Ian_Grant

Extremely cool tech! Are you a fellow retired engineer? I used an Arduino to control the oars in my RC Roman galley, writing code to read the throttle and rudder inputs and control the oars via two servos per side; one for the fore-aft motion and one for up/down. The model can't overcome much of a breeze, and I found even my oversized rudders couldn't steer her at her slow speed. She's on the shelf until I have more time and ideas. Writing the code was fun, even though I was a hardware guy all my career. 😏

Thirty servos!! Just how long is this model? My 1/150 HMS Lion from WW1 is about 54" long; I used mini servos for turret traverse. It would be impressive to have elevation too but the turrets from the 70's are solid wood (this is a "restoration" build on one of my teenage builds). There is plenty of room in fact I was planning to add smoke but the smoke unit I bought has a mind of its own as far as actually making smoke. Looking forward to your build.......... Ian ps: if you click on "follow" at the top of your log, you'll get automatic notifications if someone adds a comment.

There seem to be more and more 3D printed ships showing up here. I've started one too. It's interesting. My hull section #4, a 22 hr print, seems to have warped as it cooled even though I added inner and outer brims. Trying to decide how to proceed...... Do you plan to have the turrets rotate? Access along the hull inside looks to be restricted by your joiners. Looking forward to more! ian

Looking very nice! Will be very pretty on the water......

Just found your log. Great work! You described yourself as a Fusion neophyte (!) but you seem to have picked it up quickly and well. I've often read about sculpting hulls in Fusion but never dared try it. Your progress has been very rapid. I just started printing an RC ship too but I simply bought the folders of .stl files for my printer. So far the hull sections are done. I hope I can move through the rest at a similar pace as you! Ian

Merry Christmas to you too! She's looking great! Don't know why this is typing in bold letters! I could have saved you some knots by telling you that not all ratlines pass across all the lower shrouds, in fact only every fifth one......too late now.....a good reference to have for Victory is Longridge's Anatomy of Nelson's Ships in which stuff like this is detailed. It has very very detailed notes on line and block sizes for each piece of rigging.

She's looking great, John! Are you going to detail the upstairs interior.....I recall the drawings even had the positions of the china cabinet's legs marked, looking forward to your 1/96 furniture! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

All eight hull sections printed, consuming over 100 hours of print time. And nearly three reels of filament. I've epoxied together only the first two thus far, using JB Weld which is my new favourite epoxy despite its black colour. I'm waiting for some fiberglass cloth seam tape to arrive to put some more epoxy inside this joint before adding more sections, because the enclosed front half would quickly become unwieldy to access for joint reinforcement. The design is such that the superstructure is not removable if built according to instructions. I'm not sure I like that idea as that's a lot of hull interior that can only be reached by sliding your arm in from the admittedly large opening when the removable upper vehicle deck is removed. The designer's goal was to prevent superstructure damage due to handling, were it removable. I'll have to print some of the superstructure parts before deciding what to perhaps have removable, if only to be able to fiddle with any ballast in her front half. I also had a look at some of the superstructure files. They surprised me with the time and plastic they will take to print too. I was thinking after the hull things would move quickly but there are more 12-hour prints ahead. I also discovered I don't like the lifeboat file; I will try my "Titanic lifeboat" file when I reach that point. Here she is sitting in front of the nearly-completed HMS Lion. That's a 12" ruler sitting in front. Merry Christmas to my so-far zero followers!!!

Just stumbled across your build - what a beautiful model! Ultra-realistic looking rigging.......immaculate paintwork........

Yes, I had the PT-19 Trainer which was the best because the tail and wing were held on by rubber hands to prevent plastic damage in a crash. Eventually, though, it would be rendered non-flightworthy after several crashes. Between me and the other boys on the street we had every cox plane going. The screws holding my P-40's wheel struts to the wing pulled cleared through it first time I tried to land it on grass. Ditto with Mike's Spitfire. Jimmy's Stuka blew apart on first crash. George had this weird cox design, I think it was all white, with a sort of mid-engine in a bulbous fuselage. It caught fire on starting and burned away. After that we all started building wood planes for our orphaned engines. Later, only George and I continued on to 42" span planes on the 60ft steel lines. Used to go to the CNE every September to watch the guys fly control-line fast combat. I still have an apple basket full of old 0.049 engines, which I am told I could sell. Fond memories..........

Hi Adrian, Thermopylae is indeed a beautiful ship. I realize you haven't built many ship models, but I do encourage you to rig your shrouds in place on the model rather than using a shroud jig. The trouble with shroud jigs is that a given set of shrouds ends up tapering to a single thread at the top which cannot be attached to a mast head in any realistic manner. In reality, shrouds are rigged in pairs with the middle wrapped around the mast with the loop "seized" at the side of the mast. "Seizing" just means a second short line is tied around the two threads to lock them together. Also, each pair of shrouds is wrapped around the masthead just above the preceding pair, alternating between port and starboard shrouds, leading to a stack of ropes passing around it. The single line from a shroud-jigged set of shrouds cannot replicate this stack which in my opinion is a very noticeable part of ship rigging. Just my opinion.......you can ignore me, I won't be offended. 😉 Ultimately it's your model and whatever makes you happy is great! Anyway here's a pic of fore shrouds on an old model of mine during construction. You see the effect..............

All might not be lost if electronics get wet. A few years ago I restored and relaunched (with modern 2.5G electronics) my old Class M RC sailboat from the 80's. At the cottage she was reaching directly away from me in a good wind, when I realized I could see the white of her deck....how could that be, I wondered? Before my appalled eyes she sank by the stern, dragged down by the lead keel. Turned out that a piece of balsa wood teenage me glued in as the rudder tube support block came free and water flooded through the rudder hole. I had to snorkel out and find her about 12 ft deep on the bottom. After having their cases disassembled and being packed in rice for a while, the Receiver and servos were fine as was the large 80's sail winch. Only the battery itself was fried.

Very late to this party........beautiful model, should look great on the water! My only comment is that it is useful to have a "coaming" around the inner edges of the walls of a removable cabin i.e.close-fitting strips of wood extending up a ways from deck level to keep any water that reaches the cabin walls from dripping down into the electric innards. Did you try the motor/speed controller in your last water test? Good work! Welcome to RC.

Recall that @yancovitch built a superb SR using bits of Heller's plastic hull to "plank" a wood bulkhead hull, which looked the cat's pajamas in terms of proportions. He is a master builder. I agree with Marc about a build out at this stage being impractical but his demonstrated how SR could look.

Eric, magnificent job so far and I admire your re-dos to get it right. We've had this debate before on MSW, but your photos bring into focus once again Heller's inadequate volume for the u/w hull vs topsides. Are you planning to place the lower main wale almost completely under water amidships to make her look better? Or have her set in a waterline display?