Hello all. I have been enjoying ModelWarships.com for several years, especially the online scratchbuild projects. My 28 years in the Navy included duty on the submarines GATO, NEVADA, and Pre-Commissioning Unit MAINE. I have been scratch building ship models since high school in the early 1970s, starting with sheet balsa and shifting to basswood about 20 years ago. Most of my projects have been my own designs, given the difficulty of getting useful information in the pre-internet Cold War days. One of my earliest models was an SSBN where the only information I had was the basic length/beam, and a photo of the boat running on the surface in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings magazine. Over the years, I have build small combatants, U.S. and Russian submarines, a British X-Craft, a paddle steamer circa 1860, an ocean-going tug circa 1940, and half models of a galleon and a Grand Banks schooner. With encouragement from co-worker MClare, it's time to share my new project and hopefully get some suggestions to challenge my skills. This model is my idea of what the U.S. Navy's replacement FFG class should look like. Defense news sites and naval blogs reported in mid-February 2018 that the Navy contracted with five shipbuilders for conceptual designs. So this project is a sixth, unsolicited design. Since it's just a concept for fun, esthetics are important; a warship needs to look good. I have focused on plausible sea combatant capabilities in a frigate sized hull with low technical risk. Integrated electric propulsion an a scalable AESA radar are reasonably mature technologies, though I think not yet proven in service. The model represents an overall length of 485 feet, or 148 meters. That puts the design mid-way between the OLIVER HAZARD PERRY FFG and ARLEIGH BURKE DDG classes. At 1/192 scale, the model will be a bit over 30 inches long, which is handy to build and won't require a new bookcase to display. I have drawn dozens of iterations for what the model should look like and build an earlier version that I called USS EUGENE FLUCKEY FFG-62. Sixty two is the next unused FFG hull number and Eugene Fluckey was the commanding officer of the submarine BARB in World War II. He was awarded the Medal of Honor but no warship has ever been named for him. SECNAV - take for action. With just some subtle arrangement changes, I'm calling this new model USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS FFG-63. The two images that follow show the profile and overhead views and the faired hull lines.
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FFG-63 001a.JPG [ 135.87 KiB | Viewed 3269 times ]
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FFG-63 001b.JPG [ 99.73 KiB | Viewed 3269 times ]
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_________________ Mike Perry
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