This is pretty much for curiosity's sake, but why arn't there more submarines at battles? I was watching a bunch of videos on You-tube, but I never saw any with submarines. (Unless it's just that I'm not SUPPOSED to see them!) It seems like you could make a successful submarine if you had a 1 unit gun and got good enough at diving.
small ships are hard to build. In 1/144th scale, a 800 foot battleship is about 6 foot long, a 200 foot ship is about 2 feet long, a submarine in about three inches across. It isn't easy to get much into three inches, much less a diving system and stability. I have a Surcouff hull and everytime I look at it I can't imagine getting a radio and motors in it. I just want to have a dynamic diving sub with no gun. Go fast forward and the planes drive it underwater... The Queens Own group runs 1/72nd scale and they used to have a very nice M-1 that worked pretty well.
As Phill said they are just two small. I have a 1/144 scale Model of a German Type VII D U-boat. It is a Mine layer sub of one of the most numerous built German U-Boats and I have thought a few times on making it into a Convoy ship, but it is just so bloody small I am not even sure I can get a receiver into it, much less any motors or a way to steer it.
Subs will be more buildable in the 96th scale battlestations group also. Still a challenge, but buildable. Mikey
Being that I have a 1/96 Surcouf plug assembling on a bench, and Mark having a 1/96 I-400 plug built, I'd say some Battlestations guys think that they'll work in that scale
The WWCC (my club) has several submarines built to 1/144 big gun rules. We have two I-400's and a Surcouf, the largest submarines until the nuclear age. They are all dynamic divers, with torpedo guns activated by a button in the bow: bump the target to fire the cannon. They can be deadly effective, but they are difficult to use due to their slow speed and even more difficult to make reliable due to their ridiculously small size and the need to fully seal them. It is a rare treat to see one in one sortie a year, and we have six to eight battle days with four sorties each day. We had a real problem once when one sank. You can find some photos on the WWCC photo gallery (and a second one). There used to be some higher resolution copies on the photo gallery here, but I don't know what happened to them. I have some video of them in action, but not enough good stuff for me to put together another Bintondo Bros Productions video.
I see. Dad and I built a dynamic diving Akula a couple years ago, and was hard to fit all the electronics in even though it is over 3 feet long (although I am planning on installing a water gun to attack canoes!) How do you make a sub's pressure hull out of 1/32" penetratable balsa?
You don't. The pressure hull is usually rigid plastic tube, with the outer hull of the sub fitted around it. With combat subs, I'd imagine that the outer hull includes air spaces that are clad with balsa. When these spaces are pentrated, the sub is in trouble, but the actual mechanism of the sub is protected by the inpenetrable pressure hull.
The subs I have seen are built to big gun rules, which allows a minimum armor of 1/16" balsa wood. These boats are dry-hull designs: the main hull is sealed and provides buoyancy, and there is no watertight cylinder inside. They also follow standard penetration rules, so the sides are mostly penetrable 1/16" balsa with ribs to provide strength and shape.
This is a little off topic, but like I said earlier I have a model Russian submarine that I someday hope to arm with a small watergun for hunting rival Scout canoes. Would one of the pumps from Battlers Connection be powerful enough? They look like they can put a stream of water pretty high into the air from what I have seen on you tube. Thanks!
The Battler's Connection pumps are pretty powerful, most likely sufficient for your needs. However, moving water that far and that fast takes a lot of energy, so you'd better hope your submarine has enough batteries to keep up with the demand.
I did something similar with my USS Salem last fall when I went camping out at a lake with some friends/family. They had a canoe they were running around in...I half flooded the Salem and chased em around using the pump to try and soak em. I have a large BC pump in there with a 1/2 unit restrictor, and was getting decent range out of it. Provided you have the battery to drive it and keep pumping it should be sufficient to your needs.
How is the best way to control the pump? Right now I am running the sub on a four channel futaba, so I would be using the right stick's left/ right axis to control the pump. It sounds like some people have been using ESCs to control them, this would be expensive but allow me to control range. Would I be able to use two ESCs off the same Rx? or should I just go with the old "servo and a switch" method?
Everything you need for a 144 scale sub or larger sub is here at http://www.caswellplating.com/models/gato.html
I am a member of The Queens Own Combat Warship Club which is a 1/72nd scale club, I have the Sainted Cliff Shaw's HMS M-1 which carried a 1/4" ball bearing cannon. The subs disappeared from our game because of the introduction of hedgehogs to the game. They placed the submarine at a tremendous disadvantage because one did not really need to hit the sub to score a sink. There has been recent discussion about bringing subs back since I have been working on the FNS Surcouf, and we have an operational DKM XXI ( I think that is the model). The German Boat fires torpedos, ( 2" long metal rods) from prototypical positions. The big problem that we have in getting submarines into the game is how to score them. The submarine in R/C combat. for the most part, has lost its primary weapon, the torpedo. The set up on the German Boat will fire a metal rod, that will cause a series amount of damage, but the range is limited to about 5-7 feet, and the ship will need to be running decks awash, which makes it a target. The heavy ships, like the Surcouf or the USS Narwhal with their large deck guns would have the striking power of a destroyer in our game. But they will be slow, handle poorly, and be very vulnerable on the surface. The big problem with submarines is determing how you will score them. The sub will operate one of two ways, dynamic or ballasted. The dynamic ship will use speed of boat with dive planes to submerge the boat. The static or ballasted ship will use ballast tanks to submerge the ship. If the dynamic ship takes a hit, fills with water, she is going to the bottom, and that is the last you will see of her. If the ballasted ship takes hits, it will not alter the ability of the ship, so how do you determine if she has been hit until after the battle? Now I know that you will all offer suggestions like a vertical thruster and thngs like that, but that is what it boils down to in combat. Right now, what we are working with is a ballasted ship with a sealed superstructure. If the superstructure takes hits, you submerge the boat, it will fill with water and you will loose the trim on your boat. You will still be able to recover your ship, and you will be able to determine that the boat has been hit and is sunk. We are also looking at removing the use of hedgehogs and operating the subs on the idea that they are just big slow destroyers. As it appears with our plans, they will function best in the island games and convoy games. Head up ship to ship fighting, they are too vulnerable.
Tachikaze, does the static-diving submarine have an outside hull plus a pressure hull? If so, there is your issue. Construct the static-diver like a destroyer with an excellent deck seal and a ballast tank, and you will be able to damage it and sink it just like any other boat. I remember hearing about the Hedgehog on another forum, and thought it too excessive. A better ASW weapon (if regular cannons aren't enough) is a 2- or 3-foot length of fishing line with a large treble hook on the end. The basic strategy is you drive over the submarine like you're making a depth charge attack, and if you hook the submarine then you tow it in to shore. You know the submarine is "sunk" when you pick it up and hand it over to its captain, and say "here, I got ya." I have always thought that submarines are not very suitable for front-line battling against the best of the best. I consider it a coup de grace, a weapon to finish off disabled ships. It's too slow and unmaneuverable to chase down most of the ships on the pond, but the torpedo armament is great for dealing a devastating blow. In the WWCC, I would ue it as a campaign game weapon: sail a regular battleship or cruiser until a ship on the other side breaks down, gets mossed, or runs aground, then quickly bring out the sub. While everyone else disrupts rescue attempts, the submarine moves in for the kill.
In real life, hedgehogs were a ship-based weapon based on a mortar that launched explosive warheads ahead of a ship. If one of the hedgehogs hit an object like a submerged submarine, it would detonate. A single hedgehog impact was usually enough to sink a sub. This is different than a depth charge that exploded upon reaching a certain depth whether it hit anything or not. I'm not sure how this kind of weapon is modeled in r/c combat, but I'm sure one of the Bug Gun people can enlighten us.
