This is my "other" Gneisenau. This is the ship I will be taking to the MWCI Southeast Spring Regional & IRCWCC nats this year. Picture below shows the deck/subdeck dry fitted into the hull. It was a bit of a pain trying to get it to fit properly, this is the first ship I've tackled (from scratch) that has had casements. Prop shaft & rudder installed. Deck/Subdeck cut & glued together, ready to go into hull. Interior shot of rudder post, propshaft & gearbox glued into hull. In retrospect, the propshaft was a little too long, if I ever do a refit on this ship, I would like it about 2" shorter. Subdeck/deck assembly glued into hull. I was determined to use gears for steering, and this is what I came up with. The first gear is attached to the rudder via setscrew, the two in the middle rotate on brass shafts that can be pulled for easy removal, and the last is attached to a traxxas wp servo underneath. It does take up a bit of space, but, being one of the largest class two hulls, I can be a little bit sloppy. Stern cannon fill tube comes up just aft of where the last smoke stack is. I am planning on being able to reload the cannons quickly with the decks still on (primarily for campaign). It also functionally holds down the gearbox shield. You can also see the two Turnigy brushless motors I plan on using for the drive & pump. Pump is a Camurati type. Hull is cut out. This hull definatly, difficult to cut. I of course, used a reinforced dremel cutting wheel (the black one). Where the cutting wheel couldn't cut deep enough, I had to use a Bosch 1/2" metal/wood oscilating cutting bit to finish the job. Some of the windows are too short/narrow to cut with either, for those I had to use a tungston/carbide cutting bit meant for hardened steel. Very happy to have finished cutting out the windows for this today! This is a shot with ruler showing the thickness of one of the pieces that was cut out of the hull.
The KIP solonoids have been hooked up to the new BC firing board, tested (without CO2), working great. Wiring harness for battery (2x esc, 1x solonoids/firingboard) complete. Brushless drive & brushless pump bench tested, working well. Installed the waterchannel (foamy floor padding). Finally got around to sealing the top half of the foredeck with west system. I also managed to get a couple of the new Grey Wolf Squadron Scharnhorst class smokestacks while down in Georgia last weekend. Last night I cut out the interior shielding and fit it into the hull tonight. Its not attached to the inside yet, but the showerpan liner I used is giving lil Gneisy the "new ship smell". The bow has a small piece of wooden ply wedged down the middle.
She's lookin' dead sexy! The rest is in the design stage, and will probably get printed next weekend after I get more grey filament
Absoluteck the ship looks great. I was wondering how you were able to bend your magazine wilhout collaping the inner wall of the tube. Did you fill the tube with something like sand. I see from your picture you had to use heat on the copper but what did you use as a mandrill to bend the tube around?
SMS Gneisenau Parts List Futaba 7C Transmitter OrangeRx Futaba FASST Compatible 8Ch 2.4Ghz Receiver S-Spec Turnigy 450 H2218 Brushless outrunner 2100KV ZIPPY Flightmax 8000mAh 2S1P 30C HobbyKing ® ™ Brushless Car ESC 60A w/ Reverse HobbyKing® ™ Programming Card for Car ESC Nylon XT60 Connectors Silicon wire 10awg & 14awg wire Traxxas #2075 Waterproof Digital Servo Williams Regulator (No longer available) Catalina 3.5oz CO2 Bottles (Battlers Connection & Strike) Camurati Pump 1-Unit Pump outlet Assorted Clippard pneumatic fittings & hose 50bb coil & 50bb straight (well, not anymore) magazine cannons with tight tolerance barrels Dual Firing Board (XR-4D) 6V KIP Solonoid Hose Quick Connects Rudder Gears, Class 3 Rudder & Rudder Post West System 105 Epoxy Resin & 206 (slow) hardner 1/4" 5-ply aircraft plywood & 1/8" 6-ply aircraft plywood 1.5" 4-blade (then 3-blade) 25 pitch props 1/32" Balsa from LHS (Local Hobby Stores) OO or OOO Silkspan Sig Nitrate Aircraft Dope Acrylic Paint
Ordered some new stuff for lil Gneisenau. Going to run 4s LiPO via two 2s 6000mAH hardcase packs. New drive motor will be a KD 36-12XL Brushless Outrunner 720KV, which is actually much closer to the needed RPM than the old discontinued 2100kv on 7.4v. New pump motor will be aB28-47-13S Brushless Inrunner 3000kv, detuned slightly of course, main thing was to have one less spinning thing in the small hull space.
Also ordered a new 5 blade 1.5" prop from Strike. Hopefully it will help with stopping better so I don't run over anybody's sub in at the May battle. Planning on installing two new straight mag (well, custom bent) cannons as the front coil takes up too much space, and the rear cannon was too much of a pita to remove when I wanted to take the test deck off. I'm going to try using clippard push connect fittings instead of the usual brass barbs. Also planning on redoing some of the wiring in the ship as I have since it was first built. Learned how to solder better, and acquired nicer wire to use.
So the new ESC and props finally showed up. ESC is really for something else, but I will probably test it out in lil Gneisenau first.
So the other night I pulled this out and decided it was time for a refit. I've already taken off all the old balsa siding which was quite hard and removed most of the internals, and the old rudder servo mount which took up most of the back half. I think I will be replacing the forward deck hatch as the current one is badly warped. I have purchased a low profile servo so I can mount it much closer to the stern, thereby saving enough room to mount a modified coil cannon. I might try installing a lower kV brushless motor on the main drive as the current one has to be throttled down to 63% to make speed (it's not a priority though). I need to make a housing for the pump to hold it in place and also to keep stuff safe from the spinning out runner motor. Most importantly, all the wiring is getting redone. Will see if I get anywhere with this project this year. I know my track record is not great with getting stuff done.
