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Plenty of reason to be proud. She is a very handsome ship and there is plenty to be proud of, balls and all. Lou

Ah Family! Yes we probably do have the same Admiral. Mine trusts me about as far as she can throw me! She is leaving to visit kids and grand kids as well except I won't be meeting her there. I get to stay home and finish the bathroom rebuild and be chief cook and bottle washer for the two grand kids we are raising, (15 going on 30 and 10 going on 3).I have been doing this pretty much five or six times a year, (The kids not the bathroom) for years and she still calls me up and makes "suggestions." She has no problems with me in the kitchen unless we are in there together! She keeps reminding me about how tired she is of cooking! Now you have me worried! I have no childish cuteness! She may not come back and I will be stuck with these two Velociraptors all alone! Good luck on your trip and vacation, and I still think your work on the Sultana is turning out perfectly. Lou

Are you adult enough to be left all alone for a full week? What's in Tokyo? When my Admiral leaves for her almost three weeks next week she is only going as far as California! She doesn't trust me enough to go any further away, (Even though she would probably like to, further away that is.) Lou

You are right. The escort carriers were converted hulls with a flight deck installed. The escort carriers were mostly converted cargo ships while the light carriers were normally converted cruiser or passenger ships. But in the US they were built open bowed with a gun platform under the flight deck at the bow and stern like the Japanese carriers. British carriers, including their escort carriers had the bow built up higher so that it met the underside of the flight deck. Possibly not a true hurricane bow like today's carriers but still much more weather resistant than the American and Japanese designs of WWII. Lou

Well you could have been in Typhoon Cobra in 1944: 100 mph (87 kn; 45 m/s; 160 km/h) winds, very high seas and torrential rain, three destroyers capsized and sank, and 790 lives were lost. Nine other warships were damaged, and over 100 aircraft were wrecked or washed overboard; the aircraft carrier Monterey was forced to battle a serious fire that was caused by a plane hitting a bulkhead. Story Pictures More I read somewhere that this storm was one of the main reasons the US navy converted to the British hurricane style of closed bow on aircraft carriers. Lou

No reason to believe you will not do an outstanding job just as you have done so far. I just thought it went without saying. Now get to work and show us more or I will be forced to send a horde of Rigging spiders to your house! Lou

I agree, a VERY nice build to be proud of. I am kind of jealous though! Lou

Well this was MODEL North Atlantic. The waves were more like four or five INCHES, not 40 feet! But it was still fun and made for some very interesting movie footage. Lou

Used to be when I first became a police officer. Then it changed and continued to change until today it is a privileged life style. No bills, no boss, free medical, everyone else cleans up after you and takes care of you. How can you loose? Lou

If she did then you would be broke and agility would no longer matter!

Its their agility that KEEPS me FROM getting them anytime! (But then the Admiral kind of likes it that way).

I agree, I have never seen a factory geared motor that I really liked the ratio they offered. I have done gear drives, belt drives, and chain drives and to be honest I prefer direct drive if possible. My only experience with the Blue Devil was the Lindberg one and you already know how that one turned out. Too top heavy on a narrow hull and flat bottomed all combined with no prior knowledge to speak of. It was only a matter of time. Your Blue Devil is much larger and with careful placing of all the heavy stuff low in the hull should be OK. I think you may have some power problems due to small props and motors and may have to think way ahead of the ship especially when going at full speed, but stay out of heavy weather and away from solid unmoving objects you should be OK. One of my favorite ships I built many years ago was the British navel tug Storm King. It was about four feet long and somewhat narrow for what you would think a tug would be. Pretty much built it from scraps laying around the house as I was much younger and pretty much broke. Ran that boat in all kinds of weather for years, even did a little ice breaking with it once but that was a little hard on the hull so never did it again. I do have some old VHS tapes around here though showing me running in scale North Atlantic conditions. WOW was that fun! When you slow the speed of the movie down you can see the bow cutting through the higher waves and the flying water going over the bridge! And the rolling in the turns was something else! I would have given almost anything to have had one of the modern day VR cameras installed in the bridge and been able to be "On board" so to speak. I showed the footage to an old Coast Guard officer and all he said was "I've BEEN in weather like that! An even larger ship like yours will be impressive to watch doing destroyer like things with a high bow wave and water piled up at the stern. I do hope you have a place to run where you have plenty of room, as you have done a fantastic job of building and deserve to get the fun part afterward of watching your creation act like it's full sized counterpart. Lou

Hi Brian Good to see you still making excellent progress. Remember, old age and perseverance will always overcome youth and ability. Lou

Hello Eugene I also greatly appreciated seeing your work on the Avos. Just like Chucks Cheerful it is a welcome addition to the small vessels of the 18th and early 19th century. I am certain that it will be a very popular kit in your ship line up. I hope you continue with your excellent kits by providing the world with high standard subjects to choose from when deciding to build a ship model. Lou

Hi GAS Thanks for the information on the motors you are looking at. They do seem to be somewhat milder than what I was thinking you were talking about. They should be able to drive the small props you are considering without much trouble. It would be nice if they published the amp rating but with the batteries you are considering you should still get OK running times. I still think I would prefer larger motors and props for a ship this size but that may be a personal bias and has no place in proper design considerations. You are right in that these motors are certainly inexpensive, that's always a plus! As always I will be following your progress with interest. Remember when you get it into the water the red side goes down! Lou

Hello Eugeny I am glad to see you here. I already own the Phoenix and consider it a superior kit. I am looking forward to other Master Korabel kits and Syren/Master Korabel joint kits or projects. Lou

Hi GNS Let me see if I can do this right and make some sense for a change. First off I have to say that I have been out of the electric RC stuff for a while and I must admit I am not sure what size a 500 motor is. If you are looking at 7000 RPM @6V then I will assume you are looking at RC car or possibly aircraft motors. If so then you are looking at high amperage motors that put out a lot of power in a small size but will draw a battery pack down pretty fast. The ship you are building is 6' long by 8", (?) with a draft of 3" (?) and like the Blue Devil model and not like the prototype is pretty much flat bottomed. I would have to look up the formula in my old stuff somewhere in the basement in a box but I want to say that you will need the ship to weigh somewhere in the 45-55 pound or more to float right. Getting that weight going and getting it stopped will take some power and as large a prop as you can fit. Since you need so much weight to float right anyway and you clearly have plenty of room why not think bigger and heavier? Larger, higher voltage motors will draw far less current as a rule depending on what the motor was designed for. If you choose to use something like a starter motor for an automobile then you are again back in the high end draw short term use motor. But I have seen people use 12V windshield wiper motors successfully. Still a little high draw for my liking but doable. The motors I prefer are motors taken out of equipment like photocopiers and stuff like that. They tend to be reasonably high torque 18 or 24V high quality motors with low EMF properties, (Another important factor to consider in RC). They run quite well at 12V and can turn a surprisingly large prop without running up the amps. i personally like to use a motor that has about the same diameter or more than the prop you are going to drive. I also think that if you are able to provide 7000 RPM directly to the props that they would tend to cavitate and not provide thrust at all unless you back down on the throttle. The other part of the system is to get away from the quick charge 7.5V battery packs and go to the gel cell batteries you can get for use in home alarm systems and back up systems. They are much easier to charge and much safer to use to say nothing about cost. If you know someone in the commercial fire alarm system business you can most often get batteries from them that have had to be pulled from alarm systems for liability/insurance reasons but still have tons of life in them for modeling uses. They are heavier but like I said you need the weight anyway. Again i need to remind you that i have been out of the hobby for a number of years and the largest ships I ever ran was a 4' ocean going tug and a longer but much shallower draft China River Gunboat, (Panay). But I do know of other people who have built in your size and displacement range and they did much the same as I described. If you want I could make a couple of calls and see what the modern uptake on the engineering aspect of large displacement hulls is and if it has changed from my day. The offer for motors still stands if it turns out that they are what you are thinking about after all. Hope this is useful. Lou

Hi GAS I used to do a lot of RC stuff and over the years accumulated a fair amount of stuff, including motors and drive gears etc. (It's called hoarding now days) I think I have several motors that may meet your needs to power your Blue Devil. No problems handling the 2" props direct drive. What I found in years past with the larger props, (3-4") was not getting the motors that I had to work but getting the universal joints to hold up when slamming the throttle from full ahead the full astern. The ears of the nylon dog bone connectors would sheer off almost every time! What I ended up doing was to make the dog bones out of brass with steel cross pins. I was able to make them using a hand drill and files. I used the collets made by Dumas on the motor and prop shafts. This arrangement has lasted for years on several ships. I think I could supply you with motors that would be very well suited to your needs, (You would need to give me a little time to dig them out from storage and ship them to you) The dog bones and other stuff would be up to you. Let me know by PM if you are interested. Lou

Looks like you managed to measure once and cut twice AND came out with more rather than less! That's quite and accomplishment! Lou

Hi Patrick Glad to see you back at the very first of the new year and hope that your's goes well for you. As for your Sultana I personally think that you are doing a fantastic job and need not make excuses for anything you have done OR anything you have not done. If you feel you have modeling limits and chose not to attempt to exceed them on this build then it is far better to keep the kit at your level and nicely done, (Which you have done) rather than exceed your abilities and blotch your beautiful model up with junky looking work, (Which you have not). Besides not everything suggested by the kit manufacture is gospel. They obtained their information from the researcher/designer and his work could be both inaccurate and have included best guesses based on what was available to him and then Model Expo kept what they could use in a kit and skipped over what they could not. So by the time the kit got to you it already had been hashed over by many people and limitations accepted for a number of reasons. If it was a newly designed and researched vessel and manufactured using up to date equipment things could have been different if the effort was made. As you have noticed neither are true in this kit. This is considered to be a moderately easy beginners kit and concessions have been made all the way down the line. I further support your KISS decision on the fact that this was a small relatively unimportant vessel at the time it existed and according to Hahn didn't cost all that much when purchased in 1768 and as such it would be sensible to assume that many elaborate embellishments would be missing or not replaced if damaged or rotted. Just a view of one who is enjoying your build immensely. Lou

Mark Should be between 4 and 6 AM our time. I'll probably be awake, my youngest is already counting the hours. (He got a watch for his birthday this year and times EVERYTHING) Merry Christmas to all. Lou

Patrick I think that we may be living under the command of the same Admiral! Unlike you though I KNOW she isn't listening. In fact she hasn't listened to me for the last forty years! "Yes dear, that's fine dear" is just another way to say "If it doesn't sparkle and fit around my neck or on my ears, how could it be important?" At least you get a second cup of morning coffee! Lou

Great job Patrick. Can't wait until the next installment! She is truly going to be a model to be proud of. Lou

Nice work Denis Lou

Great looking job Denis A number of years ago in a galaxy.......... whops wrong movie. Way back when I built the Billings St. Canute and it was assembled the same way. each side separate and then join the two halves. At the time it seemed to go against all tradition but I gave it a go and I was amazed at how fast it went and how well it turned out. Very clean planking look and no warping at all. You might want to give it a try. Lou