11/06/2020: FRAG1 Well, it’s been a long time coming, but here it is. This is the USS Idaho I started on Jan 20, 2019. She took 19 months to get on the water, and has had her first post-combat refit. The Idaho is a 5.5 unit, 26 second boat; typical of the US Standard-type battleships. The plans used to build her were Profile Morskie’s excellent 1945 configuration. Length is 52.08 inches, with an 8.83 inch beam. She masses approximately 23 pounds to reach scale waterline. Given some of the hull’s characteristics, I prefer to run her at scale waterline. Sure, it exposes a little bit more of the hull to fire, but once you see the boat in action, you’ll understand why it’s worthwhile. I’d originally used her as a test platform for a bigger version of an interesting cannon configuration I’d developed with Texas, but have since determined it’s not the most appropriate layout for Idaho and have reconfigured the cannons to suit the boat’s advantages. Whereas the Texas isn’t necessarily designed for a stand-up fight, Idaho’s current configuration is purely for close action and retention of freedom-of-maneuver in this non-permissive environment. As such, she has a Brawler configuration, with stern sidemounts, two pumps, and a funny gun in the bow, which fires right in the crook of her portside casemate. Bob H. and Tyler H. of Port Polar Bear both had a hand in optimizing the gun layout, the pumps for laminar flow, and a whole slew of other construction features, so they get a lot of credit for how splendidly this boat turned out. As well, Kas G. of GLAS helped me significantly with tips on fabricating the hull. So, my general scheme for this stem-to-stern is as follows: Preamble (This thing you're reading) Chapter 1: exterior views Chapter 2: The deck plates Chapter 3: The Innards Chapter 4: The Hull Any further Chapters will address refits, and barring a major refit, will endeavor to show only the modifications, with minimal rehashing. I’m sure you don’t like reading about kicking dead horses as much as I like avoiding doing so. My language regarding refits and configurations are based upon the Army’s Armor nomenclature for upgrade schemes to the M1114 HMMWV. I found it amusing as a soldier, and am therefore stealing it. FRAG0: as-built configuration (which, as you can see, is absent. This S-T-S starts out with the FRAG1) FRAG1: first major refit FRAG2: Second major refit (and so on) My hope is that this S-T-S will show the progression of the Idaho as I learn to use her more effectively over the course of her lifespan. Compared to Texas, Idaho is more durably-built from the outset in order to yield a 25 year lifespan. I haven’t heard of any other New Mexico class STBs on the water, but am aware of at least two currently under construction. I like unique boats, and after taking her into a full weekend of battling in the knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth style of Port Polar Bear, I wouldn’t ever trade her in for a CandyCornia, Weedorado, or Pennsylvania. New Meowxico is the best of the STB hulls, and you can’t change my mind. So. Without further ado, The Spud Launcher.
Chapter 1: Exterior views Here she is. So. Aside from seeing the slender bow, You’ll see my biggest flaw right there in the profile of the hull. We’ll talk about that later. It’s purely aesthetic, except when Mike comes over with his North Cackalacka and puts a quarter-sized hole in that sharp bulge transition. Then you have a huge ramjet shoving water into the hull, and the two pumps really get put through the ringer. I’ll touch on this some more later in Chapter 4, particularly how to avoid making this same mistake, and what I’m going to do to address it in the FRAG2 refit. Here, you can see the funny gun in all its glory, tucking right into the casemate nook. I’m not going to disclose the ideal combat range of the cannon, since I would much prefer my fine axis friends to discover it in the most lovely way possible. @Bob H. helped me lay it. You should be familiar with his work. Here’s the midships. I tried to find a happy medium between the extremes of detail, so that I could have a handsome, yet gruff aesthetic. There are many good bits for a marksman to try and pick off, yet the major components are either replaceable, or highly durable. Here’s the aft deck with the lovely sidemounts and the aft superstructure. And the stern, with the pertinent spinny-twirly things and the flippy-flappy thing. A close-up of the 1.5 inch drag plates behind the 1 inch outboard props, the 1.5 inch 40 pitch BC props, and the Class 5 rudder with a 60/40 post positioning. Note the gap between the blades. These BC props are going to be replaced by 1.65 inch props here soon. Acceleration and performance are good with the 1.5 props, but the new ones will hopefully be better. For all intents and purposes, the entire thrust cone is covered by the rudder during turns. In spite of being a lot larger than Texas, Idaho can still turn inside of her. Mostly because Texas is my first boat and turns like a puking dog. If the rudder rule change happens then the rudder coverage should grow enough to keep up with the bigger props. If not, then I’ll have traded a tad bit of maneuverability for better acceleration. Overall, the stern is far more slender than I had imagined it would be, and is actually a far greater ram danger than the bow. Still not as bad as those French dreadnoughts, but still. Gotta be careful in reverse. Here’s the top view of the bow. Note the funny gun’s right in the casemate notch. Here’s a close-up of the Funny Gun. There’s the hood popped for tweaking, etc. I made the cast for each of the turrets by hand, and have several spares of each And the aiming plate that is integral to Turret A. This is a pretty cool feature. I’ll show more of it later It’s plywood with a filed channel for the brass tubing that holds the cannon barrel. There are four Neodymium magnets holding it in place, and the underside has a block of foam to further hold it in place. It works out darn well in practice. No gun wiggle whatsoever, and it acts as armor for the barrel (speaking of which, I removed half of the tubing armor for visibility purposes) A somewhat decent Picture down the barrel line. Here’s the loading end of the forward cannon. Note the hatches on both sides of the Superstructure. It takes a few minutes to do it, but I can switch things around in the funny gun. Also. The rescue float spool with metered ice fishing line and the Laminar flow pump outlets Now. I know many of you have a hankering for shooting off fine details. And I have a thing for being able to switch from Detail Queen to shiv-wielding Hood Rat. And if I feel like getting them shot off, note the materials are super cheap and easy to replace. Just like all of those resin cast turrets. Also. Bonus points if you can identify that feather. And here’s the rescue float. It’s block foam with plywood layers. I know you’re wondering about the bare brass tubing coming out on the bridge and on top of this float. That’s where the ship’s rangefinder was, and they serve as the mounts for the video cameras I have, which are amusingly similar in size and shape to the rangefinders on Idaho. This is a deep sea fishing swivel to attach the rescue line Now, there are three magnets and a block holding the float in place. It detaches easily under sinking conditions, and holds itself in place rather well when it gets shot. I’m sure you saw the BB modification to the float that somebody made a bit ago. The Block screwed onto the deck is solid sugar maple. Delightfully Bulletproof. Notice C turret is popped and that the barbette is solid Plywood. Same for D turret. It adds a negligible amount of top weight, but the aft deck is built to allow for zero water infil, even under serious maneuver, and even when the stern is being run under by a major capital ship doing her best to run her under. A lesson I learned from Texas. (End Chapter 1)
Chapter 2: The Deck Plates So. There are three deck plates. I have made it such that the bow deck plate almost never has to be removed, and FRAG2 or FRAG3 will try and do the same for the aft plate. Right now, the only reason I remove the aft plate is to reload the two sidemounts. So. The funny gun’s solenoid is the only thing in the bow. That’s all she wrote. I have the room to mount a total of four solenoids in there if I wanted to, but that is insane, and I will refrain from doing so. So here’s the main deck plate. Holds the funny gun and the main superstructure. If you’ll note, the conning tower, which on the STBs was made of 13 inch thick armor, is made of foam. The captain who destroys the conning tower gets a beer. The Bridge tower is made out of maple boards, and the deck levels are birch plywood. They have been fiberglass reinforced. So far, sugar maple has been doing well against BBs. For the main superstructure deck, I basically just layered plywood and carved out the core. It’s thick enough to stand the test of time, and still light. The 5”/38 DP single mounts are all resin cast. The funnel is foam that has been glassed over. It’s going to take shots, and that’s fine. Now, the DP mounts are more than just pretty things. They are effectively top knobs for the brass tubing I use to reinforce the superstructure. You can see one of the screws which holds the SS together. Now here’s the bottom view. Yes, I have cool guy high-flow guns. Yes, I will be doing a full disassembly, parts inventory, and links for my guns. We’ll get to those details in Chapter 3. The overview though, is that the nylon tubing is awesome, and if it gets shot, it’s super cheap to replace in like 30 seconds, so I don’t even armor my magazines. The armor would be more expensive than the nylon! I use PTC reducers for the end cap, so no sophisticated drilling or macgyvering needed. You can see the Maple block that makes up the bottom of the aft superstructure. There’s a neodymium magnet in the top of the block which lines up with a magnet on the float. Here’s the closest thing to a squirrel’s nest as you’ll find on this boat. Both solenoids easily jack into the wiring harness, and pneumatic line. Click click snap and she’s ready. Again, nylon tubing and such. D turret has the 1.5 unit magazine, since Tyler and Bob wouldn’t stop pestering me about putting the most ammo on the lower of the two sidemounts. I have found that humoring them usually results in big positive effects. Once I figure out how to get the mags reloaded without even pulling this deck, I will do just that. But for now, it takes minimal time and effort to reload, and the clear magazines allow me to check ammo loadout, and spot jams. (End Chapter 2)
Chapter 3: The Innards!!! Here’s what makes the boat go. These pictures have it all. You can see the pneumatic lines running to and from the solenoid. Because the funny gun remains full bore ¼” OD all the way to the gun, it’s running a higher flow than I’m normally used to handling, as well as being a gun in which one is expected to make 15-20 trigger pulls in rapid succession. I slapped an expansion tank in there along with a one-way valve to keep up the fire. We’ll talk about that battery in a second. The bags of lead shot in there are a current project. Since I just recently reorganized the boat’s mass, I had to install bigger ballast blocks forward, and will be likely taking her out before the lake freezes in order to check the trim. Once that’s done, I will mix the lead shot with epoxy A La McSpuds and pour it in. The Battery is a 6 Ah high flow hard case LiPO battery which supplies my pumps. Using a carving knife designed to carve bowls and spoons, I managed to get this contour out of the balsa infill between the ribs. That top plate is 1/8” Maple. We’ll talk more about it in Chapter 4. Here’s the empty Bow. Check out the main armor, along with Frame 5 which acts as a cross member under the subdeck. Again, 25 year lifespan goal. Here you can see where I switched from pet-resistant screen and have a huge chunk of ¼” thick Lexan carrying through to the extreme tip of the bow. I probably should have used thinner Lexan, because occasionally, a BB will hit it, and bounce right back out of the hull, making a huge hole. I will probably put some kind of thin padding on it if I don’t rip it out and replace it with maybe a 1/8” piece, which is capable of stopping BBs, and absorbing some of their kinetic energy, which will prevent ricochets. Here’s the main show. You can see the batteries, CO2 tank, and electronics, are all in or around the plywood tray I’ve built, which, due to it’s ability to act as a secondary armor layer, I have taken to calling a “Citadel” This is a close-up shot of the electronics. That’s two strike firing boards up top, running the three solenoids. The Taranis X8R receiver on the bottom, the wiring harness there in the center under the regulator, the 60 amp ESC in the water channel to the left, and the BC pump switch is outside the citadel, attached to the side using that cool plastic Velcro stuff. The wiring harness is a cool feature, and you’ll see more of it in a sec. All of the electronics have been coated in E6000. Here it is without the tank and batteries. Note the drain holes, as well as the rectangular notches. When I cut out the ribs for the boat, I left tabs sticking out specifically to interface with the Citadel and hold it in place. Note that the Pump battery is in a hull cradle right in front of the pump switch. Once I finish ballasting, I’ll elevate the battery such that water will be able to flow under it. Here’s the batteries and the tank. The tank is huge for my purposes, but I like standardization across my fleet, so I’ll carry some extra gas. These are 20Ah LiFePO4 cells. I run 6V systems. I know it’s not the proverbial cat’s meow anymore, but it does the job. I’ll do the fancy stuff when I put Derfflinger into action. @Beaver has convinced me to run her as a brushless boat. We’ll see how that goes. But I digress. Here’s another view of the citadel. Note the gas runs to starboard, along with the wiring for the stern solenoids. These are the only things running aft that are not part of the spinal wiring harness. Here’s the citadel removed. This took like thirty seconds tops to unplug everything and basically pull ALL of the electronics from the boat. Takes about a minute to put it back in and have her ready to go. Here’s the business end of the wiring harness. Short lines=pumps, longer lines=drive motors. The striper is an extension cord to reach the rudder. Another view of the Citadel There’s the underside and the wiring harness. The pump switch Here’s the core of the hull with the Citadel removed with the pump battery in place, the sidemount/pneumatic line to starboard, and the pumps chillin. Here’s the view looking aft with pumps removed. Note the Citadel tabs in the ribs. Also, those are push tacks holding the pet-proof screen. I silicone fixed the top of the screen to the ribs, and the lower eend is held in place with the pins, which are stuck into pre-drilled holes that are filled with silicone. They hold in place well, but pop out when you need them to. Here’s the Pumps in situ with everything in place (except for the screen which normally wraps them, which I removed for visibility). It gets a tad crowded with the wiring harness going past them, but it works well. They’re BC pumps powered by Stingers with Peter E.’s (from PPB) restrictors, set for laminar flow. I haven’t checked it since I adjusted it to Laminar flow, btu with high pressure streams, I was getting completely emptying the hull in 30 seconds with both pumps (4 GPM). With the improved performance after the Laminar mod, the rate has improved a lot. I may not be getting the monster numbers that the guys with brushless pumps are getting, but the rate keeps improving with every bit of tinkering and I’m fine with taking time to learn. There’s the Pumps with the Citadel removed. The rubber bands I have there aren’t really doing too much, but they are handy in giving the pumps just that little bit of a grip to keep them from shuffling in their cubicles. Obviously, they are currently unstrapped in these pics. Here’s the slots. Works rather well at collecting all of the water in the hull and directing it to the pumps. They are the lowest part of the hull. Note the lip to stern. Everything aft of Frame 12 is progressively higher heading aft, such that the water has no choice but to GTHO of my boat. The Pumps. I can pull them out like *this* in a matter of seconds, and if need be, switch them out just as fast. My intent, obviously, being to keep this boat in action no matter what fails. All of my parts are interchangeable with Texas, so if need be, I can cobble together a combat-ready boat pondside and be back in action before the next sortie. A bird’s eye view of the stern. Note the silicone-looking stuff. I pour that over the 30 cal bullets I use for ballast to hold them in place. Then, if I need to remove them, I just run my pocket knife around the edge and pop the whole block out. The motors are standard Johnson 550 motors running BC GB500 gearboxes, with something like a 1.8:1 gear ratio. Again, the accel isn’t bad, but I really need to switch to those bigger props. Note the color-coded solenoid wires. The green ziptie is port, and red for starboard. the bottom of the boat aft of the gearbox well is… well, here’s a better shot: Between frames 14 and 17, I used ¼ “ basswood boards, which got glassed over once I sized them just right. Note that they step downward to encourage water flow toward the midships. Now, looking back toward the motors, you see how I cut slots for the 550 cans into frame 13 and left the bottom high? If you’ve ever worked with sloshing liquids on vehicles, like fuel tankers, there is a lot of virtue in having slosh prevention built in. There is more than enough to allow water to flow, but if a big slug of water comes through (from acceleration, direction change, etc) then that acts as a baffle. The positioning of all of the systems, electronics, etc was designed to act as a series of baffles throughout the boat, while still allowing for efficient flow of water to the pumps. Works pretty well. I have a thing for speed, and am still kinda learning to refrain from high speed maneuver while heavily damaged. But side-by-side, with similar amounts of water in the hull, a maneuver change which would force a huge slug of water to the stern in Texas (and sink her in an embarrassing manner) does not happen with Idaho. She just settles until the pumps evacuate the water. Looking forward, you can see how frame 13 is a good water brake. Here’s a top view There is a nice big gap underneath the motors, just forward of the gearbox for the water to flow freely toward the pumps. Frame 14 is 1/8 inch higher than 13. Frame 15 is 1/8 inch higher than 14, and so on, until we reach 18, where the angle of the hull allows the hard area to come higher up, and I made that whole floor section out of maple boards under the rudder tray. You’ll see that in detail in chapter 4. Here’s the rudder tray. The gears etc come from a robot supply store (will add a link at some point), and the servo is the waterproof one from HiTec. To remove the whole steering mechanism, you undo the retention nut under the rudder post gear, remove the gear and chain, then give the rudder tray a bit of pressure until it pops out of place (I fitted the tray to its slot over the course of a day using files, so that sucker will only budge right when I ask it to). Takes seconds to remove the entire steering system, and similar times to get it back in place. Again, I built her so I can get her completely apart and completely rebuilt in minutes. (End Chapter 3)
Chapter 4: The Hull (and cannons) So I had planned on slapping the gun disassembly onto Chapter 3, but it turns out that there is a 10,000 character limit on posts. Makes sense. Writing that much is a major undertaking anyway. First, The Cannon. This is one of my two spares that I keep in the toolbox. It’s a Strike gun that I’ve modified to allow for swift disassembly, along with a few other bells and whistles. I’m in the process of converting my guns over to metal interrupters, so this one still has a plastic interrupter. The steel rivet head has to be drawn down, so I use my drill as a mini-lathe, and file it down to tolerance. But, since the steel rivet heads are thinner, they can drop out of the T fitting and jam. So, in order to use the steel rivet, I have to simultaneously adapt the bottom of the gun to accept ¼” OD tubing, which practically fills the interior of the compression nut with the brass tubing required to do so. I’ll add photos of what that looks like later in the year, when I get around to upgrading the rest of my guns to high flow. To attach the nylon magazine, you rob a collet from a cheap PTC fitting, bore out a ¼ compression fitting to 5/16, slap in the colletthen slide that sucker onto the nylon tube. After that, put two O-Rings on there and slip her onto the T-Fitting. Then add a PTC ¼ OD to 1/8 OD reducer as your end cap and you’re good to go. To fill the mags, I use a ¼ brass tube like everybody else, but attach it to the end of the mag tube using a PTC ¼ OD Union fitting. It’s slick. I’ll post all the links later when I have them gathered. Now, for the Hull. Here’s the part of the hull that I took a lot of care to get right. I like having a stem which is as scale as possible, especially after I did such a hack-job on Texas (soon to be amended). So here’s what I did. I used the contour lines to get an inch-by-inch of the bow in profile, then cut out each in basswood, and mated them to the bow section of the keel Once I had glued the profiles together and drawn on the tolerance lines, I pulled them back off the bow keel and spent about a day sanding it into tolerance. Yes. I spent 19 months building this boat. A day on getting the bow right is nothing. I’d intended to have it 3D modeled and printed by one of the local schoolkids, but my teacher friend ended up leaving town, so I just took the stem I had made, and used it. gave it a few thin coats of epoxy, then glassed her in and we’re good to go. Took several good BB hits and only scratched the paint. Now. Here’s where I screwed up. See that sharp transition point? I should have chosen a slightly different rib spacing to amend that. So what I will do, is use a rib profile from a similar spot to “beef up” the rib to fore and smooth out the transition. I’ll get to this when I get to it and post up pics. it’s not a mission kill. Unless somebody with triples gets in some good licks on me. Then I just have to drive in reverse for the rest of the battle, or really put my pumps to the test. So the water channel in my hull is a 1/8” sugar maple board all the way through to the pump wells. It’s exceptionally strong and durable wood. Note the neodymium magnets I put into the bottom with a router. They’re done from the outside and (obviously) glassed over, so I have a flush interior, with all the utility of BB collecting magnets. I cobbled the keel board in with nails through pre-drilled holes in the ribs and keels. Some close-ups of the magnets doing their thing, with no potential for the magnet to be dislodged. Now. How I infilled the stern and laid the shafts. That was fun. Under those basswood and maple boards I laid in as the floor of the stern, I stuffed foam blocks in between the ribs, cut them to form with a hot wire, then slathered them over with wood filler and sanded the stern into final shape as a whole. Now, I didn’t take *great* pictures of this step, but in these two shots you can see the channels I left in the hull for the drive shafts. They are Lined with basswood and maple, and distinct structural members within the hull. I dropped the shafts in, and secured them into place using blocks and wood filler, which I sanded to form. This way, if I need to ever replace them, I just use a rotary tool to get through the glass and pop out the entire drivetrain without disturbing the rest of the hull. 19 months of methodical building is a helluva way to do it. especially when you already have a combat-ready boat. I’ll break it here. Chapter 4 Part 2 will address the interior of the hull.
Chapter 4: (continued!) So. As promised. The rudder tray. Hit that sucker with an allen key Slide the rudder out Pop the gear and chain Then use a Churchkey and gentle pressure, and she comes out Those vertical members were part of the ribs that I marked and retained for just this purpose. There’s the keel poking through the Sugar Maple floor to act as a support member for the rudder tray And there’s the rudder post shaft. Note that when the tray is in place, the rudder post is 100% encased in sugar maple and birch, and that the tray and armor divide the stern in half lengthwise to prevent through-passes. These pics give you a better look at the downward step of the floor in the stern That vertically thick stringer between Frame 13 and 14 is also 1/8 sugar maple stood on end. Here is a shot from the construction: It took weeks to get the maple stringers and the ribs notched and shimmed to line up perfectly. But it is the perfect anchor wood for the balsa skin, and is the toughest merchantable wood in North America. Don’t @ me with that Genus Ostreya crap. Here’s the Bow area, with the ballast removed. Looking Aft Now, here’s the biggest screw-up I made with putting in the stringers. I didn’t leave a way for the BBs to GTHO of the hull with the armor installed. I will amend this in FRAG2 with small holes carved in to let them drop through. For a better view, let’s take a look at how I made and installed them: I used red oak for the casemates, and sugar maple for the armor belt. Red oak is dimensionally sound when the boards are much thicker, but not for this application. I expect to not replace them on this boat, but would be surprised if they are shock-resistant enough to hold for the 25 year service life. Sugar maple is far superior both in combat, and in construction. Use Sugar Maple. I did something similar with the forward stringer on the bottom. It’s great and aesthetically pleasing. Excellent anchor interface for the balsa. And that’s it, for now. I’ll be sure to post new chapters when I do major refits, and give detailed accounts as to why I’ve changed something. Hopefully Idaho will be my main combatant for the 2021 NATS, and continue to hold the keystone position in my fleet for years to come. 11/08/20
