What do you mean, "never finished"? Gascoigne was finished about 10 years ago, saw one battle, and then sat in a garage for a while. She's undergoing refit/modernization and will see action this weekend in California!
So if you haven't guessed by now this is my Jean Bart build. Since I've taken to painting my boats black I've dubbed her "Black Bart". lol This is mostly a picture dump. I received the hull from @bsgkid117 late 2020 and battled her for the first time last weekend in Hagerstown. Brand new Bart hull with the Courbet nested comfortably inside. Prop shafts and drag disks. Plastic rudder chain breaks. .25 stainless chain is ram impervious. Belt drive 775 drive. Subdecks installed along with bilge keels. Power distribution board. Power in. Pump ESC with wires deleted. Pump ESC mount. Older picture but here's the motors installed. 6.5 Sq. In rudder made from ABS. I went a little crazy with the solenoids for this. These are 1\4in NPT 5/32 oriface Kips that I rewound the coils to open at 24v. Excessive? Much. lol Gun mocked up. Direct solenoid connection for max airflow. One Tee assembly kit ready to assemble. Guns going on the deck. Made new decks from 1/8in ABS sheet. Really nice stuff. All air, power, and signal connections come out to the front of the deck. Makes it easier to disconnect the deck. Bus bar for the solenoid power from the gun boards. Hinged turret covers. Tests in the pool. Runs really well. And cut out in preparation for regionals. That's all I have for tonight.
Black Bart at Nats I like big boats, I cannot lie. First off, this year’s Nats was the most enjoyable Nats I’ve been to. The battling was super competitive and the scores remained close all week. Bart was a hoot to drive. Being my first 24sec battleship, dual sidemounts, and her large size made for quite the learning experience, albeit an easy one. Her size and speed made getting out of bad situations easy. I could just push my way out of the pack of Nagatos and Yammer trying to entrap me. Overall she’s a fun ship to drive. IMO. So, to start out, here she is sheeted and ready for Nats. Painted in my signature black with white bootstripe. One noticeable difference from her first battle in Hagerstown is she has superstructure courtesy of @bsgkid117. Looks pretty good. So the good things. 24v drive worked great all week except one motor dying for unknown reasons. I was able to get a replacement 775 motor from @Kevin P. which was much lower rpm. It effectively made it into a single shaft ship which was great for turning but she was also deemed the birthplace of Rock 'n Roll afterwards. Lol The Holmes Hobby ESC performed great, much better than the Spark I used at Hagerstown. Forward/reverse was instantaneous and acceleration was very good. Battery usage was good too. I fit 20ah of 6s LiPo that was easily enough for two sorties. All week of nats I usually didn't use more than 50% of power. Damage control was excellent. Was never in danger of sinking the entire week. The most serious damage I took was in a 1v1 with Kevin's Missouri. I had maybe one pump going 3/4 stream and the second pumping just a little. For reference this is full pumping capacity. This was how shot up she was after the 1v1. I forget what the score was, something like 60 belows but the holes were big as you can see in these pics. And in one sortie I took this nasty ram and never noticed per the pump stream. Guns worked pretty well. I want to make some modifications to the gas supply. The guns need a bit more air available for the duels to fire how I'd like them. Besides that they worked well and put holes in people. Was able to catch @kgaigalas and empty A turret creating this mortal damage. Also put Kevin down in a 1v1. Pretty nasty damage. Couple bad things. The ABS decks created a few interesting issues. Biggest problem was heat expansion. On the way to nats the decks bowed into an arch over the hull from the heat. Fixed this by trimming the decks down but it is an issue for those thinking about using ABS. They're also pretty flexible. I bought some carbon fiber rods to glue to the decks to stiffen them up. Something else to keep in mind with plastic. Other thing I don't like is how cramped the guns are. Makes work on the guns difficult but doubt I'll change them. Direct solenoid guns aren't really worth the headache I'm beginning to think. Overall, great ship. Had a blast diving it all week. She will probably be my main nats boat for a long time. Couple things to change right now are stiffeners for the decks and added expansion tanks for the guns. Otherwise pretty happy with the build. I look forward to seeing what kind of damage it takes to put her down with the dual pumps. That's all for now. Vive La France
I wouldn't be worried, just figure on making them slightly smaller so there's room to expand in the heat.
Direct Solenoid guns are a PITA but they are neat with how much direct gas flow you get to your cannons. Now that you have the regulators switched around as we talked about, and you have basically infinite gas on tap, you can fire the cannons as quickly as the solenoids reset basically. I wouldn't direct solenoid every boat. I wouldn't direct solenoid most boats. But this boat needs serious "oh, shit" guns or you'll be Jap food. Really glad you like the ship. I knew when I first started building 1.0 that she had potential that exceeded my building abilities. You've shown that potential, really set the bar high for my rebuild....thanks a lot
Well, the 2022 inaugural battling season is over for Jean Bart. She battled in 4 events, one of those being Nats, and performed very well. Had some issues with drive motors dying which is mostly my fault for lack of maintenance in corrosive environments. Otherwise Bart was a very competitive ship. The guns are very fast, powerful weapons and are performing even better than at Nats after I changed the gas supply arrangement. On that note, the A turret gun angle has proved to be frustrating. The guns were angled way too far forward. Trying to get them on target often got me more damage than I dished out. I'm working on moving them closer to perpendicular, as seen here. For our recent battle in Hagerstown I installed new drive motors to replace both original motors that had died at previous events. The reason for failure was corrosion on the brushes causing them to fall off. One motor had died at Nats and replacing it with a slower motor created a surprisingly well performing ship. Turning was better than before with no sacrifice of acceleration or stopping power. With two new motors, and the shafts once again spinning at the same speed, I feel like the ship doesn't perform as well as it had with one hot shaft and a slow shaft. Sounds crazy but I may install another slow motor and run with it. She's well due for a resheeting now. The bow is nothing but paper. At Hagerstown I was getting huge holes from paper blowouts. My poor driving didn't help prevent this. I ate much of Kevin's Agincourt's sterns. PSA, don't chase that ship. Anyway, pulled Bart into her winter birthing. The new shop is not any more spacious but I hope to outfit it in an efficient manner. Wood has been acquired from work for the workbench as I plan out where I want everything to go. Should be fun and I hope to create a sort of studio that I can create more content for this hobby.
Man, you guys go printing the rangefinders into the 6" turrets, and now I'm going to have to update my model to keep up .... or something.
It's gonna be a light year for the Bart. I'll be going over her, making slight improvements and testing some new configurations. I've begun changing the gas feed on the guns away from direct solenoid to slightly remote solenoid. I've come to dislike the shear struggle it is to work on these guns, troubleshoot issues, or modify their angle off the boat. Also, trying out some new props as well. (Thanks @SteveT44 !) They're printed nylon, 5 blade, undirectional korts. I'm interested to see what difference they make.
How do they attach to the shaft? Is that some sort of threaded insert??? (Depending on how they work out, I might be interested in some)