A suggestion on SS material, instead of using 1/16 ply, why not use extruded polystyrene foam that you can get from Lowes. It would be a simple task to cut it down to the right thickness with a hot wire cutter. Plus it is very light. Check out the photos in my Suffren build, the largest piece on the stern weighs less than 2 oz's. Just throwing a suggestion out there for you. BTW, Uritski looks awesome on the water. Makes me want to get my V-106 on the water.
Thanks Beaver. I do have some of the foam you are talking about. I have made a little bit of the super out of it (no pics yet). I may remake the plywood piece out of it as well. I will know more this weekend when I have most of the super done and can take her for another drive and see how she handles with the super on it.
Maiden voyage video HERE For those of you who are big gun saavy, How much do I need to improve the turning to be competetive, and best guess, how is the speed? It will be a while before I feel confident enough to throw her in a pond to get a real speed.
Got to make another run today, this time with about 85% of the superstructure in place. Stability seemed to be essentially the same as the last run I made with no superstructure, so that was promising. There is still considerable above the waterline weight to be added, mostly in the form of torpedo barrels, and some reinforcement of the superstructure. I made some minor headway on the breeches for the torpedo, fingers crossed! This thing will be really neat if I can get her to drive like she does now with working torpedos
To answer Beaver's earlier question, the advantage of using the 1/16" ply for the SS is that your SS is then extra space for things to stick up into. The volume of the hull is kinda tiny. In Othar's case, I needed the extra headroom for the top 1/4" of my tiny pump...
I definitely need that space also, the firing valve uses a small amount of space in there, and the torpedo barrels need some too. I did make an experimental version of mostly foam I can hollow out in areas to clear components, but I will see soon if I need to use the foam or plywood one. The foam version is 10 grams lighter... And that's 10 grams about as high above the waterline as possible, so it may make enough difference that I want to pursue it to completion if top heaviness is a problem once fully fitted out.
Had another successful Voyage today. I finally took the time to "waterproof" the rudder servo. It is a two piece unit, but it is cemented together, so it cannot be easily disassembled. Due to that, I decided to seal the case with Skotchkote, drill a small hole in the top, and fill it with mineral oil. I then sealed the hole with more Skotchkote. Seems to be effective. I drove her around for over 20 minutes, and experienced none of the servo jitter from previous sessions, even though it took on way more water than ever before. On a side note, I had her trimmed pretty well, and the weight to shoot for to float at scale waterline is 800 grams, or 1 lb 12 oz.
Alas, no gyro. I postponed the project because it was holding up the rest of the build. I will revisit it as necessary..... I think I have pretty much figured it out. I managed to get it to balance the boat for several seconds when one side of it was sat on a pencil. If the stability stays as it is or close, it wont likely be required.
With the nicer weather lately, I finally made the time to attempt to bend some torpedo barrels. These need a really tight bend in them to keep them low to the deck and still allow room to attach a breech at the bottom near where the barrel enters the torpedo. I used Cerrobend to fill the tubing, and used a die I had previously made to bend them around. The results weren't perfect, but I suspect will work out. The length still needs to be cut down once I have finalized exactly how the torpedo/ breech/ barrel interface will be configured. When finished, the barrels will rest on or near the deck surface.
