USS Salem is an older boat that I find myself the new steward of. I took it to Nationals last year basically as was and had a lot of trouble with her older style systems just not jiving with the rest of my equipment. I'm not used to 6 volt, water retaining boxes, and servo mag throttles. I also couldn't get the boat to meet weight while still carrying enough battery to not immediately end up under speed. Growing tired of owning Schrodinger's cruisers, because I never seem to put any time into them and they never seem to actually work when I need them to, I've decided to make it a key point for prepping for Nationals this year to go over both Salem and my Fiji to make sure that they are rock solid and ready to go. Salem is laid out like a traditional 3.5 unit cruiser with triple stern guns and a half unit pump. Her cannons appear to be box stock older BC guns but they work and they will remain. Fire control is provided by three kip solenoids with their own expansion tanks. Her firing circuit used to be a micro switch that was triggered by a servo, that has been replaced as part of the watertight box deletion with SJS's new prototype plug and play gun board. For her CO2 system, a large brass regulator was removed and replaced with the sadly now hard to find lightweight aluminum BC regulator. A 3.5 oz tank is more than enough for this boat, but because she's going to be so light by removing all of this older technology, a 5 oz tank will be used because why not. 1/4" OD tubing feeds back from the regulator in the nose to the accumulator tanks in the rear by the guns. Pump control was likewise provided by a servo that would trigger a pair of micro switches to split the load between them. That has been replaced with the sjs/rc warship tech pump relay board: For an actual pump, I am going to be using an SJS 45° outlet half unit pump. For a motor I am going to be using a Holmes hobbies 20t crawl master, mainly because I know that it will hold up at 12 volts and not catch on fire. Progress on that specific item is pending arrival of pump motors from www.amainhobbies.com I took a couple minutes and designed a silly little dual 3-in gun mount to replace some of the blown off handmade balsa ones that were present on the boat. After replacing a couple of them, I decided to replace all of them and I have placed the surviving mounts on a shelf behind my workbench for posterity's sake. Drive motors are fresh brushed motors from All electronics (sadly no longer available, same ones BC used to sell) which should do just fine at 12 volts. They feed into old style blue resin BC gearboxes with an unknown gear ratio. I'm assuming about 1.5 to 1. Props are soldered BC 1.5 in, once again older style. Her rudder is undersized and will be replaced with an appropriately sized printed rudder. That's it for now. Her main battery power will be provided by 2x 5200mah 3s lipos, with everything bussed together. I normally would not do this but on a cruiser you realistically shouldn't be pumping a whole lot to require dedicated pump batteries.
Salem's refit is all finished. First sea trial was an astounding success. The boat even floats on its original waterline. Once I loom wires, clean stuff up, etc, I may put a stem-stern post up for her. I made some adjustments to my original plan based on ease of build (laziness) and my available space/weight. I decided to run three battery packs, one battery straight into each ESC and then one dedicated just for pump, because the boat was going to be light without more weight. Might as well carry battery instead of ballast. I bought a xt60 inline jst plug and cut the jst off for an xt30 to power the gun board. It goes between one of the drive motors and its battery and works great. Like I said, more pictures and such once I clean up the inside.
