Forum

Night Watch

"current state of Martin's fantasy being realised as an EeZeBilt... " Excellent Dodgy, Beginning to look like a real ship👍 😎

5 years ago by RNinMunich

Forum

EeZeBilts From Keil Kraft

It seems to be hard to keep on the topic on this thread.... still, back to the design. Making a simple box with a bulkhead cross-section is straightforward enough. But what do you do when the box has to come to a point? In particular, when the chine has to curve upward? Well, on some of the small original EeZeBilts the sub-deck just continued straight, giving a straight chine line - like the Mermaid and Cresta - fig 14. But there are a number of techniques to give a more realistic shape. Fig 15 shows the simplest - just bend the sub-deck up. When the hull is skinned the sharp angle gets sanded away and blended smoother by the balsa skin. You can even do a reflex curve - as in the Crash Tender - fig 16. If the boat is a bit too big to blend a sharp angle, you can add a curved former as in fig17 - this is done in the Sea Princess. And finally, you can simply curve the sub-deck if it is narrow enough. This is what we will try for the - fig 18. Of course, bending requires that the subdeck be fixed firmly in the appropriate curve. The keel will need to be cut to this curve, but that on its own won't fix the sub-deck. So we will add extra formers at the bow - marked in red on fig19. You can see that they create a tighter 'egg-box' shape where the skin needs more support, and I have picked the positions to provide a convenient depression where the anchor-winches are mounted. We can take the shape directly off the plan - you can see the shape at the bottom of the image. Note that the edges of these support structures are all tapered - this spreads the stress across the whole structure and improves the stiffness...

5 years ago by DodgyGeezer

Blog

Walrus ASR Diorama

Hi all, as promised the build blog for my new project which I will be building over the next couple of weeks while on 'bed rest' ( code name for the project is 'pleasetellmeitsnotaplane') As with all my models i Believe that getting it factually correct adds to the overall effect of the model. The 2 models involved in the Diorama will be a Mk. II Supermarine Walrus from RAF Squadron 277 based at RAF Shoreham in Sussex and a Mk.5 Spitfire from US Navy VOS-7 based at HMS Daedulus, RNAS Lee on Solent, Hants. I came across an article about US navy pilots using Spitfires as air observers and spotters for the battleships and cruisers during the D.Day landing when they directed the 'big guns'. onto specific targets. There were 17 pilots and they were all trained observer/spotters from American warships and all trained on the spitfire/seafire as there was a pool of these types available (these were all Mk5's which had been superseded by newer aircraft) meaning if a plane was lost then providing the Pilot was OK he could get back into the air quickly. In just 26 days they flew 209 missions for the loss of only 1 life, 8 air craft where lost but all pilots where rescued 3 by a walrus. This was the only US Navy Squadron to fly spitfires but It is not often talked about, the Americans have this thing called NIH when referring to other allies equipment, it stands for 'Not Invented Here' so if they didn't build it they didn't use it. The diorama will show a Walrus on the Water effecting a rescue of a downed Spitfire Pilot who is out of his sinking aircraft and in a liferaft being pulled towards the Walrus. The diorama was planned out using roughly assembled (Loads of Blutak) models laid out to get a feel for the size and drawn 1:1. And now the big moment ....drum roll.. my first Airfix kit in over 40 years (if you don't count the Flower class s (but they were big) Attached some photo's From day 1

5 years ago by boatiebennett

Response

Re: C01

Brilliant👍 Someone has been working around naval ships for a while haven't they? Bears a striking resemblance to several modern / OPV designs I've worked on. Stealth features, VLS missile system, twin screw/rudder, light/medium heli handling deck, V/UHF antennas on the yardarms, integrated antenna system around the mast structure ... I'm missing the VLF/HF, SATCOM and IMM antennas though 😉 And THE most important antenna --- SATTV! Cheers, Doug 😎

5 years ago by RNinMunich