As promised (or threatened?) stage two of the hull work and thoughts on motorisation. The hull was sprayed with two coats of grey primer/filler. Pic1. As usual this showed up the remaining imperfections (pics 2 & 3), but I'm not going to worry about them until I've got prop shaft tube and rudder stock sorted out and permanently fitted After my attempts to make and thread a 3mm prop shaft went awry Martin (Westway the Mechanicals Master) stepped in and made me a decent one complete with a bushed stuffing tube Vielen Dank Meister I did however manage to make a 4mm to 3mm reducer so that I could fit a Rabeosch 35mm prop as seen in pics 2 & 3. The tube and shaft from Martin, arrived Saturday an' he only made it on Monday, have been dry fitted so that I can start setting up the gears, necessary to bring the drive down to the prop shaft fitted very low down in the hull, and motor mount. Pic 4. Motorisation: (Remember folks - this kit was designed and built as a static model!) I want to use the old 1950s Taycol Target motor which my Dad originally fitted in the Sea Scout which I have renovated and upgraded to work forward and reverse with a standard ESC. See Build blog 'Sea Scout - Jessica' Many of you will know that the Taycol motors were field coil motors, meaning that they have no permanent magnet around the rotor coil, and thus reversing the battery connections to the brushes had no effect on the direction of rotation, as this simply reversed the magnetic fields of both stator and rotor coils To counteract this so that the motor could be used in both forward and reverse with a conventional brushed ESC I modified the motor slightly (separated the two coils) and built a simple converter board to connect it to the ESC. Again see the Sea Scout blog for the details of the conversion. Basically; once the field coil and brush-gear (rotor coil) have been separated a simple diode bridge can be used to apply the output of the ESC to the motor. This enables the reversal of EITHER field OR rotor coil polarity, depending on how you connect the converter to the motor. Thus reversing the direction of rotation of the motor. Beneficial side effect is that the diodes also suppress the commutator sparking In my case, with the Taycol Target, I also cleaned, flattened and polished the commutator. Thus significantly reducing the potential for spark generation in the first place! A peculiarity of the Taycol motors is that they all use metal brushes, pressed phosphor bronze strip, so they need oiling! DO NOT oil conventional brushed motors with carbon brushes unless the brushes are exchangeable or you want to have to buy a new motor!!!!! Pics 5 & 6 show the proposed position of the Taycol in Gina 2 and pic 7 the prototype converter board I knocked up to test the motor, together with a Graupner Navy V30R Marine Brushed ESC. Details and results in the Sea Scout blog, including video of the sparks and oscilloscope pics of the drive waveforms before and after conversion! The latter showing the spark suppression effect of the converter Some samples attached - last 3 pics. Pic 8 pic shows a more compact version of the converter, one of a few types I'm doing for Martin's various Taycols as a trade for the prop shaft he made for me and some useful material he sent. Thanks mate Next steps will be 1) mounting the gears correctly on the shafts, requiring the manufacture of a 3/32" to 4mm adaptor and a 1/8" to 4mm adaptor, and keying them to the shafts - Hooray for mini milling machines 2) manufacturing bushed end plates to hold the gears in place, 3) fitting the motor mounting platform. I'll probably borrow from my experiences of real shipbuilding and do this as a suspended 'false floor', i.e. mounted on stiff springs to enable adjustments to optimise the gearing mesh! On real naval ships this is done to improve shock resistance and to minimise engine noise / vibration conduction to the hull, thus significantly reducing the acoustic signature of the ship. Not that I'm tooo worried about being torpedoed Worth a try Pic 9 shows the cleaned up and renovated Taycol Target motor. Pic 10 shows the drive waveform complete with sparks before modification. Pic 11 the cleaned 'forward' waveform with the converter board. Pic 12 the cleaned 'reverse' waveform, no suppression capacitors needed More soon folks, Cheers, Doug PS Along the way a new keel was fitted as can be seen in pics 1 to 3. The original builder had 'buried' the keel in the hull planking!

Some of you may already know part of the story but, spurred on by Martin 'Westquay' and commanded by Admiral 'Dave' here goes Dad built her originally when I was about 12, so ca 53-54 years ago. (As at 2017!) She was 'No name' and free running with a Taycol Target, ahead only, and a 6V (very) wet cell lead acid. (Down to the garage again for a 'top up!) Anyway, to cut a long story slightly sideways MY daughter Jessica found the boat in the cellar when she was about 12! And immediately wanted to run it on the local lake in Munich, as I was doing with my HMS Hotspur (but that's another shaggy model story!). Sooooooo, she was cleaned up, resprayed pink (!) and white, Taycol Target field motor (no reverse) removed and replaced with a Decaperm 6V 7A with 2.75:1 gearbox. 6V 4000mAH SLA (weight half ton or so) Performance was rather sedate. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time! RX, battery and rudder servo were shoehorned into the aft compartment, Jessica nameplates stuck on and off we went. Jessie was happy with the boat and I was happy with the Biergarten. Can't remember where 'the management' was Jessie soon lost interest so I used the boat as a test bed for a while. So now, 25-26 years on; prompted by Martin, I took the old lady down off the shelf (I TOLD her not climb up there!) and started inspecting the damage. Photos attached. (Yes I know 35Megs is not for boats but I didn't have nowt else then) The ancient DIN Audio socket was for charging the RX bat, double throw switch on starboard quarter. The big 'ole was for the telescopic antenna borrowed from an old radio. Needs must when ... The funny looking 'thing' hanging out the transom is a dummy exhaust hiding the bolt holding the antenna bracket inside! Have also started dismantling and renovating the Taycol, which I want to put back in with a reversing circuit and a 2S or maybe 4S LiPo. That was day before yesterday. Yesterday I took out the junk (siren, water pump, servos & micro switches to operate them and the running lights) and wiped the dust off - last two photos, incl. THE JUNK. Stripped of all the junk & Decaperm she weighs 1214gm (about 2lb 11oz). Also tested (cautiously!) the Taycol with a regulated / current limiting PSU. She rattled and protested but ran Now being dismantled, cleaned up and brush gear refurbished. Might also fit proper bearings! Next step: clean up the old gal, check for leaks and load capacity. I will probably use the 4S LiPo ca 310gm, the SLA was 660gm, so lots of spare capacity, or maybe I can get her nose out of the water for once More soon Cheers from Munich PS to Dave and Martin: NO! I don't propose to go full authentic nostalgia with a wet cell accu