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Ian_Grant

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Everything posted by Ian_Grant

  1. Ian_Grant
    Very nice model....!
  2. Ian_Grant
    Hi Kevin, it was a rafting trip, three rafts, four guests and one guide per raft. Guide is at centre with oars, two guests at front and two back, guests can paddle if they like (or to keep warm!). All we really had to do was pitch our tents and set up air mattresses etc, pack them in the mornings, and take a turn doing the dishes. As they said, "It's your holiday so don't paddle unless you want to". The chief guide was a chef for seven years, the second guide was a sous-chef, the third loved to bake at camp. The meals were fabulous eg arctic char, thai curry chicken, fresh-baked brownies or cake. Only two of us opted to swim amongst the icebergs in Alsek lake, it was REALLY bracing!! Great trip, but next time we think we'll go with canoes to be more active. We were lucky to pick this trip as some other rivers had too much smoke and trips were cancelled. And the Dempster highway was opening and closing seemingly at random. By the way, we met a few Brits in Whitehorse who had their motorcycles shipped to Anchorage, rode to Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea, had come down to Whitehorse, and were en route for Cape Horn; yes, THE Cape Horn. What an epic trip!
  3. Ian_Grant
    Yes, your MACK 1885 motor is brushed. Since you're a newbie, a warning about batteries - I don't think it's the case here (your battery looks like NiMH cells) - but if lithium batteries are being charged it's best not to leave them in the boat due to fire risk. 🔥 Look forward to your launch video! Wish I was as close ...... 😣
  4. Ian_Grant
    Nice neat installation. Looks like a mini servo on the rudder. I only seem to see two terminals on the motor so I assume it's brushed? Is it geared down? Nice model by the way...... if I ever build a tug I'm quite taken with the "George W Washburn" by Dumas.
  5. Ian_Grant
    Congratulations on a superb model!!
  6. Ian_Grant
    Glen, this is your best SIB yet!!! Can't wait to see it hooked up at the sea wall............. 👍
  7. Ian_Grant
    Glen, she looks incredible!!!!!.....better than mine......love the oars.....
  8. Ian_Grant
    I spent not one nanosecond thinking about it while passing down the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers from the Yukon to coastal Alaska. What a trip - grizzly bears, bald eagles, mountain views, hikes, glaciers calving into Alsek lake (where a polar bear swim is optional). Plus we got to fly back to Whitehorse in bush planes.
  9. Ian_Grant
    Unfortunately I did not get the boat to the pool for a water test today so it must wait until we return from our trip in two weeks. The mechanical setup is complete ie. all the servos have their mechanical links to the oar mechanisms and the 2nd lower oar bar is fixed via the requisite hinges to its beam. I also added the aluminum rods at the stem for mounting the printed ram when available, and also to prevent water reaching the wood interior of these holes. We need to finish packing so there's no time to install the Arduino, fire it up, and tweak the software to the actual physical connections of the servos in this final configuration. I expect the water test to be underwhelming. I plan to make the oar blades larger, but they will move just below the water surface. Deeper would be better but that would mean the loom ends would be higher and be interfered with by the deck beams. I can just see me reworking the mechanisms to shorten the oar looms (which would reduce their ultimate height) , if that is possible for the upper remes since they must reach the wall of the outrigger. Time will tell. I used the shortest arm possible on the sweep servos, to get the two inch stroke at minimum torque load using a reasonable total rotation. The arm must move over 120 degrees; looking at this I recalled Bedford's comment of long long ago when he suggested linear servos which would give constant sweep speed. Since my sweep servo arms are rotating, and the software as presently written generates a steady rotation of the arms, the sweep speed along the boat's axis decreases as the angle of the arms increases. I'll need to change the software to accelerate the sweep servo arm rotation as its angle increases, to maintain a constant "delta-x", if you will, forward and backward. Haven't looked at the math yet, should just be some basic trig. Here are a couple of shots of the boat "ready to go"; just needs electronics, updated software, and ballast.
  10. Ian_Grant
    Bill, have a look at the latest few posts on 72Nova's "Wasa" build. Rigging doesn't get much better than that! You will see realistic block spacing etc, but the exact number of blocks involved in the crowfeet varied over time. See Andersen pg 127; "The sprit topmast backstay was one of the places where the early 17th century rigger really let himself go." I love that sentence. He shows many variations by nationality and year ..... just look at that "backstay" on "Sovereign of the Seas" and thank your lucky stars you're not building a model of her! 😉
  11. Ian_Grant
    Good luck Bill!! 🖖
  12. Ian_Grant
    Michael, as always, fantastic model! I can't get over how your crowfeet don't distort the run of the stays. Beautiful. By the way, what are you using for ratline thread?
  13. Ian_Grant
    Held my nose and ordered another aluminum channel beam from ServoCity, paying the usurious shipping rates to Canada and the inevitable "brokerage fees", shipping taxes, brokerage taxes, and Canadian taxes on the sum total ie taxes on taxes. I have some tea in the pantry; where's the nearest harbour? Making slow progress on the 2nd mechanism. I want to make a second water test with all lower oars this week because we are leaving on the weekend for two weeks in the Yukon and NWT. Here's a pic of current state.........
  14. Ian_Grant
    Really like your stand, Bill. And the ship, of course!
  15. Ian_Grant
    ........ and smoke from Canada ...... 🫢
  16. Ian_Grant
    Over here, waterproofed matchsticks for camping are generally green. Glen, what can I say? I'm running out of superlatives for this build. Your scorpios are Aaah-maaaaziiiing!!!!
  17. Ian_Grant
    Looks great Glen! Must have been very fiddly. Just a note that they weren't actually made of stone, just sometimes painted to resemble it. They had to be very light weight wood and canvas affairs to not affect stability. In fact they were later made to be collapsible and stored flat on deck during heavier weather.
  18. Ian_Grant
    Agree with George....and I love the brass etch trailboard decorations ..... day and night compared to the decals.....keep up the good work .... I admire your commitment.....
  19. Ian_Grant
    Yes, the corvus was a Roman invention for the first Punic war. They soon discovered that the additional weight, and possibly the removal of forward bulwarks to allow deploying it at various angles, made the ships even less seaworthy so it was obsoleted. The new solution was a lighter-weight "boarding bridge" which could be manhandled over the side, and was stored lying athwartships on the forward deck, between new bulwark openings used to deploy it. You can see it sitting on the deck around the 21 sec and 53 sec marks in the following video (I meant to send you this video earlier, not the short fast one but couldn't find this at the time). That's a really beautiful model; I'd love to buy one but they are out of production, very difficult to find, and presumably $$$$. There's another video before this one showing his stages of the build. I'd love to know where he found his crew too! By the way, looking forward to seeing how you represent scorpio artillery at your miniscule scale. I'm wondering how to make them for mine!
  20. Ian_Grant
    Glen, this is amazing ..... I love the bulwark decorations!!! For some more ideas on finishing this ship, check out the following video: https://m.facebook.com/Cast-Your-Anchor-Hobby-246287451905/videos/roman-navy-galley-warship-model-boat-awesome-cast-your-anchor-specializes-in-sta/325854628861004/
  21. Ian_Grant
    Sorry to hear that ...... the usual sequence would be stays first since they're along the centreline and soon become less accessible, then backstays. When rigging each stay, I attach a temporary backstay to the next mast behind, or something convenient, so I can tighten the stay and the backstay to ensure the mast is straight when I fix the stay. For this stage I work from stern forwards.
  22. Ian_Grant
    😆🤣
  23. Ian_Grant
    Bill, if that is "S2" coloured in green in your pic, yes it is the mainstay, hooked at the shoulder in the stem below the bowsprit. You'd need to slide it down the bowsprit before adding the gammoning (will it go past your sprit-topmast?) if you want to tie the loop off-ship. It might be too late for you. 😒
  24. Ian_Grant
    As long as I don't go past the point at which the grip on water requires too high a continuous torque from the sweep servo....🤔
  25. Ian_Grant
    I think mine is perhaps more overweight than underpowered; I had to put in several pounds of lead to load to waterline. On the other hand it still lacks the second mechanism and the entire deck etc. When I guesstimated the ultimate weight of the wood hull I was conservatively heavy - better to turn out lighter and need ballast than heavier and sit too deep. You may recall I weighed my old battle-cruiser empty to see what its wood etc weighed; I'm wondering now if maybe I placed some ballast in the inaccessible areas in her bow and stern as I built her, 40 years ago....... I'm thinking of replacing the oar blades with blades 1/2" longer to catch more water, since the loom length was increased by 1/2" when I changed the geometry of the outrigger. It would be a bit painful but perhaps helpful.

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