guys build these hulls. Rich
