Anyone know how or have technical diagram showing the construction of underwater TT? Torpedo in 1/96 scale are represented with 1/4"*6" projectiles. looking to arm 6 to 10 of these on the Yamato (Skulski notes this in his book). would prefer to have multiple shot mags, 6 torpedos per gun would be fine due to the rule 1 shot per barrle every 5 min.
Nothing perfect, but this guy has a multi-shot torpedo launcher in his scale sub. http://www.rc-submarines.com/id47.htm There are some interesting links on there that may be helpful as well.
Well, reloading a .25"*6" projectile without some sort of external actuation via servo or other mechanism is going to be quite a challenge. Sorry, can't help you there. In the WWCC, "underwater" torpedoes are required to exit the hull at least .25" above model waterline, although why I'm not completely sure. Other Big Gun clubs allow them to exit wherever they really did. The actual weapons used to fire the torps are standard Arizona cannons, one per launcher. Another important detail is that the magazine is sealed, because the interior of the cannon floods while you're at sea. Effective range is very short, probably 6" or less, using a single .25" ball. Fire more balls or a rod and the range will increase, but not by much. If you want its pretty easy to modify the breech to fire two or more balls per trigger pull, but you'll never get it to fire a single .25"*6" rod. But thats really not an issue, because several 1.4" balls fired from the same barrel underwater will act almost exactly like a rod, only its reloadable. The WWCC used to allow the use of .22 caliber projectiles as torpedos for submarines. They would tumble in the water and knock out a large chunk of balsa, so the rules were changed so they must fire backwards to reduce tumbling. I recall the captain of one submarine mentioned that without tumbling, the projectiles had a tendency to get stuck in the hole and plug it up. The Queens Own allow torpedo boats to have .25"*scale length torpedos. They have a Schnellboot with torpedos. There is a picture of a victim in the battle damage section of photos. I believe those have a tendency to tumble as well. In summary: If you want to fire a 1/4"*6" projectile, don't expect it to reload. It would be for point defense against pesky destroyers only. If you want to automatically reload your torpedoes, then modify an Arizona gun to fire multiple balls per trigger pull, and seal the magazine. Of course, you have to be careful not to make torpedos too powerful, or the game will be dominated by torpedo armed destroyers.
good point, I think I'll go with 10 single shot torpedos. Tug gave me a link to a sub builder who makes 1/96 scale torps and launchers and tells how to build them. So I'm going to give it a shot with some mods to the torp design.
Mark, I've done quite a bit of research into propel powered torpedoes like you're referring to. While propel is more than adequate for torpedo propulsion, it will not have sufficient power to penetrate balsa at a range of more than a few inches. I came to this conclusion by using some rocket simulation software, and calculating the torpedo's kinetic energy at a given point. I ran many simulations, and developing best case scenarios. To determine penetration, I came up with a minimum KE/area, based off some fraction of the energy of a 1/4" round at max penetration velocity. While I do not remember the statistics off hand, I believe I set the min KE for penetration at 20% of a 1/4" round at 200 ft/s. The area of a cross section of the ball was then factored in to allow me to test larger torpedo diameters. The biggest problems faced in making a torp penetrate at a range of several feet is the drag of the water,thus limiting it's velocity, and the fact that a torp must be less dense water (absent active depth control) so the torp cannot maintain a significant amount of kinetic energy. Even under the best case scenario, where a torp is accelerated by CO2 to it's top speed in the tube, and assuming a higher pressure gas (freon(l) at 150psi), the drag of the water prevents sustaining a speed sufficient to penetrate balsa. However, at lower speeds (I forget off hand, but I believe it was on the order of 20 ft/s), ranges of 30+ feet could be achieved by 1:72 scale torps. The solution I have recently been working on is to use a propel powered torp as a delivery vehicle for a 1/4" spurt gun. Keep in mind, however, that I will be battling 1:72, and will still be exceeding scale torp size to accomplish this. Right now I'm looking at 1/2"OD x8"long, though this could possibly be pushed down to 3/8" or even 1/4" OD in the future. At this point, QO seems willing to allow these exceptions of scale to bring running torpedoes into the game.
I won't be ready to install torps for at least another year, during said time I'll be conducting some experiments and will be most interested in others results/input as well
this is kinda stupid but when i heard about torpedoes is the hobby i thought the there is like a little clip or what ever and a tube and that is hooked up to the co2 cystem
It's not a stupid question, Sean. There are several ways to do torpedoes. In 1/114, it'd be hard to get a torpedo launcher that's not really a cannon, like the ones Carl describes.
Took some searching (not on the home pc => no bookmark). The page is at: http://rc-submarines.com.c10.previewyoursite.com/id47.htm I'm saving the word documents as a hedge against it moving again (not at the original addy iirc)
They impact just like any other projectile and cause damage as a result of the kinetic energy of the projectile. I believe somebody was, however, looking at the idea of designing a spring-loaded "warhead" that would expand on impact to increase the effective amount of damage for a prospective self-propelled torpedo in order to more closely simulate the damage that the explosives would have caused with the real thing.
many people have looked into it, but no one has yet (to my knowledge) found a triggering mechanism that would withstand the impact of being launched off the deck of a ship and then trigger upon hull impact -Greg
A sharp end would make it more likely to go all the way through the hull and not wind up hanging out.
also, keep in mind the safety aspects. Eventually, someone will get hit in the leg by one... and sharp would not be the best thing in that instance. (just trying to preempt the usual comments that come up every few years on this one about fishooks, barbed harpoons and the like and keep the thread useful)
Harpoons! This could evolve into a 17th C. whaling scenario! Capt. Ahab vs. Moby Dick in R/C! When I thought I might want to build an Essex someday, I wasn't thinking back that far! [:0] JM
Seems to me that torpedo bulges were designed to reduce the damage taken by a ship and since there are no real torpedo bulges (or are there in big gun?), wouldn't using that type of "warhead" make torpedos too powerfull? J
But if we can build scale Harpoons, then the modern NATO & US client ships will be worth building 8) J, no, we get no bulges. Main reason is that we'd have to jack up gun velocity to compensate.
