Yeah, I need to get outside to sand off the old paint and some sort of clear sealer from Canarias' deck and superstructure elements before she gets a fresh coat of paint. I'm starting her rebuild from the outside in. The balsa stops short of the ends of the ship leaving an obvious step so I'll be sheeting all the way to the bow and stern and sanding, which was how I sheeted her originally. The next outside project when the weather warms up - late April at this rate - is to bond the fiberglass decks to the Vanguard and Rodney hulls and mold and install decks for the Soviet CL Profintern. That project has been on the back-burner for several years. I'm really keen to try her in combat - should be effective for running and gunning with tandem rudders and BB cannons in bow and/or stern casemates close to the waterline (those were 6 of the 15 main armament positions). The ends of the barrels can be within 1/2" of the waterline at maximum depression. One option specifically for IRCWCC NATS Campaign Lite is to install 4 x 1/2 unit spurt guns in the bow casemates for base defence. I'll use the same spurt gun design developed for my I-400, capable of shooting either 2 or 5 BBs per shot versus the entire magazine load. In 2013-2014 I reworked the inaccurate Prointern hull plug I commissioned 7 years ago and donated it to Strike Models. Stephen Mogret called a few weeks ago and told me the hulls are about to go into production. The hull I'm using is the first of only two I made and corrected from the commissioned mold. Correcting the erroneous sponson shapes (their splinter shields went 1/2" too far down the sides of the hull) in fiberglass took so much time it wasn't worth making, correcting and selling the hulls. The new hulls from Strike should be really nice. They are 3/8" deeper than scale for added displacement and the splinter shields for the 4 main armament side sponsons and between the sponsons and fore and aft superstructure, a distinctive feature on the real ships, are molded as part of the hull. Part of the aft superstructure with the stern casemates is also molded.
Hey Bob, Do u still have the HMS/HMAS Albatross hull? And I was wondering if u can tell me about her. Thanks Nikki
Hi Nikki, I just sold one but laid up another two weeks ago for myself. If you want it I'll sell it - I've got several builds and refits on the go and probably wouldn't get it built until this time next year. The ship was built as a seaplane carrier by the Royal Australian Navy and could carry about half a dozen in the hangar under the high forecastle. A catapult was located at the bow and there were 3 cranes for recovering the seaplanes and moving them to and from the hangar. It was intended to be used as a territorial patrol vessel. You can find the dimensions on Wikipedia: about the length of a liberty ship, bulged hull, 4 x 4" guns (two on sponsons on the flight deck, 2 aft). In WWII it was part of a task force in the south Atlantic searching for Graf Spee. In that role it could be used as a 1.0 unit combat model. It was sold to the Royal Navy and converted into a fleet repair ship, repairing multiple ships damaged by the severe storm at Normandy shortly after D Day. In that role it would be used as an RC combat convoy ship. There's a photo of one of my Albatross hulls in the Indefatigable build thread. Check out the Neptun website for images of their 1/1250 model of Albatross.
