Well have it limited down a bit.. bit operative word.

inline rudders are, normally, not as effective at turning the boat, while tandem (next to each other, as opposed to in front of) have a better ability to redirect the ships thrust.

I think that a run and gun cruiser is a great idea, but that may be biased by my current experiences there. Definetly easier, and cheaper then a bigger ship.
Personally, i like the bulged tennessee, it looks great and will turn great, plus, it has alot of room and wieght. Thats what i would pick up in your situation. But, those wshipd are all pretty even, so choose the one you like. And, there might have been other modifications, where that forward casemate might be there, but the cage mast is gone, look into some photo websites.

 

I recommended the Arizona because the ship has a lot going for it even for beginners. The sides offer casemates and defense. That is something my sodak sorely lacked. Even when you get in trouble there is more protection until you get out of it. The hulls that are offered are of the later "bulged" ships and to build the earlier ones you would be redoing the hulls to be within rules. Obviously this is not beginner stuff. The later ships don't have cage masts so that's not a problem. In comparison between Tennesse and pennslyvania, penn. is faster and has less to shoot at on the sides. Of course, the final say will be what you want. Swampy is offering the hull for a limited time again so if you're leaning, you might want to order one. The tennesse is based on the Colorado hull and is offered by BC so no problem there. A small cruiser is a tougher build and reqiures more precision to work well and be effective. I tend to find them frustrating in IRCWCC for beginners because they kinda stay out of the battle and don't match up well against too much else on the water. "A fly on the horses' back" Yes they are smaller and require less guns but we are here to battle, right? I recommend getting your big ship going first. You won't be sorry and you will save time and money from building your starter ship. Try to get stick time in a few ships if you can before you decide. You will find you're building more ships if you like battling and that cruiser will always make a good second ship. If you do it right, you can even re use some things from your big fat tub of a battleship

 

Cruiser in the IRCC are not very good. But Gardenome is in going to battle with the MWC. Cruisers are good ships in the MWC becuase they are faster then the BBs & BCs.
Enjoy your Houston. Here's an early tip. Call it the Indianapolis same hull slightly different superstructure. It gets more weight then the Houston, always a plus.

 

I agree with Bob, if you're battling MWC then its hard to beat a class 3, 23 sec cruiser as a first boat.

 

I thought IRCWCC was speeding up the cruisers too....arent we Rob?

 

Actually, the Indianapolis is a modified hull as well. The Portland class (Portland and Indianapolis) are 614 ft long off the top of my head, while the Northampton class (aka Houston) are 600 ft long. IIRC, the Swampy hull splits the difference between the two classes and thus is "correct" for neither, but "legal" for both.

The extra weight is certainly nice, but if the OP likes the Augusta, there's no MAJOR loss by building it as a Northampton as opposed to a Portland.

 

I read he was going to be battling both. Yes the IRCWCC will be considering speeding cruisers up but that will not be voted in until 2010 battle season if we make ballot this year.

 

No emergency "cruiser bailout" bill?

 

Okay I am either dense in my understanding of inline rudders or they are the daftest concept of dual rudders. So inline would mean one rudder in front of each other like say.. time for some bad ascii art..
Inline:
|
|
Tandem
| |
Is this a correct depiction? If this is correct I have never seen it in my life. Plus, how would a rudder behind the other would help in the steering of a vessel? I would think the turbulences created by the first rudder would greatly reduce the efficiency of the second rudder.
On another note.. It is true I am thinking of wiggling my toes in the IRC waters from time to time. But my local group will be MWC and I will focus on MWC. I will just try to make all my builds be IRC compliant there are a few subtle differences in build. The biggest difference after reading both several times comes down to speed. Speed is something I have told that is rather easy to adjust if there was a need to to be compliant in another format. Heck due to my hectic schedule (back in college to finish some degrees) I will most likely be limited to local for a year or two. It is my plan to start a second build a moth or so after my first build so by the time I might foray into IRC I should have a 4/5 unit ship if there hasn't been speed changes to its format.

 

The way I have seen diagrams of how this work on most ships (yamato is an exception), the small forward rudder turns in the opposite direction of the larger primary rudder. This in effect crates a large "bow" so to speak, and helps turning. I used to have a picture of it, but I don't recall what happened to it. Does it really work? No idea.

 

Thanks again all!
Well sent a email to Steve today. Inquired about Houston and a Tennessee (bulge) hull. Houston will be my first, i'll be getting my stuff from BC since it is the same size as a Cleveland. It shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to pull that off.
I figured I should get the the Tennesse hull while I can. But I have been reading Castles of Steel by Robert Massie right now.. and Adm. Jellico is sounding like to be an interesting person. And BC just realesed the HMS Iron Duke hull.. hmmm... she does have nice clean lines.
I guess I will have to get some plans for the Houston/Augusta or maybe like some one said I could do the Indianapolis out of it too.

 

I think you'd be happy with both of those choices. You could also build a Pearl Harbor version Tennesee or Colorado class ship out of the Maryland hull sold by BC. Youl should be able to use the Cleveland and Maryland hardware kits with a Tennessee or Northampton (Houston) with no problems at all.

 

Well just before I finalized my purchase from Swampy I talked to my local MWC guy Mark Roe. I said that I had found a Northampton but what did he think of the Suffren from BC as in what would be the best first build. He pointed to the BC Suffren since you can get the deck kits. That the deck kit would make it easier due to instructions and well less fab time. What do you guys think? Do the BC kit Suffren or go to Swampy for the Houston. To me nationality is not a big deal. Both have nice lines. It is more about getting my feet wet and learn to build.
I'll still be getting the Tennessee from Steve since I don't want to pass that up. I just like the post 43' Tennessee.

 

Go with the swampy hull. Ive heard stuff about too much hull volume in the Suffren, which would mean to make it waterline legal, it would have to be illegally overwieght.

 

I would suggest that you go with the Suffren.
It is the larger of the two cruisers.
It is also the heavier of the two.
It has clean hull lines, and will be easy to sheet.
It has a triple shaft, twin rudder arrangment which gives it excellent handling.
The superstructure is simple.

Because of it's size and weight, it will be a more forgiving build, and also have more survivability. It also needs only two motors. One for pump, and one for drive.
It is one of the best heavy cruisers that you can build.
And as it is French, some (if not all) clubs allow you to chose which side you want to battle on.
Mikey

 

As to the comment about the B.C. hull having too much hull volume.
Of all of the fiberglass hulls that are available from the many distributors, it would be hard to determine just how many are totally accurate.
But as the clubs that this ship would be battling in allow an extra 10 percent of weight to be added I can't see how it would be a problem if it is true.
The only down side to building a French ship, is that you will come to understand just how much better they are than everything else out there, and you will find it hard to build ships from other nationalities down the road.
Mikey

 

I have seen two of the BC Suffrins on the water. Both where at max allowed weight and both had tons of freeboard sticking out of the water.
The other problem was the center shaft. When the ship backs up it rolls to one side, exspoing a lot of the red (Under the waterline) area. It's easy, even with another CA to pop belows into it.
My Houston, and all the others I have seen, have plenty of wieght. They are easy to sheet. If done right they turn on a dime. Mine spins around on it's bow like a little Westphalin.
Sub decks are easy to make.
Get the Houston, an very, very good ship.

 

Mogami is the best, with its heaver weight, low for and aft freeboard, less to shoot at, and dual rudders, nothing outperforms it. But then you were not asking about one of those were you, lol.

Now if the sufferen does has a little extra freeboard, can't you just sand down the deck edge 1/4 in or so all the way around? That should solve the issue. But Bob's right, they do heel quite a bit when going in reverse.

Tim's Houston is a great ship, at Nats he was running in and taking on all 8 of us Axis cruisers at once, he did not last long, but thats another story. The model performed very well.

 

I think you'd need to sand down more then 1/4". More like 1".
Houston
Houston
Houston

 

They don't just tip in reverse, starting from a dead stop makes them tip also. So does turning in whatever direction the prop turns in forward. Bigger 3 shaft ships like Bismarck & Scharny have too much weight to tip like that. Becasue it's only 11lbs it is a lot more unstable.