Shots were fired. They hit another boat. There were three boats on the water. USS New Jersey was protecting the seaplane-tender USS St. George. The VNS Mogador was running minimal boiler pressure, so was not a really effective raider. The Frenchy got locked under the escort's barrels just when the NJ lost engines.Torpedoes were fired. The hull was penatrated. My rotates got bound on the deck and couldn't rotate to starboard, otherwise, I would have emptied the magazine. As it stands 3 holes above the waterline on the NJ, and one below. The St. George's captian was a humanitarian and pushed the BB with DD outrigger into shore. Since he was being so nice, I didn't torpedo him. He gets that one for free
It was great to see our first battle in the US! The size of Matt's New Jersey was awe inspiring. I was amazed at how quickly it could turn! Dustin's Mogador was beautiful, as was Mark's seaplane tender, the USS St George. The Mogador was fully functional, but had motors that were under powered. They were swapped out after the battle to great effect. Mark's St George was not only lovely with its scale seaplane on deck, but was rock solid reliable, and had plenty of power, pushing the two interlocked combatants to shore with ease. A good start for Battlestions here in the US! Carl
What was really beautiful about Mark's boat is the WATER BALLAST SYSTEM. Ditto on the reliability. It was impressive to see a boat completed that quickly have no issues on the pond. It even ran on the pond when the heavy rain came in. Just another quiet day on the Baltic... Carl, it was great to finally meet you and so many others in person this weekend.
Congratulations! I look forward to the photos and further commentary. And, of course, to the future battles in which the armed ships work better
Here's some video of the St. George in the monsoon. Hopefully I'll get video of the battle and rescue posted in the next couple of days.
It's hard to tell from the video, but St George wasn't going that slow because of her scale speed. She was going that slow because of the high wind! Carl
Here's some video of the New Jersey and Mogador meeting for the first time. I did miss some of the action, but you can't blame a poor, unarmed, convoy ship running from those 1/4" guns, especially since I had no pump installed.
Here's the St. George rescuing the New Jersey and the Mogador. To be fair to the Mogador, it wasn't really dead in the water, it was just really slow and on the far side of the pond. I think that the most amazing thing about the rescue is that it was all performed by a very small geared motor drawing 18 watts at full throttle. Thats 180 plus pounds being moved across the pond with the same motor I'm using in my Treaty escort carrier. Without the extra weight, the St. George makes 38 knots on one 1.5" prop!
Your seaplane tender made a great tugboat! And having a camera on board was way cool. The inside of the St George was a work of art, folks, seriously. Notice that this hull has the same dovetail joints that are in his fine laser-cut 1/144 scale Baltimore and Bogue kits? Hopefully some more pics of the St George will be posted later for all to enjoy. Any chance of making 1/96 scale versions of those Treaty kits? Battlestations! needs some fine 1/96 kits like that available to the masses... Carl
Well he has scaled up the C3 hull, wich was from the Bouge 1/144 kit. He's only done one other design as a kit. i just don't know if the demand is there for a production run.
Unfortunately Dustin is right. Scaling up the Bogue hull 50% was expedient and not too expensive for a run of 2 kits, but it really is not a competitive boat. When you scale an existing design you are locked into the rib spacing of the original design plus you have to scale the material by the same amount or the notches don't work. That was ok in a convoy ship, but not good in a warship. To be a good warship the design needs to be redone to use 1/4" ribs and put as many in as the rules allow - and that would not be worth the time for the small demand the kit would have.
OK, I've done my research with the rules and the 1/144 Baltimore hull and decided that I disagree with the above statements. This design should easily scale up to 1/96 without compromising the integrity of the hull. Hear me out: 1) Rib thickness and spacing. The rib spacing on the 1/144 Baltimore kit is 2" between the ribs, and the ribs are 1/4". Scaling up the design by 50% will result in a hull with 3" between the ribs, and 3/8" thick ribs. The rules allow rib thicknesses up to 3/8". The rules say the minimum spacing is 3" center-center for 3/8" ribs. So the rib spacing works fine, but you need to use 3/8" thick material for the ribs, which is the scale thickness anyways (1.5*1/4" = 3/8"). And a hull with 3/8" thick ribs should be plenty sturdy... 2) Maximum amount of bow+stern impenetrable hull is 8%. Roughly 2/3 of this should be in the bow and 1/3 in the stern. a) Bow impenetrable area. The distance from front of the bow to the front of the bow rib in the 1/144 scale Baltimore hull is 1-7/8". Scaling that up to 1/96 yields 15/8" +15/16" = 45/16" = 2-13/16" b) Stern impenetrable area. The distance from the stern to the back of the stern rib in the 1/144 scale hull is 3/4". Scaling that up to 1/96 yields 3/4" + 3/8" = 9/8" = 1-1/8" c) Total impenetrable bow+stern distance on the 1/144 Baltimore hull is 0.08 * 56.0825" = 4.4866". Scale that up to 1/96 yields 1.5*56.0825" = 6.7299". Bow + stern impenetrable area = 2-13/16" + 1-1/8" = 3-15/16". Well under the 8% rule. For those who wish to maximize the impenetrable area, they can glue solid wood to the back of the bow rib and to the front of the stern rib and fiberglass it to make it impenetrable up to the 8% rule. 3) Windows. Impenetrable area must go 1" below the waterline, or to when the hull angle reaches 45 degrees. A lot of the bottom deck on the 1/144 Baltimore hull follows the 45 degree rule. In areas where the window reaches 1" below the waterline, scaling up the design yields a window 1.5" below the water line. More penetrable window than necessary, but completely legal. Captains can always make the extra 1/2" impenetrable with wood/fiberglass to get back to the 1" rule. 4) Deck thickness. Sub-deck thickness on the 1/144 Baltimore hull is 1/4", with a 1/8" deck added by the captain for a total of 3/8". Sub-deck can remain 1/4" thick with a 1/8" deck added by the captain. If freeboard is greater than or equal to 1" (I don't have Baltimore plans to check out this rule), then the total deck thickness can be 1/2". So it can be a 3/8" sub-deck if freeboard is >= 1", or it can be a 1/4" sub-deck if freeboard < 1". Either will work, though the 3/8" sub-deck is a direct scale up from 1/144. The flat part of the ribs made for the sub-deck could have a 1/8" spacer added if a 1/4" sub-deck is used to make a better fit. 5) Bottom deck thickness. Here scaling up the 1/8" bottom deck would technically yield a 3/16" bottom deck. However, there is no reason the bottom deck could not remain 1/8". So, you could do a simple 50% scale up from 1/144 scale to get a 1/96 scale and produce a perfectly good hull kit.. The scaling would be perfect if the freeboard is >= 1", but can still work if the freeboard is less than 1". I'd buy it. In fact, rcengr, if you make a 1/96 Baltimore kit by just scaling it up the 1/44 Baltimore kit by 50% -- with no added re-design, mind you -- I'll be your first customer. Just let me know when it's ready. Thanks, Carl PS: I'd be grateful if someone with Baltimore plans could tell me the freeboard in 1/96. Thanks in advance!
Carl - you make some excellent points. First, the Baltimore easily has 1" of freeboard. My Roanoke, which is almost the same hull, has 1.5" freeboard in Treaty configuration. Second, you are right about integrity, I didn't mean to imply that the hull would not be sound or would be illegal. There were two items I didn't like with the scale up. First was use of 3/8 ribs -- I would rather have 30 1/4" ribs 2" apart than 20 3/8" ribs 3" apart -- but that is more personal preference than engineering analysis. Second was the rib spacing, and I admit that I didn't think that one completely through. I looked at my C3 hull which has 3" spaced 1/4" ribs, so when scaled up the ribs are 4.5" apart which leaves some pretty large unsupported areas in the 1/32 balsa. The Baltimore is 2.25" center to center for most of the ribs which makes it very close to the minimum 3" for the 3/8 ribs, so no problems. You could maybe put 2 additional ribs in using minimum spacing which is not worth the effort. For a 1/96 Baltimore, I would just cut out the all the 1/4" parts from 3/8". I would not include the internal 1/8" -1" mid-deck that forms the bottom of the window. Because the Baltimore doesn't have external notches the builder can just glue in strips between the ribs to make the bottom of the windows where they should be located. You will probably want to stick with the 3/16" balsa on the bottom, because the bottom of the ribs is actually relieved by that amount - might have to go with strips rather than sheets though. So I will get some kits cut of a 150% Baltimore, but I only want to make one run. I would expect them to run about $110 each and shipping will need to be determined based on final weight and shipping location. Carl - I'll trade you straight across for your 1/96 destroyer hull if you still have it. If anyone else is interested in a kit, please send me an email. I'll wait about a week before I put the order in to give people time to consider it.
The 1/4" ribs vs 3/8" ribs sounds intriguing. I'm not sure about other big gun clubs, but the WWCC almost universally uses 3/8" ribs, with only a few ships using 1/4" ribs, and no ships (not a single one!) built with 1/8" ribs. Here, I often hear about how 1/4" is the preferred rib size. Why the difference?
More ribs = stiffer balsa (less distance between ribs). Also, more ribs helps against rams (unlikely in the extreme to breaka 1/4" rib), and with the higher ship speeds in fast gun, that's important. Especially if Tugboat has Lil Scharnie running around... The only ships that I do 1/8" ribs on are subs (still building) and tiny DDs.
AWESOME! I'm stoked! You've got a deal! I'll throw in the plans for the DD, too (I was selling them separately). And I'll trade you a set of 5 single- and double-knuckle 1/96 resin turrets to go with the DD for some scaled up sets of hatch doors, vents, 20mm guns, etc, that you do separate from the kits. Thanks, Mark! You made my day, big time! Carl
I'm not sure. I guess it's just a personal preference. Me, I've always preferred the 3/8" ribs in 1/96. I figure a nice big rib will survive a direct hit better. I also plan to reinforce the ribs on bigger boats that can spare the weight. I'm a little leery of what a 1/4" ball bearing will do to a rib. Carl
