Forum

Cruise Liners

Not sure about being alone, 3 out of 5,285 members seems alone to me, but have you ever been on a modern day cruise ship or cabin cruiser ? I would say "don't knock it unless you've tried it". However I have and would tend to agree that the older have some sort of character about them but to be fair the 20s and 30s travellers were a different breed to that of today's cruisers PS that's now 4 out of 5,285 Keep smiling

5 years ago by mturpin013

Forum

Paints

Hmm! Let's 'Cut to the chase'! First; I've never been on a ship, naval or civil, and I've been on a few during my 30 odd year career designing COMMS systems for , mostly naval, that used gloss paints OR matt paints. Matt paint, whether for scale or full size, rapidly shows the wear marks where folks tread or grab or where we habitually grab it on models. This rapidly creates a shiny effect, like the seat of your favourite, most comfortable and ancient trousers (which the Missus probably wanted to throw out years ago but you are fighting a REARguard action) 😁 During WW2 the emphasis was on reducing the reflectivity of paints on war. Gloss on a ship / boat MAY not look any different from satin or matt at a distance BUT; it will reflect sunlight and flash which attracts attention and betrays the presence of the vessel. Furthermore gloss shows the wear and tear marks much sooner than satin. Whether matt paints were available or not in those days I don't know, but even if they were I don't think they would have been used after the initial durability tests on board. Having seen the paint part numbers, all BS381C xxx, specified on the Thornycroft 'blueprints' that Martin sent me, I would say that the paint colours you need Morkullen are RN Light Weatherworks grey BS381C 676 = Colour Coats M01 RN Dark Admiralty grey BS381C 632 = Colour Coats M16 RN Light Admiralty grey BS381C 697= Colour Coats M23 See page 3 of the colour chart, see attached colour charts from Sovereign Hobbies for their Colour Coats paints, which have been derived from original Admiralty paint chips.. Colour Coats are enamel. If you prefer acrylic try Life Colour set CS33 Royal Navy WW2 Set 1. See page 6 of attached Life Colour catalogue. Happy painting, don't forget to post pics / vids of the results👍 Cheers, Doug 😎 PS have a look at the recent HMS Campbeltown 1/96 thread for further detail of the recent discussion on WW2 RN paints. BTW; if I feel after painting that the finish is still too glossy I give it a blast of Lord Nelson satin, or in extreme cases, matt clear varnish. Otherwise I agree with Reilly's comments👍

6 years ago by RNinMunich

Forum

a very noisy fireboat

its early on with this project, I was going to wait until its completed, but not sure when that will be, so Ill give you a sneak peak. I've been using a sound system in one of my model planes, and over time have become friendly with the guy who makes them, helping him with various things. I got thinking about the 4 foot fireboat I have, and how cool it would be to have a sound unit. So, to cut a long story short, I knew he had a plane sound with twin Merlin's for a bomber, and I use a merlin for my P51 Mustang model. After a serious amount of pestering, I got him to modify one of the 5 stock sounds on his Boat sound unit, using the twin Merlin sound from the planes. It took some work, getting rid of the propeller sound on the start up and shut down sequence. I ran it for the first time last night, but forgot to take spare batteries, and a small screwdriver to adjust the settings, so couldnt change the settings, in particular, the volume was set way too loud, losing some of the clarity of sound. This is pretty close to the real engines, which where v8 meteor, this sound is an actual recording of the v12 Merlin, its doubled up, and staggered, so you can hear the two engines running. It has start up and shut down sequence, it isn't clever enough to read reverse unfortunately. Its a speakerless system, using transducers instead of speakers, which are much louder, smaller and lighter. They rely on vibrations, they are epoxied to the hull, and the whole boat becomes the speaker! Its the first time I've done this, and its pretty new on the market for boats, planes have been going for a few years. I've realised that whilst I put them above the waterline, I didn't account for the roll of the hull, when one (there is one on either side) goes below the waterline it muffles the vibrations, and causes a funny sort of gurgling noise, ah well, like I say, its early days! Still a bit of tweaking to do, but you get the idea. Stock sounds are Turbo cat diesel, Johnson outboard, evenrude outboard, mercule v8, steam. They also have aux sounds, such as bell, steam whistle, horn, seagulls etc. I think on my system the Johnson is dropped in lieu of the twin merlin sound. Have a look at www.mrrcsound.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkJUHe1tR_w

7 years ago by pmdevlin

Forum

Website upgrade coming soon!

Hi Stephen Thank You so much for bring back the Horn. I use it to let me know when someone has stopped by the website. I'm hoping that theirs is know problems after implementing the horn sound. if there is it's understandable if you take it off. Also if their is a degradation in the website performance it would be advisable to disable it. I'm really going to have to do my best, to make a donation to the website in the near future! 👍 Regards, Ed

7 years ago by figtree7nts

Forum

Website upgrade coming soon!

Hi figtree, I've just put the horns back! They used to use a flash plugin so I removed the feature to speed up the website and avoid all the warning messages browsers give about flash. Now they're re-implemented using HTML5 which is much cleaner. @Robbob, pleased you like the site upgrade too! The world of emoji/emoticon/smileys is confusing. The website has replaced smileys with emojis now. Smileys were little pictures that replaced text characters, I did have control over how they look, but it becomes messy as many people use smart phones and you get a mix of smileys and emojis. Emoji are actual characters, like letters. The problem is though, they're displayed in a whole range of different ways. An emoji in Firefox will look different in internet Explorer, different again in Gmail, different again on an Android phone, different again on an Apple device. it is a pitty there was no alignment by companies! It does save downloading many little graphic files though and it helps the website speed. Also.... there are hundreds of emoji's to choose from. The website has a handful of common ones to pick from, but it's not limited really. All donations gratefully received. Unfortunately no big company pays me to keep the site afloat! I just know a lot of people enjoy it and I take some personal pride in having built it up to where it is today. it's all hand coded, no bought packages, I don't think any off the shelf package would give the same experience! Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone 😊 Stephen

7 years ago by fireboat

Forum

Website upgrade coming soon!

Hi Fireboat I just wanted to ask, what ever happened to the horns. when ever any body stops by you here the Horn? Will it ever come back? I myself liked it a lot!

7 years ago by figtree7nts

Response

Flying Fish

Alan you are right they are from another thread this was just a quick option I will try & get the trawler out later it is up in the garage loft & take some pictures for you, as I remember the motor was amid to allow room for a 12v battery the servo horn is straight to the kort nozzle rudder arm pleased to help if I can Bob 👍

9 years ago by Northumbrian

Media

This Is a scratch built paddle steamer named ''Jeanie Deans ''

This was scratch built apart from the fibre glass hull which I purchased. Model is 65" long with a beam of 10". Power is by electric running via a gearbox at 300 rpm. Ihave taken almost 2years to complete the model working most days on it. Attention to detail was the order of the day. I am using a Planet T5 Tx and Rx, 5 channels. I have a smoke generator pushing steam out of the twin funnels,synchronised to forward speed, faster the revs, faster the steam. Conventional rudder operation. Have an operating Radar, horn, simulated steam noise varies as speed is altered, full navigation lights,all cabin lights can be switched on and to keep the 106 passengers happy I have a Banjo Band playing to complete the scene. Have sailed it recently at Peterborough and performs really really well. Have to say it tends to attract a lot of interest. I am now constructing the Ayton Cross tug in 1:32 scale, with all the detail I want.Plan is to tow the Jeanie Deans around when completed as well assailing her

12 years ago by Chiefy

Blog

Support arm pt2

The klaxon horn has now been added, along with the sir supply hose. the hose was formwed out of a small piece of solder, being easier to shape [and hold its shape]. the rear face of the horn was drilled to accept the end of the solder, along with a hole drilled in to the cabin roof. the whole arm was painted in satin black to complete. In these pics, you will also notice the screen wiper motor boxes and wiper arms & blades. the boxes were simply made from plasticard. the wiper arms are plastic strip, along with teh wiper blades, again thin plastic strip, painted matt black to replicate the rubber bit.

12 years ago by Gregg