Hello to all who were with this venture in the late 80s and the beginning of the 90s. The group was known as the Civil Warship Combat Club or CWCC. It was a fun venture. Had many members all over the world. Had people contributing articles to a news letter called IRONCLAD. I now apologize for I left without warning I lost my mother in 1990. I moved to Lake County California. Then I got married and the rest was history. Things went on the sour side. You might as well say I was dead for those years of marriage. Divorced her and married again for the past 8 years. I still have the rules all the newsletters and even games that were developed by Dick Hargrave out of SOCAL. Thanks Dick for developing those games. Don't think I can get myself to start this again. Just ashamed that after I disappeared no one else carried the ball. I have to mention this also. Please do not be offended by my call name Union Scum. For those who were part of this group that was my alias. Many different names were used. Rebel Rouser was another. Anyone interested in talking about this I shall at least answer any questions that you may have.
my sister likes reenacting alot and if i was going going to be stuck with her during the times she goes I was going to build an scale model of the monitor with a watergun or maybe talcum powder behind a safety barrier so I would have something to play with as I sat around all day. then we moved and it will be some years before she can find another group again.
At the time that Union Scum organized the Civil Warship Group, I don't think that a lot of us locally really showed the appreciation that we should have for what was being accomplished. I remember seeing many of the Ironclads that had been built and they looked great. It was really something; the CWCC group grew twice as fast and constructed triple the number of ships that we were building in Western Warship at the time. Union Scum should not blame himself for the clubs downfall. I believe that it was also a time when our gun technology was not to a point where it needed to be, to make the Civil Warship Combat a reality. Today, with what we can now build, it very much could be a success once again.
Central Fl Moved from IL.... so about dead center of reenacting central but takes time for her to find a new unit.
Dedicated weren't you warspiteIRC. You know I always thought this period would be the closest thing to actual R/C ship combat. Don't have to worry about ramming as that was a tactic used. Spring loaded spar torpedoes. For brick forts they would be made out of plaster aperius. 'Twas not to be.
McSpuds & I thought about trying to create a spinoff from fast gun for Civil War ironclad combat about 10 years ago. We compiled a list of ships, stats, etc, figured out a scale that would have worked for everything from river ironclads to the HMS Warrior. Spuds even started building a couple. What we couldn't work around was: -At scale speeds the boats would be at the mercy of wind & wave -The lack of reserve buoyancy and low freeboard meant a bunch of "unseaworthy" sinks (like the real USS Monitor) -To make it realistic, we'd have to sheet the ships with 1/8" aluminum & use standard fastgun bb guns (IE nothing but bounces). So we gave up
I patterned it off of Big Gun. 4 different calibers. What I did though was change the air pressure for the type of guns used. Say a 15 inch smooth bore. 1/4" ammo 125lbs of pressure. 11" smooth bore 7/32" Ammo 100lbs of pressure. Fighting the CSS Virginia. 50lbs of pressure as that was what USS Monitor was told to do. They only used 15lbs of gunpowder as they could of used 30lbs So on for the rest of the guns.
Irnuke I forgot to ask. What scale were you doing this in? I chose two scales. 1/48th or 1/32nd. 1/48th was the one I really chose. The reason was at the time there was a company called The Maryland Silver Company that was getting plans from the archieves in DC. Most were in 1/48th already. Speed was not so hard as remember this is 1/48th scale. I will post the speeds later here for you if you would like. Maybe someone can revive the CWCC. My opinion and only that, best representation of R/C Naval Combat. For many reasons but, here is not the time and place to discuss the WHY.
