The Ship Model Forum

Last bit of work for now is to punch out the anchor necelles, mortar and VDS well. My technique for this is simple enough, I create a box, in the case of the mortar well a chamfered box, top and tailed to give me a nicely welded looking appearance to the corners. I copy it then use one to punch out the hole and the second is then positioned in and attached to the hull. QED.

The trick here is to do these after the smoothing process or the results will be just nasty. I use the Materials editor to apply a paint job and that is my basic hull complete. I leave it on a layer of it's own and freeze it. Probs, rudders, stabilizers and sonars will be added on a layer of their own, as will superstructure etc.

I do not claim this is the best method to knock up a hull with Autodesk 11 3DS Max, but after weeks of experimenting and lots of false starts it works for me.

I will be taking my time constructing the basic superstructure next, as I am getting close to that stage on my actual model and want to use the 3D model to produce blueprints for the actual model.

middle_watch,

I can relate to your problems with Vista. I run XP and Vista 64, and Vista has more bugs than an antfarm! At first I had a lot of problems trying to get Vista to run with existing software, but I fixed that!

Note: My Vista machine is a secure machine - it doesn't have a network connection. That gave me some room to tame Vista. I use the XP machine for Internet connections and to scan files for viruses, etc.

Vista loads something like 245 run-time applications when it starts up. It used 2.2 Gbytes of the 4 Gbytes of RAM on my machine! Most of these applications have to do with network connections or network security. I turned off all of the startups and all of my application programs ran just fine - and it boots a lot faster! I eventually turned back on the one startup that produces system information. Now it uses "only" 800 Mbytes of RAM, leaving 3.2 Gbytes for my applications.

I killed the useless Aero interface - it was causing major problems with some programs and was nothing but a CPU cycle hog that actually did nothing useful. The machine ran faster.

I set Vista to use the simple "Classic" Windows interface and appearance (looks like XP) - again things speeded up and more problems went away.

I killed the useless search index catalog function that bogs down disk accesses - again a major speed improvement.

Also, you should exterminate Microsoft's Intellipoint "intelligent" mouse driver (ipoint.exe). It is a bug colony all of its own, and totally useless.

Basically, after taking an axe to Vista it is now just DOS with a graphical interface - just what I need. All of the CPU cycles and most of the RAM are available for the programs I want to run. All Office products run perfectly (Word, Excel), as does DesignCAD (my CAD program), Adobe Reader and Photoshop. In fact, I haven't found any program that doesn't run correctly (other than the bugs in the programs), and run faster. Even Internet Explorer and Firefox work OK as html file browsers, except that they can't find a network connection!

I don't have System 7 yet, but the first thing I plan to do is lobotomize it to get rid of all the useless Microsoft crap. Simpler is better!

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Thanks for that, cannot lobotomise mine sadly as it is the "family" computer, I have tried to rebuild to XP but half the hardware is not supported and had to give up. Work is about to flog off some old servers and I have my eye on one of them as a dedicated CAD machine. I will house it in the shed and run a wireless link to a dumb terminal.

Moving on, the bulk of the superstructure causes no issue, mainly chamfer boxes tweaked together. The more complex Bridge shape started out as a 12 sided oil tank template, plenty of height segments and it was just a matter of vertex shifting to come up with a basic starter. Windows defeated me until I buckled down to some of the tutorials and found with 11 you have to set to change settings to set Mental Ray as the Renderer then all the juicy bits like glass become available, don't recall having to do that with 7.

Started adding detail to the Foc'sul with a chequer board anti-slip coating, working on the capstans now, and pondering how to do the chains.

This is a rendered image.

Allowed myself to get sidetracked into putting in some Foc'sul detail, The rendered image shows some work is still needed on the hull around the bull nose and anchor nacelle, but I will come back to that later.

For those interested, aft to fore: Refuelling pipes, vents, breakwater, Ikara Test aerial, Twin head electric capstan. And of course the guardrails, dado rail (colour not right yet, these used to be a sort of tan before going to boring grey) and various cable guides.

Colour of the foredeck itself is debatable, I recall it being green or grey at various times, memory is a faulty thing but I think it was grey in Atlantic Ops and Green in the Far East, feel free to comment, I am modelling HMS Naiad in 1979

Corrections to the hull and working detail on aft.

The Layers really make a big difference as the polygon count starts to rocket, I particularly like the ability to freeze and/or hide by layers, means I can shut off big chunks and speed things up. I am now running it on Windows 7, and it is a lot more stable than either Visa or even XP which tended to give up now and then with "out of memory". Using the same hardware, just wiped it and put on 7.

The box in front of the Bridge is the Ikara Assembly Room, or IAR where the missiles are brought up from the magazine and winged and finned ready for launch. The tangle on top of it is the RAS (replenishment at Sea) and ammunitioning gear, missiles are brought up or taken down direct to the Magazine through the big hatch, the locker thing holds a sort of frame that extends the handling rails so the missiles can be brought up into the air.

The caution on the plates had to be changed after a visit the USA, out American cousins seemed to find something amusing and/or offensive about them. They are soft welded steel plates designed to vent the blast if the Magazine blew.

We had "blow out patches" on the missile magazine on the USS Oklahoma City. Same function.

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

I've been running* Windows 7 for almost two years now; it's much more stable than Vista. You might check in with Rob as well as I know he's running it.



* I'm not running CAD programs so this may be irrelevant to your issues.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

I never understood the fuss, as I understand it in America a "Blow Off" is the final performance of a show, anyway, we had to repaint them while alongside in Fort Lauderdale (Spring Break, 1979, oh my!!!), they were called "Venting Panels" or something like that afterwards. Soon afterwards we also had to change the safety arcs from red to yellow, some European regulation I think. England is the beach of Europe these days.

Liferafts: as usual a headache peering at photos and wondering why the hell I did not take more photos when I could, the number of ribs seem to change by year for instance so I have guesed at three for this model, they were released either by a hand turn of a switch or by hydro-static pressure valve. My main memory of the rafts is training on them in HMS Raleigh swimming pool, I was tasked with demonstrating turning a capsized raft over. Nice, two weeks in sick bay with concussion when the strap snapped and I hit the edge of the pool with the back of my head.

Could have been worse, might have hit something other than my head!

Liferafts in situ. Also added the portholes, the Leander class was designed for nuclear war and hull portholes were removed from the previous design hull, but for some reason they were retained in 01 deck forward, shedding some light into the Petty Officer and Chief Petty Officers Mess Decks, the Wardroom and the Captain's cabin which had the two forward facing ports.

The upperdeck hatch shown was notorious as the "jogger killer" I am sure all the incidents were pure accident. The Jacob's ladder spar can also be seen here, now that was a test of your metal! Ten pints of the local hooch and back across the open sea by open boat to climb up a rope ladder suspended from it. Who needs a soberiety test with that to fight through! Never mind Trafalgar and the Nile, real battle honours belong to Saint Helena, Oban and other ports of call where we had to anchor off!

"Blow off" is very similar to a term for a sexual act performed by cheap street walkers. I'm sure experienced US Navy sailors got a good laugh when they saw the wording on your ship.

Can't believe that Her Majesty's salts weren't aware of this - especially the fellows who visited Hong Kong. I met quite a few of the chaps there, and in Wanchai the "learning" opportunities were virtually limitless.

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Well a job we knew well, but off?

Anyway, the 199 VDS (Variable Depth Sonar) actually a Canadian device which was made obsolote by the 2016 sonar fitted in the last four Leanders and hence they omitted the 199. The device was used to detect submarines hiding in shadow zones formed by two isotropic thermal layers.

Shown in place, in the stowed position, the only hull portals are here allowing the winch operator to see the gear.

A peek at how the thing is used when deployed, depth is controlled by the ship's speed which of course placed awful restrictions on manouvering.