englishgunner wrote:
Gadday Bruce,
I am building a 2.7m V and W destroyer and was hoping you could give me some advice as this is my first build. What did you do for the ballasting of your hull which looks similar in size to mine. How do you place the ballast in the forward part of the hull with the deck permanently in place. I would like to get motors similar to the ones you have, can you tell me exactly what they are? What voltage are they, what sort of batteries do you use and are they also used to ballast your hull? When you put your prop shafts in, do you secure the prop to the motors and use a jig of sorts to hold it in place at the other end whilst using resin to set it.
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Sorry, these are probably basic questions, but if you have any advice - I feel a bit stuck in relation to installing the shafts and seeing how you have expertly set up your hull would be a great help,
cheers, Will
Sorry for not replying sooner Will I haven't been checking this site much lately!!
Regarding ballasting I use 4x 12v 9Ah Yuasa SLAs (2.5kg each) as drive and ballast directly below the bridge area, 2x 3kg lead wts at the back end of aft superstucture, a 2kg rubber coated dumbbell (from Kmart) under the fwd 5"gun and about 500grams of fishing weights around the rudder posts.
With fitting shafts I use a short drive shaft between the motor and prop shaft that way I can set the shafts up fairly shallowly in the hull. I just chock up the internal end of the shaft and spend most of my effort getting the A frame's and the shaft's lined up correct. Then I use a big glob of auto filler(the type that come with fibreglass strands in it) around the A frame legs inside the hull (making sure it fills everything) then leave to set, coming back a few hours later and doing the shaft tube end.
The motors in her a Graupner 900s which are no longer made (and very expensive if you find them)a better motor I recently found is a 755 sized motor off ebay for around $12AU !!! (3500rpm at 12v) I have fitted them in my DDG53 and they are a good motor with fairly low Amp draw (and they are turning 78mm props!!)
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/775-DC-12V-36V-3500-9000RPM-Motor-Large-Torque-Ball-Bearing-High-Power-Low-B9Z6/264347929745 Hope this helps...
Bruce