I have a 5 ft hull and deck of an ELCO 80 footer, it is yours if you pay the shipping.😀

Italeri makes 1/35th scale PT's, Higgins, ELCO, Scnellboats and Italian models. Probably the best kits on the market and the largest as well. Unless you are looking to go with a f/g hull. Dumas made 1/2oth scale in f/g, but now they may be plastic. Dean's Marine is another source and there are several sources on this side of the pond for f/g hulls as well.

I would not worry about them too much. Most of the products I looked at were out of stock anyhow.
besides, NZ could be New Zombies.

Wonderful photos. It must have been a great event. The CVE looks like it was a show stopper and the Fletcher in front of it wears my favorite camo scheme! Both beautifully done. I suspect all the models present were jaw dropping.
Thank you for posting the pictures.

OK ALREADY!!Yes welcome back Colin and Martin......now get to work! Build! We need boats.
I just finished reading the National Geographic prospective Duck population study for next year. Our feathered friends are breeding like mad. So many prospective interlopers. So many targets of opportunity. Away all boats. Man Action stations!🤣

YYEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We missed you Colin!

Well I am still working on the Fletcher, but I also re-fitted the USS Jimmy Carter SSN-23 and she ran trials after a 6 year drying out period.

Hi Umi,
I think I have found the issue and it is not with Model Boats, I think. I use a proxy with my e-mail server and for some very strange reason, once I downloaded the message to Thunderbird, the message should have been "read" in my server. For a strange reason, unbeknownst to me, the message kept being treated as a new e-mail. very strange and it have never happened before.
Anyhow, if this happens to anyone else, just go into your e-mail program and delete the original message. That seems to have stopped the issue.

I have now received 7 notifications by e-mail, dated 9-17-21 at 8:53 PM, the SteveDownUnder liked my post. I appreciate the flattery, but this is like a broken record. yes, I DO remember those.
Please whack what ever needs to be nudged, or remove the BUG in the ointment. Yes, I remember when we called them bugs, too.
Cheers and Thank you.
Jonathan

Hi Seaspray,
On my Eastwind build I use blocks of Bass wood rather than Balsa. Reasons were, a firmer backing, less likely to sand too much away, holds onto resin better than balsa( balsa absorbs it so much that the surface loses volume and the glass tears away easily). I ordered mine from Midwest: https://midwestproducts.com/pages/wood
As for glass cloth, I used a fine, weave, I think around 5 oz. Easy to fill the texture with two coats of resin.

https://midwestproducts.com/pages/wood

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Hi,
The motors I used are:https://www.componentshop.co.uk/800-dc-motor-mounting-bracke...
As for how hot they get, well i can not say, as I have not checked. I do not run full out, in fact rarely do because at "scale" speed she needs a bit of sea room. That said, at 1/4 throttle she is stately ansd I doubt that heat is an issue. If I discover it to becoming an issue, then I'll resort to cooling coils. The props, as well as the struts and shaft tubes, were made for me by George Sitek, http://gsitek-props.co.uk/. I have a set of Prop Shop wheels on my other Fletcher, but they are 1/4" under size. I really like both, but George's fit his struts beautifully as well and really kick her in the butt.
Hope that helps,
Jonathan

https://www.componentshop.co.uk/800-dc-motor-mounting-bracket.html

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http://gsitek-props.co.uk/.

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"I was surprised to find out how little development there has been" When you have a good thing that works right, do not mess with it. The perfect example of the KISS principle at work.
I love watching them, but the thought of hitting the ice( hard non moving object) at great speed, dos nothing for this tired aging body, even if the surface is slipperier than cat snot.

Wicked nice! Nothing more relaxing than and hour or two on the lathe. No hunting for dropped parts, everything held in place tightly, no huntin' and peckin' for tools or parts. Ahhhhhhh.

I would love to attend... but they probably would not let me in...country. I hope the show is a resounding success.
Jonathan

Ron,
You forgot to mention that this time of year, our water is a LOT softer too! Certainly makes running them easier.

At times, far too often now a days, I find myself totally without any motivation to engage in my favorite activity, modeling. I sympathize with you completely Nerys. I hope this too passes. With this bug invading everyone's lives, modeling is, for many, our last respite. When I get to the point you are at now, I walk away. Bury myself into some wonderful books, maritime of course, and wait for the motivation bus bus to drive by. Then I shoot out a tire or two so that it can go no further. With Google Maps, I am sure it will find it's way back to you soon...... so make sure your that you guns are loaded.😂😁😂

A very short teasing post, at Stephan's request. I managed a nice test float. She turns like her namesake, ie as a pig. Huge tactical diameter. I need to plan in advance. More to come next week.

Another option is a servo that provides more throw out of the box. I am using GoBilda torque servos, which provide 180 degree rotation as supplied. if a Servo Morph is added to the circuit, the servo will provide 300 degrees rotation. They run around $35 US. GoBilda will sell direct. https://www.gobilda.com/ Make sure that you choose the Torque version, as the speed versio is too weak for a sail servo.
As for your ESC, it is a separate issue and it sounds as if you have a car ESC, which will lack reverse. the other possibility is that your FrSky radio is set up for an aircraft throttle, rather than a reversing marine throttle. I am running FrSky in my boats and had to change the previously installed programing. Worth a look.

https://www.gobilda.com/

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Steve,
Yes some of the parts were very expensive. Nothing 3D printed is cheap anymore. Shapeways has quadrupled their prices since I started buying thru them, plus they have added a "handling fee" which is a percentage of the order total cost. It happens when a company feels that they have cornered the market and consumers have no choice. Fortunately many of the designers on Shapeways have found other sources to print their designs which make the cost very reasonable. In some cases the finished products were far superior in finish as well, compared to the Shapeways items. I will not name names here, but if you PM me I will share some of my sources.

Very nice. Are you allowing them to free harden, or did you use a pressure or vacuum pot to reduce air bubbles in the resin? My resin is rather finicky in that it's self life, once opened, is about 6 months. After that it absorbs too much water and it's ability to harden degrades significantly.

It was around this time that I started to really look at electronics and motion requirements. One of he vendors I regularly visit is ServoCity. They do a lot with robotics, especially combat robots. I few years ago they started to carry a line of servos by GoBilda. The line has since expanded and it fit my needs perfectly. GoBilda will also sell direct retail I have since found out. The servos I bought, to animate my turrets and torpedo tubes, rotae 180 degrees, out of the box, and with a servo expander, also available fro GoBilda, they will give 300 degree rotation. An added plus is that they are programable servos that can be made to give 360 degree continuous/reversible rotation with proportional control. I know this sound like an advertisement, but they work. They have expanded their line to include a Torque version of their servo which, while slower is much more powerful. I originally ordered Speed versions of their servos, but have changed them out to the Torque version when I found that some of my turrets dragged and loaded the servos down.
So with my "drives" purchased, I set about making mounts for the servos which drive the five turrets, the MK 37 gun director and the torpedo tubes. It was somewhere around this time that I also discovered the FrSky X9E tray radio. I have talked about these before, but it was a leap for me because I had always used 75mhz analog radios. The learning curve was very steep, even with numerous videos and threads on different forums discussing these units. The is an Englishman who has posted wonderful videos about FrSky and I owe him my understanding.
Going back to my servos and drives for a moment; the hardware for connecting the servos, to the shafts of all the items I wanted to animate, are also available fro the two vendors I have mentioned. Especially nice is a servo adapter that screws into place of the servo arm. It has a clap like shape that tightens around a 1/4" shaft. perfect for my needs and very simple to adjust, not the mention allowing easy removal of the turret, ect.
General planning now entailed smoker placement that would clear the deck houses. On my last destroyer I used one large smoker and piped it to two stacks. It worked very well, but is cumbersome. I also tried to plan out my electronics bay to be neat and accessible, but as usual, neat did not work and accessible is a matter of interpretation. In the end a stacked two level electronics bay fit everything in, so far. I do not have pictures of this part of the build so I'll move on the detailing the houses.
For fittings I used two primary sources, Distefan on Shapeways and Robert Thomas who makes Quartermaster fittings. Robert makes perhaps the finest resin fittings I have come across. I decided to show a number of house doors open and to make functional the house vents.I did this to supply air to the smokers and allow heat from the motors to vent out.
In the first photo, the entire bridge above the 01 level is 3D printed, including the gun director and it's base. Moving aft, the stacks, torpedo tubes, all turrets, the side 20mm shields,and the aft superstructure, again above the 01 level are also all 3D. The time and effort this saves is amazing. All doors are Quartermaster.
I made the house events and started to add hand rails. Many were later removed when I found that I had neglected equipment that interfered with them. Deck access hatches were added, house braces and quarter round house extensions were started. I lined the house portholes with brass tubing and drilled the holes for the future house lights and lined them with brass tubing as well. Valve wheels went in and various reels mounted. The objects alongside the after house are spart K-gun arbors.
Till next time

Some nice! I have to ask... where can get a paddle boat like that?!!

What!? No tails feathers??? Looking great!

Norm,
I don't know why but my reply to your question about the area aft of the TT's does show here. I posted a comment about the rigging plan and the war time modifications to Ajax. it is in your blog stream, but does not show here. Let me know if you can not find it, and I'll re post it.
Jonathan

Here is the list of war modifications, according to raven and Roberts.

The rigging plan, as built, shows her carrying her boats, port and starboard aft of the Ttubes's. Makes sense because they would be under the crane. The plan by Raven and Roberts shows the same circa 1941, but with a quad 0.5 mount MK II in place of her catapult, date Mid 1941 @ Alexandria or Port Said. I have the list of war modifications made to her. I'll scan it and post it later this evening. Need to go cook, for the cook.

A very brief addition of a couple of points I did not touch on. First is my shaft alignment method. I have become quite partial to the tubing over shaft method. This uses tubing, it can be brass, aluminum, or any other metal. A snug sliding fit works fine. Tubing fitting over the prop shaft and extending forward to fit over the motor shaft is the goal. If there is tension on the alignment tool causing it to bind if slid fore and aft as well as rotated, then there is a significant misalignment. Bearing in mind that it is possible to flex the prop shaft, especially if there is a fair amount of it extending forward from the stuffing box, I align my motor and shaft by shifting and shimming my motor mount until my "tool" slide effortlessly. I then tack the motor mount into place with CA, let it harden, I use a thick slow version, and check my alignment again. If I am happy I then bed the mount into place with thickened epoxy. This seems to be more successful than the MK1 eyeball method.
The other thing I do involves my u-joint between the motor and the shaft. I use double knuckle Delrin joints with metal spiders. I like these for several reasons. 1) They will break if torqued beyond their limits, which is not really that much, but that said it is well within the limits I impose upon the props and shafts. 2) they can be relatively easily adapted to different input and output shaft sizes, 3) they work exceeding well when true alignment can not be achieved. 4) they are readily available. They do have a drawback which is that they can be noisy, especially at low speeds and this is where I found a solution. They are not precision joints and the spiders do have slack which causes chatter. What I have done it to slide some heat shrink tubing over the entire u-joint. I do not shrink it into place. Just the tight sliding fit holds it fine. This appears to keep the cages of the joint in alignment and in doing so the chatter disappeared. Feel free to try it, I do not intend to patent my idea. LOL
That's it. Next post , on with the build.

BIN primer is very good stuff! I have found it to be very useful on #D printed items, particularly some of the Nylon type of materials. I have not tried it on the "fine detail" plastics, but if I have a piece that I can afford to throw out if need be, I will try it a post the results.
It sands much like automotive filling primer in that it is sof, but thick.

This is a bit off the mark, but it's Dremel related. I have always objected to to the speed of Dremel tools, especially when working with really small bit. I was in a large box store the other day and stumbled upon this:
https://us.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/tools/hs...
It is quite nice with some feature I really like, such as adjustable torgue setting, and especially a trigger that is activated by simply pushing the tool onto the work. However the real reason I bought it was the slower speed. Much better control for drilling and a nice power screwdriver. It cost around $45 US and recharges via a USB cord from a computer of the supplied transformer.

https://us.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/tools/hses-01-cordless-electric-screwdriver

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And here I thought that you had all but given up.....nice details. How about a little electric solenoid valve for the galley stove pipe?