Ian_Grant

"...became a scene of the utmost confusion." HaHa...that's one way of putting it I guess.

Bill, to carry on with the talk about jigsaw puzzles in Marc's log, your wife could be challenged by this 76" x 55" puzzle: 🫢 https://www.ebay.com/itm/404097350340

OMG - LOL ... no way no how... 😅 Actually Glen for my next build I want to make an RC full-rigged 3-master.

Glen, you have surpassed yourself with this idea. Very interesting history; I had never heard of the claw nor did I know that Archimedes was killed in a siege. I do remember, though, spending a lunchtime hour puzzling my way through his geometric approximation of pi in a "History of Science" course in first-year engineering. Greek mathematicians were very clever and it amazes me how much they were able to calculate; another example is Eratosthenes's calculation of the circumference of earth which was only about 2% in error. Surprisingly perhaps, his math was very simple compared to Archimedes's calculation. Just a correction: my galley is a quadrireme not a trireme. It's surprising how little we actually know for certain about these ships. A quadrireme may have had 3 banks of oars with 2 men on one of them (analagous to your quinquireme drawing above), or 2 banks of oars with 2 men apiece. This is because it is thought that the "quad...." or "quinqui...." indicated the basic "unit" of men per "subset" of oars. I opted for two banks of oars to keep my model simpler. There were also "sexteres" which are broadly interpreted as triremes with 2 men per oar. But there are also mentions in surviving texts of "twelves", "sixteens", and even "twenties". To my knowledge no one has any idea what rowing system they employed. As an aside, it is interesting to analyze the effect of multiple men per oar on total power for the ship. Adding a second man on an oar does not double its power because the outermost rower exerts pull over a shorter distance therefore adds less energy. According to Pitassi he generates about 0.8 "manpower" giving 1.8 "manpower" per double-manned oar. (a third man adds only about 0.6 manpower). If you believe a quadrireme had 3 banks of oars having 1-1-2 men, each set of 4 men generates 3.8 manpower. If you believe a quadrireme had 2 banks of oars having 2-2 men, each set of 4 men generates 3.6 manpower ("only" 5% less but speed was critical in galley battles). Ancient galleys are a fascinating subject. I'm looking forward to your build progress, and can't wait to see the little oars moving! 😉

When the Royal Navy was ordered in 1803 to intercept the annual Spanish treasure fleet bringing gold from the Americas, the British squadron searched by simply sailing back and forth in line abreast straddling the latitude of Cadiz, knowing that the fleet by Spanish law must arrive there and probably would do exactly as popeye says: sail along Cadiz's latitude since they would likely be uncertain of their longitude after a long voyage. Bill, I don't know how far you got in the Hornblower books, but if you enjoyed the first couple, this search is ably described by Forrester in "Hornblower and the Hotspur".

There are a lot of bold ship modellers, and a lot of crazy ship modellers, but there are few bold, crazy ship modellers.

I loved calculus in high school, especially integration problems. I was so looking forward to helping my kids with them and I was disappointed to find that in high school now they only do differentiation and integration is left for first year university, when of course they were away from home. But I did get to help them with physics problems which have their own charm. Oh yes, captains and navigators had to understand spherical trig to plot their position on the globe and there was a lot of math to do after such things as lunar observations. In later years accuracy totally depended on your chronometer; if its time drifted off so did your longitude accuracy which led to many wrecks (like Admiral Shovel's ships on the Scillies). Somewhere I picked up an old copy of "The Admiralty Handbook of Navigation" but never went hard at trying to understand it. Should dig it out.

Oh I see....up here some people "seal" their asphalt driveways with a coating of new "black stuff" and a long-handled roller but I've never seen the city do the streets aside from patching cracks.

Enlighten a denizen of the great white north - what is meant by "sealing" the streets?

Looks really nice Kevin! There's also been a debate about the moving anchor chains tearing up the hatch cover; can't remember the verdict now.

Read a bit in the reviews for this puzzle. In case you're thinking of getting one for your grandchildren, it is described as "raunchy" with "nude figures" on the beach in the foreground. 🫢😏

Looks great Nils! And you're putting me to shame with your rapid progress.... 😉

Did a reverse image search. Found the puzzle in a lot of places. Here's one: https://puzzledgamer.com/products/heye-corsair-1000-piece-puzzle They call it a triangular puzzle; not sure what they mean by that unless all the pieces are triangles which sounds even more devilish.

Sorry about our fires smoking everyone out! The Premier of Quebec was saying on the news tonight that they have crews to fight 40 fires at a time but they have 150 fires right now. Here in Ottawa we have fires to our northeast and our southwest. Back to N95's again. 😭

You mean this one??

Interesting. Are you still actively using your Malabar? I tried to interest my son and nephews years ago, with no success, and mine has only seen water once since - I got the notion to relax with it at the cottage and she sank stern first before my eyes! The little block of wood glued in to support the rudder post detached from the hull after 40+ years and water poured in. Fortunately I was able to snorkel out and find it on the bottom. The RC set worked after drying in rice but the battery was not happy. Fond memories. I guess there's little demand for these winch products now? Young people playing video games instead? 🙄😭

Hi Doug; Nice boat with the barquentine rig! Do you have just a couple of yards on the foremast braced and the others follow? I agree with Reggie about the Williams book. I have one and it's a good read with many helpful drawings. I never heard of "standing" torque; sounds the same as "stall" torque: the torque at which the winch will no longer pull in, but will resist being pulled out, if you will. Hitec quotes 1.8A as the current drawn by a stalled 785HB. Regarding the 785HB, Hitec specs its max torque as 153 oz-in at 4.8V; 183 oz-in at 6.0V. They never list nominals, only maximums. 😏 I cannot find a drawing that shows the supplied drum diameter, but judging proportions in the drawings I think the 1" radius you mention is the diameter of the outer flanges. The actual winding surface is the smaller circle within the larger one, meaning the "pull" with the supplied drum will be greater than 7.6lbs, perhaps about 9lbs. Just as a brief intro, there are two types of sail servos, drum winch and arm. A drum winch has the advantage of constant torque no matter the length you are trying to pull in, but the problem of the line perhaps coming off the reel and tangling if you try to ease a slack sheet. A sail-arm servo has as the name implies a long arm at the end of which you get a lot of movement (like 765HB below). The advantage is that you never get tangling problems if you try to let out a slack sheet; the problem is that the longer the arm the less pull you get. Hitec used to have a "mega sail arm" 815BB with 300-350 oz-in to provide more torque than a 765 but it seems to have been discontinued. Frankly I don't understand this as my old M-class yacht with 800 sq.in. of sail needed that old 20lb winch; you could hear it working hard if trying to pull in the sheets to get close hauled in a strong wind. Don't know what your sail area will be on your CA but you should figure an estimate and compare to the 785's capability. Also does the 785 have enough range for your sheet movement? If not you need to rig the sheet in a way which doubles the total range, but halves the torque. The Williams book goes into all this. The book shows many systems with drum winches pulling back and forth on a continuous loop around another free-wheeling drum, with sheets attached somewhere along the loop. This eliminates tangling at the winch since the "primary" loop is never slack, and gives maximum possible pull at any position. Great idea! But you need the space to contain the potentially long loop. https://hitecrcd.com/products/servos/analog/boat-analog/hs-765hb/product What is a crawler? HaHa!, I was asking myself the same thing a year ago when looking at ESC (Electronic Speed Control) units with the notion to modernize my old WWI battlecruiser from the 70's. Crawlers are RC models of off-road trucks with huge wheels that are raced (?) over rocky terrain and I guess have winches just like real trucks. Looking forward to seeing your CA on the water! Keep up the good work. Ian

Nice looking planking job! Out of curiosity, what sail winch do you plan to install? My old sailboats are from the seventies, reliant on a winch of the times which has 20 lb pull but is about the size of three hockey pucks......

.... or perhaps the word is just "stubbornness" .... 😏

Thanks Michael, that's very flattering coming from someone whose builds I admire tremendously! Just had our replacement pool installed today so I'll be all set for initial water tests..... 😉

Thank you Botra; I noticed you were a new follower. It's about to get very interesting..... 😮

Hi Bill. You're at 1/48 scale (forty eight quarter-inches in a foot) so dividing the actual chain sizes by 48 gives 16 to 20 thou of an inch or about 1/2mm.

Marc, Don't know how you find all this great info! I browsed through his belaying plans and he, perhaps not coincidentally, has drawings for many ships of which you can buy plans drawn by Harold Underhill. I think this is the guy who drew my Preussen belaying plan. Great find! 👍 Postscript: I did some screen captures and when I magnify the image the belay names are illegible. I imported to "paint" ...... is there a better way?

I looked through Heller's drawings again. I see what Ferrus is saying - one of the large drawings shows the two mainstay links becoming one immediately behind the foremast, and also the knighthead is further back than I thought. From what Anderson said I had pictured the collar ending further away from the mast, and the halyard tackle passing up immediately behind the mast and through the collar loop. But this would mean a VERY long collar. So I vote with Ferrus and Henry now. Sorry to have brought up this whole digression. From now on, I'm 🤐

....and holding glasses of wine, if memory serves.