lol and after your next battle you will have more minor tweeks and so on. i love this hobby you have to think not just do/play you do very nice work good shooting/luck
The Roanoke completed 14 sorties this weekend at the Treaty conference event, with no sinks! Overall things when well, I gave as good as I got for the most part. I had one sortie with intermittent radio drop out - it's very frustrating when you cannot move away when someone is shooting you full of holes. I took myself out of the last sortie of the weekend by bumping my rudder and stripping the servo gears when I took the boat out of the water. Other than those minor problems, the whole match went well. I need to change a couple of things of course. I need to get a lighter superstructure. At 10 ounces, it's a little too much on top. Plus I learned that the most robust pieces still get shot off. My top director is still visible in the picture above, but only because it drifted to the side of the pond and I was able to retrieve it and glue it back on. I also had guns shot off, radar dishes shot off, and I lost a lot of armor shield around the secondary guns. On a positive note, the turrets took several hits but were undamaged. I also learned that you need the internal bb shield even between the first two ribs. I left it out because there was no easy way to put it in, which resulted in several blow throughs. Ouch. Fortunately I was fast enough and kept enough distance that the hits on or below the water line were limited and the pump could keep up with all the damage. Overall, a very satisfying first battle!
I forgot to mention, I was very happy with how the super magnets worked out as hatch holders. I was able to rapidly open and close the hatches when I needed to change batteries or CO2, or work on the radio. After watching some of the other captains mess with unscrewing nuts, trying to line up holes on studs, and just trying to find their attachment hardware, I decided that the magnets were the way to go.
Admittedly, the magnets do a good job holding the hatches in place. What they will not do though is give a good deck seal. The first time someone prop washes and sinks the ship because water leaked in through the deck, you may rethink the magnet idea.
I guess that's why Treaty rules don't allow prop washing. Even so, I'm not sure that possibility will change my mind. The guys using thumb screws were not getting any better seals then I was. The one time I was prop washed, by accident I'm sure , it was a non-event. Most of the water that made it up on the deck just flowed back off. While not water tight, my hatches are closely fit and rest on a lip that goes around the entire hatch, so the pump should be able to keep up with any water that leaks through.
I think the effect of screws is that they tighten down a deck help to compensate for a bad deck to subdeck joint. But IF (emphasis on the if) both pieces lay flat next to one another then magnets work just as well as anything else. A tight joint is still a tight joint whether you bolt, screw, staple, glue, or just assemble it.
I agree, fiddling with screws and wingnuts, etc. is for the birds. For the past year and a half, I've been battling my VU using simple gravity hold-downs, and only this month upgraded to flip-levers to hold my deck in place. In previous ships I have used carefully-designed tongues and other clever hold-down methods to allow access to their insides in mere seconds, while maintaining a decent deck seal. I have also seen people who put one #4-40 allen screw every inch on their ships. It takes them a half-hour just to open it up if they forgot to turn on the CO2, and another half-hour to close it back up again afterwards. The difference in sealing? Unnoticeable.
I have to disagree. Although Treaty may not allow prop washing, it is a valid tactic in IRCWCC and MWC. Even a small gap can allow a significant amount of water into the ship, especially if the water is practically forced in by twin 2" or larger props from the larger ships. Ever see the propwash generated by a Yamato? Time after time I've seen a ship pump suddenly go full stream after getting prop washed with a poor deck seal. I've seen ships sink numurous times because they suddenly got a boatload of water dumped on the deck and through a poor deck seal by an NC. I've also seen a ship shink because it's stern got pushed around and swamped by water pouring over the outside edge of the hull and through a bad deck seal. Ever see a ship get accidently rammed which knocks the deck loose and opens a gap? It may be convient to use simpler or no method to hold down a deck. But for that "it ain't gonna happen" deck seal, a more positive method is needed. It doesn't have to be a screw every inch on the deck rim. My last two ships use six brass knurled knobs on each ship's main hatche. It only takes about 30 seconds to put them on or remove them. For the extra 25 seconds of work vs magnets or levers, I get a tight deck seal that does not allow ANY water inside the ship. As example, the Verite was stuck along shore with two ships, one a SoDak, trying to propwash the little ship under. It didn't happen even though the deck was flooded with water. The Verite survived her 5 minutes. I guess it is a matter of convience for some people. I'll take the extra 25 seconds to open and close the ship to prevent any water entering the boat from anything other than the holes put into it by BBs.
Magnets can and will seal a deck well, if the joint is well designed (until the wood warps too much to be flat anymore, but that is another problem). My on K, when the deck was new, you could hold the stern underwater up to the turrets and get almost no leaking around the joint. Even after the deck started to warp a bit, the magnets held well enough. (one of many reasons I am going to plastic deck materials rather than wood)
Actually Mike I think we are mostly in agreement. I consider a bad deck seal a major problem and a one that a builder needs to take in to consideration. I have used screws, toggles, threaded rod, silicone, and even just gravity to hold down and seal a deck opening. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Out here in Washington it is the expected norm to clean off the decks of your opponents while on five with your propwash. We don't have a lot of ships so the pond would feel very empty if all the on fivers hid at the far corners of the pond. But even then I would still consider a good deck seal important since I like to battle dreadnoughts and none of them have the free board to stay afloat for long without a good deck seal. To me a deck needs to resist the intrusion of water AND be reasonably quick to grant access to the inside when needed. Anything less is a major build deficiency. Now if your deck sits tight to the subdeck then you don't need much force to seal it down. Where as if your deck resembles a potato chip then yes you need something a LOT stronger than magnets are likely to provide. Hopefully your decks are much closer to flat than a chip and that's why you don't need a bazillion screws. Magnets can work but only if the deck seats tightly on its own. Warped decks will necessitate other options. On my upcoming Bayern build I may well use magnets to hold the decks down. But I am going to be using plastic decks that are recessed into a plastic subdeck. That should prevent warping and make for a good seal no matter what system I use.
After two years of battling, it was time to haul the Roanoke into dry dock and perform a retrofit. The side were mostly paper and a significant amount superstructure detail was missing. I started by pulling out all of the components and doing a thorough functional check. There was a lot of rust on the motors, but with a little oil on the bearings I consider them good to go. As I removed the BB shields, I ran into the first problem. I used some #2 screws to hold the shield to the ribs, which made a very tidy installation. When I went to unscrew them, they were rusted to the ribs and the head was so small that I could not get enough grip on them to unscrew them. When I put the shield back in, I'll use bigger screws and make sure they are stainless steel. Next I took off the balsa sides. Using Harbor Freight oscillating multi-functional tool with a scraper blade, the sides just peeled right off. The ribs underneath the sides were in very good condition. I used spar varnish to seal the wood and it worked very well, I noticed no areas of water damage on the sides. The first surprise was when took the sides off the first rib bay. Because the second rib is very narrow, I just had a small hole to let water out, but the hole was not big enough to let out BBs. I recovered around 30 BBs just from the one bay and you can see a little of the rust left in the bottom of the bay. I'll have a big enough hole to clear BBs when I finish the refit.
The bottom of the ship was sheeted with 1/8" balsa. On the outside, I fiberglassed it with 3 oz cloth and it held up very well. The inside of the balsa also formed the bottom of the water channel. On the inside I just coated the balsa with epoxy. The epoxy cracked in several places and let water into the balsa, as can be seen by the dark lines in the bottom of the water channel. So in the future I'll coat the water channel with self-leveling polyurethane, which is flexible enough to keep the wood sealed.
I removed all of the self-leveling polyurethane that I had originally put in. Around the motors I had put the polyurethane too thick and had to dig some out just to get the motors in. This resulted in some dips where water could collect and I wanted to get rid of these and smooth out the area. Where needed, I used some two-part foam to smooth out the bottom, and then coated the bottom with a coat of polyurethane. One of the great properties of the self-leveling polyurethane is that if you paint on a thin (relatively speaking) coat, it will stick to the walls and act like a very thick paint. The self-leveling property means that the surface is smooth, without drips or runs, and you get a very durable coating about 1/16" thick. Here's some before and after pictures.
Part of the refit will be to recycle the 4.5 Ahr SLA battery and replace it with a LiFe battery. The SLA worked OK, but its center of gravity was fairly high and it was prone to shifting. This contributed to rolling over a couple of times and sinking when there was not enough water on board to otherwise cause a sink. The new Headway 10 Ahr cells fit very nicely in the water channel. The batteries are lighter, have more capacity, and sit lower in the ship. I'm looking forward to testing these batteries on the water. The batteries are bolted through a 1/8" fiberglass plate on each end - there will be no shifting of these batteries.
Those cells have been working great in the Verite for the past year and a half. They are practically bulletproof and still going strong. Still a nice looking ship Mark. You can tell when a ship is well built when it looks almost new after a couple years of battling abuse. Welll done!
I was surprised by the amount of scale I found inside the actuators. Since I wasn't careful about the valve orientation when I installed them, the vent hole on the actuator was not on the bottom where all the water could drain out. So each time water got in the actuator, it had to evaporate, leaving all the scale behind. For the re-fit I made valve mounts from 1/16" fiberglass. The valve is held to the mount with a nut and the actuator is set so that the vent hole is at the bottom. Loctite ensures that the actuator will not unscrew. I also put the valves in the main bay instead of under the deck, so maintenance will be easier. On the front gun the valve (shown) there has about 14" of hose between it and the pilot solenoid. The valve wasn't closing fast enough for me, so I added a quick exhaust valve to the actuator. Now it closes very quick!
