el cid

Yep, it’s the SQA-10 VDS (variable depth sonar).  (Sumrall 1995.  Sumner-Gearing Class Destroyers. pp. 212-215)

Yep, it’s the SQA-10 VDS (variable depth sonar).  (Sumrall 1995.  Sumner-Gearing Class Destroyers. pp. 212-215)

Gun Line
This was a commission for a gentleman in America, whose father served in both ships.
Shore bombardment Vietnam. USS O'Brien and USS Taussig in the background. Worth looking up O'Brien, she had quite an illustrious career.
w/c 16" X 11"

I was asked by Valentina Golycheva if I could do a painting of the attack on Convoy BD-5 - 12 August, 1944: The Marina Raskova was a soviet cargo ship that was torpedoed and damaged in the Kara Sea by U-365 (commander Kapitänleutnant H.Wedemeyer) while heading from Molotovsk to Kara's naval base at Port Dikson to supply food, technical equipment relief personnel and their families. The merchant ship was being escorted by three minesweepers from the 6. Minesweeper Division, and two of them were also sunk by the German submarine (T-118 and T-114). Marina Raskova was sunk by a coup de grâce the day after. Of the 632 men Women and Children on the three ships, 373 were lost and only 259 were rescued. Valentina's Father was among those killed. A little known event among the the the many tragedies during the war at sea in the Arctic Convoys. It is well worth looking into the story of Convoy BD-5 and subsequent expedition in 2015 to find and honour the remains of those who did not return Valentina Golysheva is well known in connection with Russian Arctic Convoy associations and Rememberance events in Russia and UK. She is Associate Professor, PhD Director of the British Centre Department of English School of Social Sciences and Humanities and International Communications Northern ( Arctic) Federal University (NARFU) Arkhangelsk

1956, I left school, joined Merchant Navy, trained as a Catering boy at the TS Dolphin in Leith. Joined my first ship Edenwood  at Ellesmere Port. Ballast to Casablanca for Phosphate for Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth. On the return trip we stopped off to 'swing the Compass' off Inchkeith. The Compass Adjuster was T.C. Lauder of Leith. I was sent up to the bridge with tea and sandwiches for him. Not the last time I was to meet Tommy Lauder. Several ships, sea miles and years later, now in the RN, I met the girl who was eventually to be my wife. When I met her Family her Dad was  the same TC Lauder Nautical Optician and Compass Adjuster I had met that day on Edenwood. It will be our 60th wedding anniversary this year.
The painting is Edenwood off Inchkeith with the Pilot Boat (as I remember it )  alongside and my future Father in Law climbing aboard.
 

Jim,
must have missed this the first time I went through all you wonderful pictures, I served on the Gold Rover, in Late '82. I was made redundant the following year during the 1st round of Maggie T's defense cut backs after the Falklands. Best 3.5 years of travel ever during my time on the RFA
 
Thanks
Guy

Up date, put in a Short S17 'Kent' Flying boat.

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

With Sea Watch books no longer selling plans for the Swan class we have decided to provide them as a free download from our website
http://admiraltymodels.homestead.com/Plans.html. Feel free to take use this set of plans if building a Swan class ship model in the future. Be aware, however, that the sheet with the sheer, half breadth and body plans need to be printed commercially due to their size. I have had no end of problems getting these plans printed to spec in the past even though there are scales printed on it. Therefore, we are now providing them as a free download with the caveat to check them very carefully after printing. The best advice I can give is to make sure the distance between perpendiculars is 96' 7" (scale) or 24.15" full size.
 
For those who have purchased Mylar plans in the past from us there should be no problems as they were checked and dimensionally stable.  But David and I feel that we can no longer charge for plans for which we have no control over the final product. With so many of our Swan  books having been sold over the years we didn't want to leave you without any options for producing plans so this is the best we could come up with. Thank you for all your support over the twenty years we have tried to provide the best product possible.
 
We are hopeful that we may be able to conduct a workshop late next year but, like everything else in this strange time, we shall have to wait and see.
 
Stay healthy and best wishes from David and I for a better 2021!

Pilots,! Think i might need one!

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Looking forward to this build, Mosquito was (is) an awesome a/c.
 
One of my all time favorite air combat memoirs was written by a Mossie navigator...
 
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-David-McIntosh/dp/0773730893
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

It's going great.  Nice work.
 
The part in question is the pump panel - and the drivers side with the gauges etc.  The Engineer controls the pump from this position.  The other side has a connection or two for additional hose lines.  There is nothing inside except the connections to the pump, the wiring for the panel lights, pressure lines to the gauges, etc.  Also inside are the water pipe lines to the hose outlets on both sides of the vehicle and the pipe up to the hose reel that sits atop the box.  The hose reel is for what we called a booster hose.  I have never seen any color of these high pressure hoses except a muted dull red and black.  The pressure on this line can be up to 1,000psi - depending on the pump mfg.  Most city FDs around here don't use booster lines today but rural areas with field fires do use them.
 
The engineer controls the pressure delivered to the hoses by engaging the pump before leaving the drivers position - if they intend to use high pressure on the booster line he engages the 3rd stage which delivers high pressure after the incoming water enters the 1st stage and the incoming pressure is increased  there and then enters the 2nd stage where the pressure is increased further and then to the 3rd stage where it is increased yet again.  If the fire is one where quantity is needed vs pressure only the first two stages are engaged.  These pumps are centrifugal pumps and I have described how the pumps I have operated are operated.  I never operated a pump after August of 1984 when I was injured on the job and when I came back they promoted me to Div. Chief so I might be a bit rusty on specific details. 
 
BTW, every fire pump I have ever seen is red.  Doesn't matter if it's on a pumper or in a building.  ALF purchased their pumps from a pump mfg. who make pumps for many uses.  Fire pumps undergo extensive testing to get approval as a fire pump and then each pump is tested to strict protocol at the factory before shipping.   Fire pumps cost a lot more than a pump with the identical components that isn't meant for fire service use.  These other pumps cam be almost any color but red.  I have been inside pump mfg factories and have seen green, blue, orange but never a red one outside the dedicated space they use for the fire pump assembly and testing areas.  Most firefighters never see the inside of a pump mfg facility and my seeing the making and testing of fire pumps was because I was the Fire Prevention Division Chief and had to approve all fire pumps for the large buildings in town so their certification was something we had to take very seriously.
 
 
 
 

Prepared the yards with foot ropes.
 
I cut a piece of a shirt 17 x 6 in along the button up side. I trimmed off the buttons between the buttons & the back seam giving me a full bolt rope along the top.
 
Cut out the sails slightly larger than the molded plastic.  soak them in hot water tamp them damp with a paper towel and lay them on the mold.  brush water glue mixture on just the top surface while it was still damp. 10 min later brush a light coat of pure glue.  Tie the bottom corners with thread before it completely sets up.  If you peel the top Edge back just a millimeter or two leave the rest of it glued to the mold, LET DRY, so the sail will not move as you sew around the yard, going across and then tie it off at the other end of the yard. REMOVE from mold.   At this point you will have a prepared yard w/Sail and foot rope.  Question; at this scale ( 1/96 ) do I omit tackle blocks since theres no where to attach them without tangling the rigging ?
 
And just tie off bottom of sail to the lower yard ?
does this look OK and keep going?
Also do the yards HAVE to be angled or can they be straight? 

Hello,
 
I have been able to solve the problem with the tackle pendants and the blocks for the yard. Many thanks to mort stoll who gave me valuable help.
 

 
After solving the problem, I went back to the backstays.
 

 

 

 

 
After the completion of the standing rigging on the main mast, the tensioning of all ropes will be controlled and fixed.
 
Now I can devote myself to rigging the mizzen mast.
 
Helli

These are only my observations on CAD and CAD users: 
 
The economics of my time as a hobbyist is blissfully void of the "How long?" and "How much?" demands of commercial production.  I can comfortably answer these questions with: "As long as it takes." and "I'll do with or without."   On the other hand, commercial economics demands these questions be addressed and in business, CAD gets the nod.  CAD is faster than work made with pencil or pen and ink.  In my hobbies, plans are made with pencil on paper, on a drafting table with an arm.  I have no practical experience nor personal interest in CAD.
 
Following high-school drafting classes and a 12 month, trade-school, mechanical-drafting program, I worked for a while employed drawing maps with pen and ink on vellum or starched linen.  I had at my disposal an enviable set of jewel-tipped Rapid-O-Graph pens.  The job was a pleasure and my maps were beautiful.  I was there when talk of transition to a computerized system began but no one knew what form it would take.  I consider myself lucky I moved on before the transition took place.  It amounted to an upheaval, the increased productivity of CAD put people out of work and I may have been one of them.  A Luddite view?  There is some of that, but I never went as far as tossing a sabot in the works.  I had moved on.
 
My shop was designed with space for a 40 x 60 inch, tilt-top drafting table with a Mutoh Model 6, straight-arm drafting-machine mounted on it.  I had gotten them at an auction some time before for $110.00.  I had to bid against one other guy who wanted them too, otherwise I could have gotten them for the opening bid of $20.00!  In the shop, I also provided space for a 40 x 60 inch, six-drawer flat-file.  Some people admire them.  Devotees of CAD usually view them with distain, as a waste of floor space.  Conversation then usually segues into the merits of their CAD system.  CAD adherents seem to carry  a sort of militant allegiance to what ever system they are invested in.  I detect their divergence away from pencil and paper carries another defensive element.  I get the impression the most vocal CAD adherents would be hard-pressed to draw a three view plan or and isometric view.  But with CAD, they don't have to know how.  That's a shame.
 
Done free-hand or with a straight-edge, drawing is a tactile art-form.  Drawings are an artistic extension of the object being made.  Drawings carry the imprint of the maker as much as the object they represent.  Even when drawn with a straight-edge,  drawings of one object made by different people will show characteristics of their makers.
 
2H, 4H, 6H, HB, B.  Does anyone care?
 
 
For the Season:
 
Excerpts from Robert Service's "The Trappers' Christmas Eve".
 
It's mighty lonesome-like and drear.
Above the Wild the moon rides high,
And shows up sharp and needle-clear
The emptiness of earth and sky;
No happy homes with love a-glow;
No Santa Claus to make believe:
Just snow and snow, and then more snow;
It's Christmas Eve, it's Christmas Eve.
 
Stripped to the buff and gaunt and still
Lies all the land in grim distress.
Like lost soul wailing, long and shrill,
A wolf-howl cleaves the emptiness.
Then hushed as Death is everything.
The moon rides haggard and forlorn...
"O hark the herald angels sing!"
God bless all men - it's Christmas morn.
 
 
 
  
 
     
 
            

As a child I took 9 years of art classes outside the regular school system. In these I learned about perspective, viewpoints and such, all for the purpose of making pretty pictures - what is called "art."
 
But I have always had the ability to create 3D perspective drawings on paper. For me it was fun. I made straight As in geometry in junior high school - it all came naturally to me.  In college my freshman roommate was majoring in engineering, and he had mechanical drawing classes. Like so many people he had no concept of perspective. I would look at the three-view (front, side, top) 2D images and just draw the 3D perspective for him by hand.
 
Years later I learned how to use mechanical drawing tools for work on drafting boards. I read through some drafting books and it was all pretty obvious. Again, it came naturally. I have always loved to draw (and still do), whether it is an artistic picture, a botanical drawing or an engineering plan for a house or machined part.
 
Then along came CAD in the late 1980s. We used AutoCRUD at first and it was awful! What we called a VERY user unfriendly program. One day one of the engineers tried a CAD program called ProDesign. One look at the user interface (the best I have ever seen on any program) and AutoCRUD went into the trash. We have used the same program ever since, although the program has changed hands from company to company several times. Today DesignCAD is considered to be a "hobby" program, and it lacks some of the bells and whistles of more expensive programs. But it is still a very capable 2D and 3D drawing program. Considering it costs about $100 with free bug fixes and technical support, and it has a great free user Forum where you can ask experienced users how to do things and solve problems, it is a tremendous bargain.  Some of the "professional" CAD programs I have also used ($15,000 per seat with $1500 per year fees for technical support and access to user forums) can't do some of the things the $100 DesignCAD can do!
 
So I have experience from both sides. I still do preliminary "back of the napkin" sketches on paper with pencil. I love working with wood and building wood ship models. But the ability to rework a drawing in CAD without messy erasers and whiteout, or just redrawing the entire thing as you do on paper makes CAD the ONLY way to go for a large complex drawing. If you have any doubts, just ask yourself how you rescale the size of text on a paper drawing that was created with a Leroy set? You start over and create a new drawing sheet - all of it. In CAD you click on the text and say I want it 25% larger, and while we are at it let's use a different font. And I can take an old CAD drawing and modify it to create new things without starting over from scratch.
 
But is it art, and can you use it for ship modeling?  And do you need 3D?
 
First, some people will never understand 3D drawing. One of their greatest handicaps has been familiarity with 2D drawing techniques, and even 2D CAD. In 2D you draw an image of something in the real world. In 3D you create an entirely new world. It is not drawing, drafting or anything like it - it is modeling, as if you were creating something out of modeling clay, only it is virtual clay. Very few 2D drawing techniques apply to 3D, and 3D CAD programs have a different set of tools. Instead of a pencil you have to learn to use a virtual chisel or drill. I know a fellow who has been using a 3D CAD program for years and still hasn't developed an understanding of 3D. He just doesn't get it when it comes to turning 2D sketches into 3D models. He cannot create the 3D image in his mind, and you have to be able to do this for 3D CAD. I think it would be better if he didn't try! But I was doing 3D perspective drawing with pencil on paper in grade school and instantly understood 3D CAD. So you should keep this in mind before you take the 3D CAD plunge. Like any program there is a learning curve, but if you understand 3D modeling it will be a lot easier to learn how to use the tools in the program.
 
Can you use CAD for ship modeling? Someone commented it was good for creating new designs, and that certainly is true! But I have seen a number of CAD models of historical ships, even wooden sailing ships. There CAD has a great advantage in some ways. For example, after you have created a double sheave block you can replicate it endlessly and even resize the copies with a few clicks. With a true CAD system you can control dimensions precisely, and that is important if you are copying the design of an historical ship.
 
Is it art? That depends upon what you call art. What is the purpose of the model? Any model, either wood or CAD? Is a chair art? I have seen a few that were exquisitely crafted, but in the end they are chairs, with a functional use.
 
Is this art?
 

 
These are images of a CAD model of the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5 as it existed in the summer of 1971 (when I was aboard). It was created from the original 1959 blueprints with hundreds of modifications that were made over the years. It is a 1:1 scale model, 610 feet long in the CAD universe. You might rightly call me a "rivet counter" because I modeled all the nuts, bolts screws and rivets (everything) that were 3/16 inch (4.76 mm) across or larger in the real world. About 1/3 of the 1+ gigabyte file is nuts, bolts, rivets and screws (however, I did not model the threads - that would have made the file 50-100 gigabytes). There are several hundred thousand individual parts. It took 14 years to acquire the plans and photos of the ship and the equipment on board and convert them into the 3D CAD model.
 
It is not a CAD model of the ship like ship builders use. It only contains the exterior. None of the internal structure is included. But it is a model of an historical ship that was produced in 3D CAD. Perhaps I am boasting, but it may be the most accurate model of a ship ever created. However, it is certainly "too accurate" to be correct for its dimensions are  precise to thousandths of an inch, and for the most part the shipyards certainly didn't do that accurate work! And dimensions in the real world change with temperature and time.
 
So is it art? What is the purpose of a model? Can models be art? If the only way to truly appreciate the model is to view images, how is this different from looking at paintings of historical ships? Each of us has an opinion, and no one's opinions are any better than anyone else's' opinion. But I have enjoyed making this CAD model as much or more than any painting, photograph or wooden model I have made. It was fun!
 
If you are interested in this model and how it was built:
 
 
For a lot more more information about the ship see:
 
www.okieboat.com
 
 

Drafting by hand is an art form and the lettering is more noticeable than the line work on all forms of it. Other than Mechanical Drawing Classes in High School, my Professional experience was with Civil Engineering and Survey Drafting by hand. The trick to good usable drawings was the correct dimensions and accurate data in the tables used to support the drawing details. Someone had to provide that data or you did the Math Yourself, scaling was not good enough. We did our Survey Drawing by plotting grid points and connecting the dots, to do that we needed coordinates, we used Rectangular and Polar both and computed them by hand using Log and Trig Tables, 'not Slide Rules', then the HP 35 came along, beginning the race to computers using COGO. A good Coordinate Geometry Program, 'COGO', was a God Send, from it Cad developed and refined enough to be useful. Hand Drafting was a mighty tool for a long time, but it seldom stood alone. If you wish to design or build from your own plans, uses cad, or learn some Geometry and Trig to run and intersect vectors for dimensions, full size, your drawings with hand fitting oversized parts will work as it has for years.