So, on a chilly Southwold boating lake, my completed “Shannon” got her first run on a choppy water. Overall she went great, top speed was as scale as you like, any faster it would look silly. Also very pleased with the sound of the jet drives and brushless motors, so much so I might remove the speaker and sound system at some point as I think the boat needs to be a little lighter, sitting a little low in the water?

After 15 minutes run time, still plenty of battery left, didngt get low enough for the lipo alarms to kick in and everything inside was still cool, so no over heating issues. There was a little water inside after sailing, I’m putting this down to the reverse buckets as they through up a lot of spray in reverse?

It’s been a long five months build, but well worth it, she’s deffo a keeper.

There will be a little break before I start the next build as I’ve got decorating tasks ahead, but I’ll be back soon with the build of the Dumas USCG Motor Lifeboat 36500 next .......

So, at long last I’ve added the finishing touches to the boat itself. This included finishing the railings, sorting the electronics, glueing the main cabin to the deck and a little bit of paint touch up here and there. As Doug rightly says, is a model ever finished? Apart from an RNLI flag to add and the crew, I don’t anticipate adding anymore to it apart from ballast if needed!

Today I set about painting the first of 4 crew figures. I did have 5 figures but I’ve “squirrelled” one away for my next build as these figures are no longer available and he will be ideal for the model, to be revealed! This one figure took about 4 hours of painting post primer, hopefully the other 3 will be quicker!

AS this model requires several transmitter inputs, I decided not to put sticky reminder labels on my transmitter. Instead I opted to make a board from plasticard then printed the control inputs, mashed it and painted it. It now slips over the transmitter antenna as a reminder, but once I’ve learnt the controls, I can easily discard.

So, the next update should included the completed figures in position on the boat and then hopefully some shots on the water......

All that remains now is to complete the railings on the stanchions and the crew. Completed the stern railings, a job I didn’t enjoy and hope never to repeat! It’s not perfect, but acceptable. Also finished are the lifebuoys and beacons, along with finishing the anchor weathering and straps.

Final jobs include the crew, finish the lighting wiring, finish radio setup and ballast as required....

Oh, and promoted to “Rear Admiral “ too, is that a high rank? I’m ex army and made SSgt, so thinking it’s better than that ha ha

Quite a bit done over the last few days, and my wife’s summer house is also finished, so happy wife, happy life 😂

I spent a whole day shaping, bending, soldering, and filing the stern rail and only got it half finished, I shall finish that off Tuesday I promise!

The life rings were somewhat easier, just requiring the resin parts cleaning, priming then a couple of light coats of brilliant orange before giving them a acrylic wash of orange/red to darken them as per the real thing. Finished off with some strips of silver trim tape and paracord they are ready to go on when the railing is finished.

Other jobs have included seeing the fendering competed. Also made was the mounting bracket for the anchor made from plasticard as not supplied in the kit. The strap with made from a sliver of ultrathin plasticard and crimped with pliers before painting and giving it a brown wash.

I’ve now made a start on adding the railing wire and turnbuckles. The turnbuckles were supplied as cast brass parts and really would be very difficult to model from scratch. However the supplied turnbuckles are short in qty and I’ve contacted the seller for extras as need another 10 pieces to complete!

As far as the model is concerned, all that’s left to do is finish the railings, bond the cabin to the deck, a couple of odd small items to paint and add, add ballast as required and finish sorting the electrics. Oh, and there is the matter of painting 5 crew figures...........!

So, it may not look like a lot has been done, but trust me, what you see is another 25 hours of progress!

I decided to leave the crew figures alone until the bank holiday break and concentrate on getting the deck progressed.

After many hours of masking all the areas not getting a coat of texture paint, the textured paint was applied with 2 light coats. once fully hardened overnight, the masking tape was removed before giving the whole deck another coat of primer to seal the texture and then hit with Tamiya German tank grey for the final deck colour. once that was dry i gave the whole deck a couple of coats of matt lacquer. On some full size Shannons, there seems to be a lighter grey on the deck on all the areas not treated with grip paint, but i decided against this keeping things simple and not trusting my masking to give me a reas of bleed that would require hours of swearing and cursing!

Onwards with starting to fit the deck fittings, most of which had been prepared and painted weeks ago. There are still quite a few details to add to the deck which include the remaining bumper strips, fore and aft railings (looking forward to making them from 2.5mm brass rod-Not!), grab lines, towing bits, anchor ect, hopefully crack the back of them at the next session before finally glueing the cabin to the deck. Not seen in the pictures is the rudder sealing strip I have applied to the top lip of the hull to hopefully give me a water tight seal when the deck is bolted down, we shall see!

In between doing the work on the deck shown in my previous post, I’ve made a start on the first of the figures.

Made of resin, they are quite superb and deserve the best painting I can muster! First thing was to clean any flash, wash and then prime in white.

I tend to use citadel paints for figures from Games Workshop, simply because I used to paint gaming figures, am used to working with them and they have strong colour properties. The choice of colours available is vast like most model paint companies, but if you stick to a fairly basic pallet of about 30 colours, most other shades can be mixed from them. Another great investment was a wet pallet, something I’ve never had until recently, but put paint on it, they last for days and can be mixed on it instead of a plate which drys too quickly. Also worth having are contrast washes for shadows ect.

Once the primer was dry, the hole figure got a wash with an orange/yellow pigment then dry brushed in yellow adding a cream white for highlights.

I made a start on picking out the black detail and started the skin tones, a long way to go before the figure is finished......

Today has seen the start of preparing the deck for primer and paint........

First thing was to ensure a good fit on the hull, followed by a gentle sanding with 600 grit to act as a key for the paint then the whole thing was washed in warm soapy water to remove any grease ect and left to dry in the sun.

This was followed by 2 coats of Halfords grey primer and later in the day a couple of coats of humbrol light grey. All areas that are to have the anti slip texture paint applied will eventually be a darker grey, but this will be after a horrendous amount of masking on the areas to be left light grey.

I shall move onto that stage Tuesday and Wednesday, meanwhile, I’ve been working on the first crew figure!

So.....

In-between painting my good lady’s summer house whilst dodging showers and watching my beloved West Ham United give me close to another heart attack after being 3-0 up for the third time in the bounce and neatly throwing it away, I’ve managed to get the remaining parts painted and added to the cabin.

The only thing left to do is add a 1mm carbon rod upper section to one of the longer antennas as I’ve run out, but more on the way. There was no mounting bracket for the search light in the kit (although looking at various Shannon’s, they aren’t always fitted?) so I made one from bits of plasticard and tube, you’d never know!

Also not supplied are the locking levers for the upper gantry which allows the gantry to be lowered when in a boathouse (slipway launched), again made from plasticard and painted red before fitting. Try as I might, I cannot find anything else to add to the wheelhouse/cabin having looked at the official RNLI plans and photos hundreds of times, so that’s it, wheelhouse done less the antenna and finishing the light wiring...

Next, onwards with the deck and all the associated parts for that.

Just so that you didn’t think I’d disappeared off the face of the earth, I thought I’d better do a little update. Last Easter weekend was mostly spent in the garden building the wife’s summer house, this weekend I’ve been excused garden chores!

I’ve now just about finished the radar gantry and all the wiring now disappears into the cabin for sorting onto the switch later. I’ve decided that all lights and radar will be operated on a single switch just so that I could hide all the wiring connections inside the gantry head and then having a single wire coming down each arm into the cabin. In an ideal world I would have control over each component individually but that would have resulted in a mess of wires tracking down the arms and at this scale that would have wound me up!

The remaining jobs to see the cabin complete is adding the remaining 4 antenna, a few dummy mast lights and the search light, followed by any corrections and paint touch ups. Following that I can then get on with the deck painting and components and rapidly heading to a completed model, a month or so of work to do I reckon?

The crew figures arrived today. They are an accurate set of modern RNLI crew cast in resin, but very light considering. The detail is superb and I plan to employ techniques painting them similar to how I used to paint military and war gaming figures. They were not cheap, but I feel money well spent and will set the finished boat of nicely. The only modification I plan on carrying out is the alter the arm position on the coxswain so that he will have control of the helm on the flying bridge.....

Thought I’d better do an update just in case you were thinking I’d given up 😂.

In between shifts at work and being dispatched into the garden, I’ve found the time to hook up most of the control surfaces to their respective servos. No issues with the steering nozzles and the reverse thruster buckets, they hooked up and were easily set up for travel, direction, exponential (steering only) in my Spektrum DX8 transmitter. I’ve set the buckets up onto a 2 way switch meaning that they are either up or down.

The issue I’ve come up against and it’s quite a biggie is the trim tabs? I hooked them up via a Y-lead to go into Aux 3 on rx/tx to be on a rotary switch giving me good control over their position. However, the trim tabs only need about 15% of the servos travel to give full deflection up and down which I set up in the transmitter using end point adjustment. The issue though is when you switch the transmitter on followed by the receiver, the trim tab servo arm goes through a quick full travel movement in both directions whist it is binding. If I was to leave it like this, something will break as the trim tabs have limited deflection, either they will break, or the servo pushrod will bend, servo horn break or worst still, the servo will give! If anyone has any solutions to this drama, I’m all ears!

Onto easier things, I’ve spent the last 3 days on and off in between chores building the radar gantry which was mostly kit supplied resin parts with a bit of brass tube and carbon rod.

I eventually used a radar motor the same as Rob used on his Pilot boat, it just meant hollowing out the radars motor box to contain it and the base of the motor is hidden in the gantry.

The blue flashing light is the best I could find and works well on 4-6v. The blue lens is a little tall for scale as on the Shannon it’s quite a stumpy one, but mine will do.

I’ve still to make the Nav light boxes and the red and green grain of wheat bulbs I’ve got aren’t very bright on 6v, again if anyone knows of brighter ones for 6v, please let me know before I fit them.

The photo showing the gantry on top of the wheelhouse isn’t the final result as you can see i5 looks a little wonky. Once I’ve finished installing all the lights and figure a way of getting the wiring down the arms neatly and inside the wheel house, then I will final fit the gantry.

That’s it now until the Easter weekend, gotta work for the next 4 days 🤬🤬🤬