The Ship Model Forum

This model has really everywhere interesting, nicely executed details and is also very colourful!

Do you plan to add an helicopter? I assume that in the North Sea, not often helicopters are used to supply the ship or transfer new crew members.

_________________

Although I'd love to add a helicopter, it would not be realistic, since during the cable lay operation I'm depicting, helicopters wouldn't land.

You'll be surprised that the helicopter was our most used transport. There were days without any, but also days with up to 4. Depends on the activity of the ship and the amount of people that had to go on and off. Those helicopters did go to several rigs and offshore vessels in one go, so they were not only booked for us. In the real offshore hubs there are helicopter airports with scheduled flights. The big advantage over a boat is that helicopters are of course much faster, but are also able to operate in worse weather conditions.

Your statement does remind me of the surfer ladder that I still need to add. It's a yellow ladder you see on most offshore wind vessels that allows safe transfer from a boat to a ship, protecting persons on the ladder by two strong beams. When the small boat (generally flat bow) moves up and down in the swell, it might rub against those beams, but not hit the person on the ladder. You can see them here on the aft of Seaway Moxie and side of Seaway Aimery. On Living Stone it's starboard, since it will have to pass through the plexi I'll need to think how I'll produce it. It's pretty small, so I might just drill a hole and then pass the whole ladder structure through.

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Unfortunate, that a helicopter would be unrealistic for the depicted operation. It is interesting that their use is so common. What kind of helicopters are used? Super Puma (H225), Sikorsky S-92, AgustaWestland AW101, AgustaWestland AW189 or smaller?

Thank you for the explanation of the surfer ladder - I had not noticed that detail on such ships.

_________________

A very interesting vessel indeed! I already learned a lot from this thread.

And she's starting to look nicely busy

We were indeed mostly flying Leonardo AW189's, but they also had the S-92 etc. The S-92 has a slightly higher capacity and was only used where that was required. Since those companies like Bristow, CHC, NHV helicopters were operating from Aberdeen, Den Helder, Norwich etc. they are often optimizing the distribution of helicopters, from time to time flights get cancelled due to transfer of the helicopters etc.
They are very colorful helicopters and would be nice to have on the model, but it won't happen...

https://www.bristowgroup.com/fleet/heavy-twins/leonardo-aw189
http://www.chcheli.com/node/54

Been making some steady progress recently, some key parts were aligned and placed. I also started on finalizing the bow, mooring leads and supports inside that big light hole. I was quite scared to screw that up. I also need to put that big DEME logo on the bow, wouldn't be the same without it, but painting that will be a pain...

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Could you print the logo as decal? I used e.g. Tailormadecals for printing.

The helicopters are really very colourful, that would be not easy in 1/700.

_________________

I'd love to, but couldn't really see anything on Tailormade decals? Can you give me a link on how to do that?
Won't be using it on this build, but I have a feeling I might use such decals for the future (or even retrofit it to my TI Europe)
For the time being I'll try to paint the large logo on the bow section and leave out the tiny ones near the funnels.

Some progress on the dio itself as well:

_________________
The merchant shipyard

This is their website:
https://www.tailormadedecals.com/

They both draw themselves, but also print decals you have drawn. You can discuss that with them via e-email or phone.

_________________

Hi Roel, Lars,

Design of decals is not very difficult. I have been doing that for decades already. Simple tool for this is CorelDraw, delivering sharp scalable vector designs. I could give you a hand to get started if you like. I guess you'll need at least the ship's name (curved on the bows) and straight on the stern, the home town, the bow thruster markings, the heli deck markings, IMO number and maybe a few more.

Printing is a bit more difficult: I also did this myself using an OKI DP 5000 Thermal Wax printer (same as ALPS), but these are very obsolete now, long out of production and the required supplies (tapes) are getting extremely expensive. The final blow came when the printer drivers were no longer able to cope with Windows 10 (or the other way around).

But an affordable alternative for the printing is https://decalwinkel.nl/ , and what you provide is what you get for a very reasonable price.

Let me know if you need more info.
Maarten

_________________
"I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing, and the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023

At least the DEME logo on the bow and all the text on the transom are indispensible I believe!

_________________
"I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing, and the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023

Hi Maarten,

thanks for the advice, definately worth looking into, but not for this vessel. Also I believe white decals are difficult to put onto the green bow and transom, but I may be mistaken on that.
The transom has been changed considerably due to the presence of the shutes, they reduced the size of the name etc. and it's hardly visible nowadays.
The logo has now been painted on the bow, although the parts are a bit too far apart, it does resemble the real thing quite well, so I'll keep it the way it is for now.

Sorry for the bad pictures, but since I missed my deadline again, the build will be on hold for a while again, so I won't be able to take better pics. As can be seen in the last picture, the A-frame for the trencher is now installed as well and I have started with the supports for the helideck (still dry fit).

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Niec to see this one coming together. Are you going to put the trenching tool in operation?

Hi Pieter, no, the trencher will be on deck in its stowed position. I will show the quadrant (white half round thing) deployed from the stern (hanging off the extended green frame between the chutes). I'll also put the ROV in operation and the survey pole deployed. All of those items are connections between surface and sub-surface and still have to be made.
I'm still pondering over the sequence of building all that. The quadrant will carry the cable, so practically connects the bottom of the dio with the vessel on the surface. It'll all become more clear in the future.

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Back in the saddle, time for an update.

Finished the helicopter deck supports. Bridge + Helo deck are still dry fitted, since I still need to drill and mount the exhaust pipes just behind them.


I wasn't really planning on putting the rails for the quadrant on the back (or definately not detailed), but decided to do at least something with them. First measured and cut some 0.3mm steel wire, then glued it on some fly screen mesh to get a good amount of fairly small supports without doing too much effort. Then cut the mesh to size.

They are on both sides of the cable lay system, the half moon shape in front is only dry fitted.


The real ship has in the meanwhile finally commissioned her LNG system and is now the first cable layer on LNG fuel. Due to that, she has now also won a future project.

https://www.offshore-energy.biz/demes-living-stone-bunkered-with-lng-for-the-first-time/
https://ocean-energyresources.com/2021/07/27/living-stone-contracted-to-install-subsea-cable-zeus/

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Finished wih the cold water fear now. After several attempts at gluing that Vivak plate (clear polyester, clearly not the same as acrylic), I was confident enough to go for the final gluing. Remade a couple of panels in the meantime, since the MEK is not evaporating like acrylic weld glues.

The vessel itself is now far enough to continue with the subsea equipment and lay-out.

So currently I've glued the two lengths and one side together in a U-shape and then glued that to the "sea surface" plate.
The one open side allows me to measure and work underneath for lining up the sub-sea equipment with the vessel on the surface.

I started by making the "quadrant", which is used to lower the final part of the cable while the end is being pulled inside the monopile foundation.

Currently shaped the cable from 0.3mm copper wire (will paint it later on), which is draped around the quadrant. I've made the loop in the middle so I could shift left and right to line up with the vessel. In order to allow this shifting, I've raised the clear casing on top of 4mm of styrene pieces (1 on each corner to keep decent lining up). This way I can shift the wire to its final position before cutting off the excess.

The plan is to glue it on the base, along with the quadrant and the wire on which the quadrant hangs. the most difficult part will then be lining up the standing wire with the hole in the sea surface (if that makes any sense ).

The second subsea part, the ROV, will be done first since it will be placed further from the open panel. Still figuring out how I will make the tether system.

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Nice solution for the water surface support. I've seen these monopiles a lot lately as my mum lives near Vlissingen-Oost where they are pre-assembled, it is nice to see how they appear in their real element for the coming 30years or so.

Hi Pieter,
I actually don't believe the monopile as a support was necessary for the diorama, since the last "wall" of the vivak casing will straighten the surface as well, and it's not mounted that far away from it. However, in the end I do believe it might help a bit. Still need to file it off a bit more as currently the whole vivak case is a bit unstable since it's resting on top of the monopile now.

So small progress, everything coming together. Fixed the crane, finally put myself to building the liferaft davits and mounting the liferafts (taken from my unfinished Kuznetsov) as well as the lifeboats etc.

The quadrant was also painted and the cable attached to it (and cut to length for the diorama). I've changed the top layer of the rock pancake around the monopile as the "stones" I used were too crude/large (2mm dia), changed now to 0.5mm dia stones, which is more to scale.
You can also see the tether system for the ROV, it will not be resting on the bottom in the end. This system is used as something like a weight, so it is lowered straight down, but inside the tether system is a reel with the tether of the ROV and from there on the ROV is moving. This prevents the tether from getting caught in the propellers etc.

Currently I'm gluing the upper vessel to the water surface. Things remaining:

- Build the mooring fenders
- Fix and finish the LNG vent mast and its platform
- build and mount the "surfer" ladder on the starboard side
- Assemble the underwater part of the dio and mount the upper part on top
- create a waterbase on the top of the water surface
- glue and finish the transition piece (yellow mushroom on top of monopile)

on the "maybe" list:
- build the framework around the exhaust pipes aft of the bridge
- mount pilot ladder reels

_________________
The merchant shipyard

Super job very nice and the diorama will look super
Have a nice Day
By the way nice flag.?

Thanks Greg,

small update, figured I hadn't shown the ROV yet, and once mounted it won't be that visible anymore.
I also forgot to mention the trencher in my to-do list above, I wasn't sure if I wanted to tackle that, since in reality she's not always onboard after all. However, it would be like a battleship without one of its main or secondary guns, so I felt I needed to add this detail as well.
I decided to mount her main features and stick to their main dimensions. Considering she's only a tiny detail on the whole dio, I decided not to spend too much time in additional detailing.

2 mooring fenders are also finished, they are normally juggled around the deck, depending on where they have space, they are required for mooring due to all the equipment sticking over the side on both sides.

_________________
The merchant shipyard

This model has so many cool details! ROV, trencher (looking like a Mars rover)...

How do you made the fenders?

_________________