Fairmount Alpine by George-JK - Billing Boats - 1:75 - RADIO

[George-JK]

So yesterday I got my new model, the Fairmount Alpine from Billing Boats. This will be my first posted build on this forum. I am still building my HMS Pegasus from Victory Model, but I was lacking in the photographic department (too lazy to pull out my camera, and too busy with the build  ). 

The objective will be to make it Radio Controlled, with the most functional parts, certainly the bow and stern thrusters will be fitted, the lights and the fire monitors will be mounted. The lights and fire monitors have some time before me having to decide of a solution. For the bow and stern thrusters, I was thinking of scratch building my own with brass proppelers, but if that will not be possible I will go with Raboesch

ones. Also I will be outfitting her with winches for tug towing competitions, so probably a bit of modifying of the inside of the hull, to create a sturdy anchor for the towing rope.

 

View of the box, it is BIG  (and if someone is curious, yes that is the dining table- the superior work bench   in the picture).

The model is of classical construction, wooden hull "skeleton" planked, in this case, mostly by pre-cut ply pieces, and in the bends of the hull by wooden strips.

The content of the kit:

I already started pulling out the parts of the false keel. All of the laser pre-cut pieces were of great quality, and each piece had plenty of supports left, even after considerable bend of the ply, no pieces fell out, the plywood is 5mm. 

The plastic bag contains the supplied round stock, plastic tube for bow/ stern thrusters imitation and brass round stock, including the parts for the two prop shafts. The timber is beech, used for planking parts of the hull and the deck. The quality of hull planks is somewhat lacking, but the deck planks are of pretty decent quality.

Parts of deck and superstructure, and the hull planks can be seen on this image, in the top part of each sheet.

And lastly the small bits and pieces:

The supplied popellers will be replaced by an aftermarket ones and the kort nozzles will probably also be replaced.

 

To propel this ship I opted for brushless motors, for their superior efficiency and low operating noise:

these units produce 300 W of power each (in an airplane...), and with 850 kV have maximum of 10200 rpm without load, which promises gearless mount.

And the supplied plans, are in the form of a thick book and one A0 sketch of the finished ship, with marked colors and decals, captioned in the bottom left of the picture.

 

[burnside63]

Got the chair and the popcorn out to watch this build.  Considering buying this one myself.

[Eddie]

Hey howya goin George mate, RC nice I'll be watching this one. Always want to do an RC model but I don't know where to start with RC's.

[Frankberge]

I like these kinds of modern ships. I think they look great. It will be very interesting to see it how you do with the rc parts. I have never seen a log with that before

[George-JK]

Hi Guys, thanks for the comments , for Eddie and the rest that is interested in the RC parts, I will tri to give as much detail as possible about why I chose said components. Also if You will have any questions, I will be happy to answer them, to the best of my knowledge, also concerning the kit, if there are some questions I will be happy to answer.  

[George-JK]

To move with the build:

So the start of the build is quite straight forward... Glue the false keel from the 3 parts. 

For the gluing of the wooden parts I opted for polyurethane glue, because of its water resistance and during curing the glue creates bubbles, which helps will any holes in the joint.

The background is a MDF board, that I will be using as work bench, I already marked a straight line and glued pieces of hardwood to hold the keel in place for gluing of the bulkheads. The two round holes in stern and bow are for the thrusters. which will be replaced by functioning ones in a short while.

After breaking free of the bulkheads I dry-assembled the hull to check on the needed modifications:

Keel in the upright position.

The hull of the ship dri-fitted. In the previous image and fitted in this one are pairs of hardwood dowel to help to keep the frame in right angles.

The next part will be to get hold of the thrusters and assembly of parts of the construction, that is not dependent on the keel.

For the thrusters I will either build a pair of mine, which will accommodate each a pair of brass propellers, or will go with Raboesch

http://www.raboeschmodels.com/index.php/en/component/virtuemart/marine-accessories/bow-thrusters/bow-thruster-108-04-detail?Itemid=0

for the bow thruster and

http://www.raboeschmodels.com/index.php/en/component/virtuemart/marine-accessories/bow-thrusters/bow-thruster-108-20-detail?Itemid=0

for the stern thurster.

This way the stern thruster cannot be of the same diameter as the bow thruster, because of the limited space in the stern (only 25 mm thick thruster is able to fit) and the only possible commercial fit is 10 mm in diameter.

[George-JK]

As the main assembly of the hull is on standstill, due to the missing bow and stern thrusters, I started assembling sub parts of the construction.

The first on the list were ports for prop shafts.

Here is the prop shaft dry-fitted before gluing. And the finished parts, glued to their respective bulkheads.

The image shows the bulkhead assembly, cleaned from most of the glue.

The second possible assembly to make was the rudder section, it also consists of two bulkheads and some parts creating the rudder stands.

Gluing of the base of the rudder assembly.

Adding stern of the ship.

[George-JK]

During this week I started the works on the hull, since we got to move with the thruster units. They'll be custom made by a colleague of mine  

Here are some photo of the hull.

Starting from the font, gluing the blukheads. To preserve right angles I used an angle and a sawing ring, for it sufficient weight and also right angles.

Here you can see the hardwood triangles used to stiffen the hull. Also as one can notice the bow is missing, this is due to cutting-out the space for the bow thruster.

Getting to midsection of the hull.  

Attaching the keel side-parts to stern section.

 

[George-JK]

Thrusters:

So recently we started working on the thrusters. The construction is of stator with worm bear of reduction 1:10 approximately, depends on the capabilities ofthe machune

The first parts made are for the rear thruster, the body and the stator housing.

The steel rod will be turned to the warm gear.

Next thing I did, was repair the fallen off bow part of the keel. I added two pieces of hardwood by the sides to reinforce the construction again. 

Then the stern dowel followed. This piece creates a surface where, on the real ship, the towing line slides of deck.

Next I moved to the central section of the hull, here I planned to create an anchor for the towing line so it would be possible for this ship to tow actual payload (I mean to use this ship for tug towing cups). The anchor is created from the rest of the hardwood dowel in a simple manner, the hardest part was to thought up a way, how to transfer the force to the keel without having the hull deform. 

Place for the towing line anchor. I deemed to put the anchor to the middle bulkhead (3rd on this picture)

The anchor the the force transferring dowel beeing glued to place.

Side view of the construction. I tried deforming it "by hand" it held steady for what i would dare to try, so I call it a success.

[George-JK]

The Hull

So finally the hull frame is finished, with all the modifications, that I wanted to do.

The frame glued together, keeping everything perpendicular was the main goal. After extensive checks, I must say, that the level of precision is highly satisfying.

The detail of the modified bow. The cutouts of the side supports (on this picture marked B ) are being kept for gluing after the bow thruster will be complete.

The cutout for anchor.

And the front view. It starts to look quite big  

 

George

[George-JK]

Recently some necessary parts arrived.

First to arrive were anchors, anchor chains, colors and new wood for the read working deck, specifically mahogany and lime strips.

Anchor with the chain installed, for now only temporarily by a copper wire.

 

Second to arrive were thurster engines. These are really small ones, 22 mm in diameter and 16 mm thick, they are 49 W of power and 2300 RPM per Volt

 

George

[George-JK]

The Hull

 

Since I am still in the process of making the thursters, the work on the ship is quite slow, usually I just glue a plank or two in the stern area.

This is the one of the handful of places where actual planking is being used, most of the hull is "planked" by large pieces of pre-cut 2mm plywood, not that I am complaining, it's just that this way is easy to do and fast...

Attaching the bottom parts.

 

Started the planking of the inner stern bend. Since I didn't post for a while, I already have finished the stern planking.

And here comes my first question for the more experienced members. Do you know of a trick of how to sand these kinds of surfaces? I think this is a convex surface, in mathematical terms. I used my thumb, and of course ended up burning it a bit...

 

The Rear deck

 

During these weeks I was also working on the rear deck, where a planked area of the deck is. For this I got for myself 18 meters of mahogany strip and 5 meters of lime strip. In the course of one day, cut the mahogany to 700 pieces and started the patient part of the process.

The strips, 3x1 mm mahogany and 1x1 mm lime.

The detail of the glued planks, the black stuff is PVA mixed with black color. Was trying this method out, turns out, it is quite a good one, except the amount of sanding needed to get it finished.

In the process of sanding...

The almost finished deck. A few more hours of sanding at fine grits, and at least 3 coats of semi mat lacquer, and it should be done.  

 

[George-JK]

Continuation on the Hull:

Since the bottom was already attached and I got the order of epoxy, I started to waterproof the base structure of the hull.

 

Here is also added the deck for the electronics, that are going inside.

The stern view of the ship. With the view of the added servo mounts, one servo per rudder, this will allow for independent rudder movement.

The details of the servo mounts. They are made out of the remaining pieces of the hardwood dowel used to create the towing-rope anchor in the hull.

 

The Decks:

After waterproofing of the hull with epoxy, the main decks followed to be glued to place.

The bow deck is being glued to place.

The stern deck with the supports for the side planking and the inner supports for the towing rope leads. All of these supports were first glued to place by a drop of super glue, then secured to place by epoxy from the bottom side of the hull.

Dry-fitting of the bow supports. Now it looks more like a piranha fish, the a boat  

Front view of the bow supports.

 

The Bridge:

 

Next on the list is the bridge. Here I must say that, the kit is really elaborated. The non right-angle joints are made by scraping, I would prefer to have a modeling wood plane for this work.., the two joining parts. With some patience and a sharp scalpel this was easily completed.

The lower part of the bridge.

Details of the angle joins of parts. The inside of the entirety of these joints is to be coated with epoxy.

 

Glued lower part of the bridge with dry-fitted the upper part.

The Assembly of the upper bridge. the roof will not be glued, for I intend to make the interior of the bridge. For which I managed do find a few pictures on the web.

The upper windows are being glued, the roof is there just to make sure, that everything fits OK.

 

Finished control room exterior. Now it will wait for the interior.

 

The last for now is the crane.

 

P.S.

If someone is still following I do apologize for the long pauses in the vlog. I have lots of work in school right now, I hope to update this build log more often by the start of August.

[George-JK]

Yesterday some goodies arrived, the propellers of the two thrusters, which are planned to be finished tomorow.

A two pairs, each thruster has a LH and a RH propeller. 

[Papa]

very interesting ship and model.  I am looking forward to seeing it in the water under its own power.

[donrobinson]

This is really starting to look like a cool build, I'll be waiting for more updates

[George-JK]

Thank you everyone.  

I hope to post some interesting pictures this week, since the thrusters will be complete  however I'm not sure if I'll be able to build for the next week, I fell of my bike on the way to school... 

 

 

George

[George-JK]

Finally the thrusters are complete  

The body is made of bronze, the drive shaft/worm is made from an M3 screw and the worm gear is made of brass. The final gear ratio is 1:31 and the driving engine should mahe max RPM of 28800, this then gives around 930 RPM on the propellers.

The basic parts of the thrusters; body, worm gear, the worm/drive shaft, and the engine.

 

the assembled unit, with the pair of propellers.

 

The stern unit painted red, and taped for grinding the exes material of the aluminium engine mount.

 

both units are finished, the frornt is glued together, the rear will be glued once inserted into the hull.

 

Enlarging the rear thruster hole, lots of dust...  

 

 

Also some parts came.. 

The pair of the main propellers, 50mm diameter blade design for kort nozzles, of course Left Handed (LH) and Righ Handed (RH).

And the speed controllers (ESC) for the main engines:

These are marine ESC's with maximum of 30 A of continuous current, the engines are rated for 28 A burst for ~30sec. As one can see the brush-less engine has 3 wires leading from the ESC into the engine. By changing the connection of two of those wires the engine changes its rotation, without any impact on performance of lifespan. 

 

Edited August 9, 2017 by George-JK

[George-JK]

Lately I don't have much time to spend on this project, must work on my diploma thesis.

But nevertheless, I was able to do a couple thing, start planking the hull, finish the anchor winch (the pictures for these will follow in the next post/s), and recently in the nights I started to 3D print some practice things.

Recently I designed and printed Kort nozzles for this model.

I created them using "reference" ictures from google and some basic information from some web-pages. The results are from my perspective quite good and will use them on the build. The inner rounded sections are 51 +/- 0.1 mm in all directions, which is for this application good enough. The bottom slot is for the rudder support. The only thing that is necessary is to polish them and pain them red.

 

George

[George-JK]

After a long time, I got back to building this model for a while during the winter holidays.

During the semester I, from time to time glued some planks, resulting in almost done hull...

The almost finished hull planking, here while bluing the first bow piece. The bow planking is made of two pieces glued together to make the rather complicated bend. Here in more detail:

Here is a side view of the glued piece, one can see a rather large gap between the two planks (approximately 1 to 2 mm wide), this is a result of incorrect sanding of the bulkheads. Luckily it should be easily filled with some spare wood.

The bow view. Lots of modeling pins are needed to hold the piece in place. The piece was first soaked in hot water and bend to the rough shape it needed to be prior to gluing.

To finish the planking it is necessary to paint the middle deck area (if this is the correct name of this deck), because the final plank will effectively flock the access to the roof, in this picture in the right corner. 

I added the anchor winch of my own design to the hull. The main parts are made of 10 mm Plexiglas glued together using CA glue. The axle is made of a stainless M8 rod, the end-pieces are washers between two nuts, secured by blue Locktite. the used engine has a gearbox with ratio 298/1 and 20 000 RPM, resulting in around  67 RPM at the exit drive shaft. The engine is then connected to the axle via a homemade clutch. 

The "drum" containing the anchor chains, which still need to be blackened somehow. 

And the placement of the winch in the hull. (there the hull is upside-down due to easier mounting of the winch).

 

[George-JK]

Since the hull is near being completely planked, I went and bought a set of new prop shafts with covers. I did this for multiple reasons, first, the supplied ones used brass friction bearings on both ends, they seemed to be of quite good quality, but better be safe, then to have to drill out a leaky prop shaft of a finished ship. The new ones have a pair of brass-graphite bearing. Second, the supplied ones were using a thin walled brass tubes as their covers. This poses a thread of an easy bend for example during transport. And lastly, the new ones have an engine mount, to which the engines are screwed, ensuring their squareness.

Some pictures of the new prop shafts, with propellers, for checking easy movement.

Outer view of the new prop shafts test fitted.

Stern view, checked if the props are parallel. The propellers are 4 bladed brass dia. 50 mm suitable for nozzles.

The inside view of the prop shafts, one can see the engine mounts on the ends.

[George-JK]

Making of Christmas tree

Since the model is sufficiently large enough, I will be fitting most of the lights with LED's. I started by the windows (not shure of the correct name for these) that are at the bow. For this I used SMD LED's for their ease of mounting, but not of soldering. I made two stripes with 3 LED's each for either side, I also made a pair of LED's for mid-deck lights.

The SMD LED's are really small, and the used enameled copper wire is of miniature dimension, the diameter is approximately 0.35 mm.

This picture shows the position of the mid-deck LED position, this LED will have to be mount before the bull is finished, because later it will be hard to get it's position right. 

[popeye the sailor]

great progress so far........hull looks really good.

[Seamanpeter]

great building so far. Anything done more since last year?

Interested to know how the hull is presently, complete or not.

looking forward for more details.

 

[FoxtrotHotel]

Looks really great. The custom winch mount is clever. Do you have any sensors to detect full extension and retraction, or do you let it stall out?

[George-JK]

Hello All,

I apologize for not posting on the build for so long. There were two reasons, first I always forget to take pictures of the process. And second I finished university, started a job and therefore had to adjust my routines, which took some time. also I met a colleague who owns and is renovating a historic sail boat, so I invest some time there recently as well.

But enough with the exuses ,back on topic.

In the following posts I will try to catch up to speed with the build here and try to do regular updates of the build log. 

 

Now for the questions posted:

@Seamanpeter 

The hull was more or less "seaworthy" so to speak, fully painted form the outside and ready for the details. Then on one of the two trial sails, I found out that the thrusters of home production had super low efficiency and I even managed to burn one of the motors during testing. This also caused me to put the build on hold for a good 6 months. This last weekend I started again, by surgically removing both of the thrusters installed form the hull. This is still ongoing effort. So now it is more like a submarine, than a floating vessel.

 

@FoxtrotHotel 

No the winch at the moment doesn't have any end-stops, maybe in a future update. The latest version v1.2 (pictures will be posted in following days) is printed on a 3D printer, that I own. I was thinking of putting some end-stops on the winch, but didn't come up with a reliable way of doing it. But it can be easily taken out of the finished hull so, I will be experimenting with it once the model is finished.

 

In the end let me post some pictures I found on my phone of the builds relatively current state.

This image shows the detail on the stern, here the entire length on the railing has a 5mm dia. wooden rod, that is meant to be bend to plance on the stern, which I found to be literally impossible to do. The solution brass tube with 5mm OD and ~0.5mm wall thickness. just for info the white putty like stuff is epoxy mixed with micro air balloons, something of this sort: https://www.lindinger.at/en/supplies-und-misc/building-materials/pore-fillers-und-putties/rg-micro-balloons-ul-250ml-can

I will have to find the tin with the rest, to determine the exact type, also i quite need it for the next steps....

The picture shows the model how it was till last weekend, mostly painted. In the end I used Tamiya Paints for everything. For the underwater section I went with the Dull Red paint (TS-33 or LP-18) with som accents made by Italian red LP-21 and black LP-1 done by airbrush. before the main paint coat. I will include some details on the results in later post.

The top part of the hull is painted with Tamiya TS-22 light green. Which to me looks relatively spot on. However I had hoped for it to be the same shade as the X-15 light green, in the end there is slight diference in the colour. To me this is negligible difference, I will include a picture of this difference. The blue is then the standard TS-15 blue.

For the colour picking I mainly use this picture:

Unfortunately I picked the wrong orange (Tamiya TS-15 in hopes it is the same as the X-6 which would be perfect shade, at least to me), so mine is too red. But since the cockpit has all of the glass work done it is just easier to continue with the wrong shade, then to try and mask everything of and repaint it, I think. However it would certainly look better with different orange. I have also see the same problem on many other models, that I found on the internet.

 

Best Regards to everyone still interested in the build.

I will try to keep posted this time around.

George

[George-JK]

Hello All,

So let me try to get the build log up to speed, with the actual build progress. For information, all paint numbers written are from Tamiya paint line.

First, lets start with the hull and the bridge superstructure. 

The first picture shows the paint job on the lower section of the hull, here in detail the starboard rubber and nozzle detail. I tried to create some shading in the colour by fist painting with black LP-1 and Italian red LP-21 with the use of airbrush. The nozzle is still missing the pint of the electrodes, to be done in flat aluminium XF-16. More details on this paint job will follow once i finish the rebuild of both of the thrusters, as now I don't want to turn the hull because of all of the debris that sits in the thurster areas after the sawing.

The second picture shows the dry-fitted superstructure. The windows were done form the supplied clear plastic sheet, and glued to place with the BSI Super-Gold+ odorless CA glue (this is my CA of choice, for gluing basically everything that does not require high structural rigidity). 

The second set of pictures shows details of the safety railing, if that is the proper name for it. With the bottom part being painted and the top part recently finished form the supplied 5mm dowel and additionally 5mm brass tube for the compound bend in the stern portion. Here one can see my choice for water tightening this part of the hull. I used the window sealing foam on the hull and the deck has an Aluminium L profile with smoothened edges glued to the underside. 

Next i will dine into the bridge itself. As I managed to find a picture of the bridge on one German website. I went and designed the pieces in CAD software and printed them out in PLA with the layer thickness of 0.1mm.

The stern helm still needs to have some paint "controls" added.

 

Now for the most recent work, the rebuild of both thrusters.

The new ones are, I believe, the industry standard Raboesch ones. For the Bow I ordered one middle-large bow thruster, the one with the 22mm padle housing. For the stern i ordered the mini bow thruster, because of the space confinement.

For this it was necessary to first somehow remove the installed ones, I wanted to do this with as little damage to the hull as possible. So for the stern, where there is good access for drills I drilled out/broke-off the original one, with more modifications coming, as I get the thruster itself, so I can make the final adjustments.

In the front the situation is more complicated as there really is no space for power tools, even with my Proxxon it was difficult to get there effectively. So the only option was manual labor with metal saw, for better efficiency I cut off the end of the blade under 45 Deg. to get longer stroke. The end result is on the picture to the right. Now the rest is to chisel out the plywood keel, on which the piece holds.

In next post I will describe some parts of the mast and electronic equipment that I chose.

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by George-JK

[popeye the sailor]

WOW!  you've made some great progress George.........looks super    really nice indeed!

[Seamanpeter]

George, not bad at all, sorry you have to change the trust front and back.

Must say that if have to do in mine I will have more problems then yours as mine is secured in massive wood parts.

Thanks for the advice given in your answer to me and will sort that out on both sides.

The general arrangements can be downloaded from the web site of the owner Bos & Kalis.

I will give you the website here.  https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/offshore-vessels/oceangoing-and-anchor-handling-tugs.html

There you see all the tugs from them and it helps when building them although the ship's name like Fairmount Alpine you will not find. 

Look for the new name what is BOKA Alpine.

Still waiting here for the weather so did not do much to it and my spares did not arrive.

Keep up the spirit and follow you built too.

greetings

Peter

[George-JK]

Hello All,

Thank you all for the positive response.

@Seamanpeter oh thank you for the link, I actually once found that document. And from the deck plan, made out the sizes of the furniture. Here is the general layout of the bridge furniture, also to compare with the real thing. It looks more or less similar. Also don't be sorry, I experimented and it didn't work, that happens. Of course I was angry with it, even stopped the build for some time, but in the end I got back to it, with more motivation, and more knowledge for the next project.

 

Now for todays issue of getting up to speed.

As mentioned yesterday, I will discuss some electronics and soldering related building topics.

So first lets start with the batteries.

For this model I opted for LiFePO4 batteries, because of their smaller size and much lower mass compared to lead-acid batteries with similar capacity. I went with 4 cells in series, so 4S battery, each cell is then 20Ah capacity, and standard voltage of 3.2V. I sourced the cells from here: https://www.ev-power.eu/LiFePO4-small-cells/LiFePO4-High-Power-Cell-3-2V-20Ah-Alu-case-CE.html?cur=1 they sell many different cell capacities, and also stock interesting cell types, like Lithium Titanate cells. Which I would like to try out in some future project, hopefully an IJN destroyer Yukikaze.

The final battery pack is on following pictures. the pictures also indicate the overall dimensions of the battery. 

The cells are interconnected with terminal connectors, provided from the same site. Specific, for this cell are the: Terminal Connectors for ZG-LFP20AH. The cable connectors, and the bridge between the two parts of the pack are made from a standard copper wire screw connectors, don't know the exact term. The wires are soldered in. The 3 red wires coming form the individual cells are for balancing connector.

The covers are made to be just push in at the moment, as the pack has to be split into the two sections, for it to fit through the hull opening. They are again made from PLA on 3D printer, later I will probably change them for ones made of PETG, for better water resistance. The overall weight of the battery is around 3kg, I will include the exact figure in a later post.

Now Because of the new bow thrusters I will add a small LiPo 2S/7.2V battery pack to power them. I will use one from my other models. later, when the 12V motor variant for the front thruster is available, I will probably swap to that, so I don't need multiple batteries to run the thing. And the motor swap should be relatively easy to do.

 

Next lets look on the power distribution in the model.

For this I made a sort of distribution board in the area of the main ESC's.

To explain what is this mess. The bow of the ship is located to the left of the plywood deck.

From the battery there are two 4mm2 - 12AWG wires leading to the power board, here are two Hitano lowESR 2200uF/25V and one Hitano lowESR 470uF/25V capacitors. I am of the mind, that there is never too many capacitors, also it kinda looks cool. Form this PCB there are leads, going to the BEC unit and water pump in the bow.

BEC is a voltage regulator, in my case it will supply 6V, 20A max, to be used by the lighting unit, to be designed and build in the future. Above the BEC is the receiver i use Jeti Model products for my other models (exept cars), so I went with the Jeti Duplex R14 EX reciever, so 14 channel model, should be more then enough. 

The water pump is driven by one MOSFET transistor located in the bow, this transistor will by switched also by the lighting unit.

This picture still shows power leads leading to the stern where the stern thruster ESC was located, these were removed yesterday, because of the different voltage run on the new one.

 

 

Lets look on the lights. 

For the reference on the light signs I referenced to Naval law and my Skipper course materials, section on ship light signals, basically Naval Law, but condensed, and with pictures in text, rather then on separate web page. But for reference here is an US web site: https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=NavRulesAmalgamated#Sidelights, just I couldn't find the case for this specific tub, when the towing vessel is greater then 50 meters in length and the towed assembly exceeds the overall lenght of 200 meters. Which should lead to increase in the number of masthead lights to 4 lights in a vertical line. Or at least that is what I learned, and presumably how the Ship was configured when built, since on a picture of the mast there were 5 lights, where I presume the 5th light was an anchor light.

 

So without further adieu here is the main and mizzen mast.

Both masts are made by soldering of brass tube for the central part, and brass wire for the sides. Yes the main mast looks like a Christmas tree, when all the LEDs are lit. The mizzen mast is still missing the yellow LED above the white, because of mix-up of order parts I got instead of 5 yellow LEDs 11 relatively expensive capacitors and I didn't have the need to place an order on 5 LEDs by 25 Cents each with additional 5 Euro shipping, so for now no yellow LED present. Subsequently all the white LEDs will be matted with sand paper, to provide more homogeneous light diffusion. And the adequate sides of the LED will be painted silver under black, to create the sector light effect.

Regarding the powering, all of the LEDs are connected to the mast for the Ground terminal, the mast is then contacted at the base. The positives of the LEDs are then routed using 0.4mm Dia. enameled wire copper wire through the center tube. Some details of the LED installation follows, the last picture then shows the bottom part of the mast.

 

Last for today I will write about the interior lighting.

I went with SMD LEDs for this, as they are easier to fix on a flat surface. However this posed significant challenge, as they are small, very small and therefore very susceptible to damage during soldering. I went with a mix of cold white and yellow/warm white, presumably only to complicate the thing even more, since the cold white ones would be perfectly fine all around.

Here I present the bridge lighting to the left, and the "cabins" and staircases on the lower deck. The brown spots the the bright ceiling are spots, where I had to replace the LEDs after I already glued the LED stripes to the part, newer skip testing. The 3 flood lights are made of SMD LEDs as well, but using ones with much higher luminous intensity (the value measured in candela).

For the other decks, the lights are mounted inside the superstructure.

 

 

In the next issue I will continue on the topic of soldering, specifically how I dodged the bullet of soldering aluminium because of the supplied handrail stanchions.

 

Cheers

George