The Ship Model Forum

Thank you very much Norbert. I have to say that's probably the bet compliment I could get about her
Our electronics guru in the club - a sparky by trade - plays with RC choppers and has just picked up one of those cool multirotor camera platforms! So should be able to get some from the air shots of the WA fleet. Can't wait to see what will come about. Over on the east coast and south australia some of the sailing locations from other TF72 clubs have great advantage points from bridges and the like which make a fleet of ships look just like a shot of a real fleet! Without the distractions of a shore line giving away that they're models. One fantastic picture shows another AWD model HMAS Sydney an FFG-7 a daring class destroyer HMAS Vampire and USS Longbeach and if they would have all been together at the same time in life, you'd easily mistake the photos for helo shots of the real thing.

My RAN MH-60R seahawk is basically complete now. Have added my RAN roundals and other decals apart from the serial numbers. The serial numbers are easy to figure out as we will have 24 aircraft numbered 01-24 with corresponding sqdn number but I won't add these until an aircraft is attached to Brisbane. Four Romeo's have been delivered but these will most likely be attached to either HMAS Canberra once commissioned or amongst the 8 Anzac class FFH as they come out of their ASMD refit. So the numbers will be missing for now. The decals again were made up using the bare metal foil decal sheets and attached with the micro set and micro sol solutions. This stuff is so easy to use and you get exactly what you want. The decals are a bit darker than they should be I think as RAN Seahawks SB-70 'Classic Seahawks' and the Romeo's display low vis colours, but the kangaroo stands out so am happy with that

I understand that ai in Australia is strong and the modeling naval. Then you will use a Drone for shooting.
this is very nice and is well used to make pictures of surfing. taste of electronics that uses to effect on the ship. very nice.

It should be great to see a different viewpoint. One of the guys has already gone one step and is planning on putting a spy camera in the bridge of his Arleigh Burke - it's connected through a wifi signal to goggles that you wear seeing what the camera sees! There's also no stopping what can be done

Back to Brisbane, have giving the flight deck it's coat of anti slip dark grey. Most australian ships that have a flight deck have the anti slip painted the same pewter grey as the rest of the decks, we also don't paint walkways a different colour like on the arleigh burkes for instance. Checking with what the builders are doing I've decided to paint the flight deck a slightly different shade of grey which looks great I think giving it a bit of contrast and breaking things up abit.






Pennant number added fore and aft all the hull really needs now are the depth markings and some slight weathering. I won't go overboard but a little bit of rust here and there should help bring her to life.

Also today got the 'Spook' radar (SPQ-98) working when I figure out how to upload a video I will
Here's the spook with the micro geared motor inserted. The bottom of the motor is hidden nicely by the base of the radar which is also hollowed out. The micro geared motor is designed to run on max of 3v (2xAA batteries) with an rpm of 28. The spook radar rotates at 12rpm so I halved the power to 1.5v - I'm using 1 AA battery for this which has reduced the rpm to 13 so almost perfect. Another bonus is at full 3v the motor is very noisy but at half power the sound is reduced significantly so it won't distract for example during a static display. There are two Nav radars, one above the bridge and one on the platform below the spook which run at 20rpm I have yet to get these running - I really should as I have the spook running but the micro motor is still a bit large for the second Nav radar base on the mast (not a problem with the radar above the bridge as the size of the motor won't matter as it can be mounted with a long shaft) and going over scale for an item would bug me more than having a working radar.

My working 'Spook'



Click on the pic to view video

nice perth, Ship is looking great.

Thanks very much Lyall

Been working on the flight deck netting. Made up the usual way using very fine fly screen wire. I've used some pet safe fly screen - this has steel wire embedded in the plastic to prevent scratches and rips. I've seen some of the normal - just plastic- screen warp and break through our summer heat so hopefully this stuff will hold together a lot stronger. Painted first in matt white then a light coating in tamiya light grey. The light grey is basically a dirty white as the netting is never bright white.


Painted and cut to shape.


6 down 16 to go. Actually 20 as there are two on each bridge wing where the typhoon guns are.

Port netting complete! Almost half way tedious but once you get into a rythem it goes together rather quickly.

Have added most of the draught markings. This was again a rather tedious job. Hawkeye make a brilliant set in imperial feet which is perfect for USN and even our FFG-7's though being a metric country I decided to use the metric method. You can get single numbers as in 10 (1m) 2,4,6,8,20 (2m) etc but this isn't what I was after. Nuship Hobart doesn't have any on her hull yet though being built in Australia I went for the same method as our Anzac class FFH's with double numbers 30,32,34,36,38,40 etc being 3m, 3.2m, 3.4m etc. the numbers are 10cm in height and 20cm apart from the base of each number. This works out to 1.38mm in 1/72.... For awhile this left me stumped and thought about using either the hawks graphics decals or BECC stickers and using extra sheets etc to get the extra numbers but I came across 2 packets of various sized dry transfer numbers in the correct font at the bottom of a cardboard box marked bargain box everything $2 each in my LHS. Turned out These are for train guys and the smallest numbers are 1.4mm! Close enough

Then came the realisation by doing it this way I would have to rub down every single number, but for $4 if it all went haywire I wouldn't be out of pocket too much at all. Using a scale rule I marked up tamiya paint tape with the meter and 20cm marks. This was attached to the hull and the numbers rubbed on very carefully. Once complete I brushed on a coat of the bare metal foil micro sol which with normal decals softens the decal film into the paint. Once dried a couple light coats of Matt varnish and done. With the micro sol solution and the varnish they shouldn't come off with exposure to water and some strength against rubbing them off. Well worth it as I now have the correct draught markings for only $4! As I've copied how the anzac class have their draught markings all the numbers are white whether on the anitfoul or the grey. So I have both aft calculating markings the stern calculating markings, the bow calculating markings which are all the same as they are the actual depth from the keel up. The navigational markings either side at the propellers, sonar and stabiliser with PROJ (projection) above the sonar and props. I still should put on the PROJ above the stabilisers but need some more letters to do those. These are all different to the bow and stern as they measure from the base of their prospective projections. When you take a step back they almost disappear but it's great to have them on apart from the two other PROJ markings I need the only other markings are the draught limiting marks - these are those star markings which shows the minimum freeboard the ship requires.


Markings at scale 20cm







The only other markings not mentioned that she may have are the 'T' marks at various locations on the hull so the tugs know where to push against the hull. The spanish ships do have these as do our Anzacs so she most likely will also.

Decided to move my on/off switch from under the aft stack to just forward of the stack itself. As when were not sailing the models are on their moorings so having to remove parts of the ship to get to the switch was getting risky as more and more detail is being added. The problem is to obviously keep the switch hidden. Nothing worse than a scale model with a huge switch sitting in the mide of it. I solved this by hiding the switch in a deck locker. I built up a deck locker out of card using those itchy train rivets again to finish it off. The base is 2mm card with a slot that fits the slide switch in snugly. To switch the Brissy to live all I have to do slide the locker forward and aft to turn off. The movement is only 1mm so won't look out of place



Some guys have this normal master switch but use a 1 channel wireless remote (like a car FOB key) to make the model live so you turn on the master switch when it's out of the water and when on you just hit the fob key button. This is cool and I would have done but I'll be using one to fire the VLS missiles and don't want to have multiple fobkeys as well as the transmitter. You can get from 1 to 8 channel fobkeys which I want so I can fire successive salvos

While playing with the electronics I also added a few lights. We don't sail at night but coming into winter it can be rather dark and dreary first thing in the morning. We sail on Sunday mornings around 8-12 so like the previous sail it was still darkish especially when the clouds rolled in - unless it's a thunderstorm we do sail our ships in all weather. Using 12v 3mm LEDs I've attached the Nav lights and white light above the bridge and on the platform of the 'spook' radar on the mast. I could go crazy using fibre optics to light all the mast lights and the red spotlights and deck floodlights but again I'd never turn them all on and I could use the money for other toys. The red and green lights aren't as bright as the white lights so they are mounted as is within their recesses on the bridge wings. The white lights are however quite bright on their own but I've mounted them in their black covers which has reduced the WOW BRIGHT!

Masthead light on the 'spook' platform.


Lights on with covers


Lights on without covers

Blinding and too bright!

In complete darkness

nice effect, fantastic

Now that is some very clever engineering, both with the on/off switch and the lighting!

Personally if I had that kind of boat to run I'd want to run it from a boat of my own so that I can be out on the water with it. That way if there's an emergency such as a power failure or a leak, the scale ship can be taken in tow or even brought onboard so it doesn't sink where you can't easily get at it! Also, you could use it to retrieve the missiles from the firing VLS...

My father has a bass boat that would work nicely for such a purpose.

Thanks guys. I have a yacht also Sean, full size but when we sail the models they're on lakes my yacht is in the harbour so no hope in that haha. Any emergencies come with the territory, and fingers crossed no titanic reenactments. Leaks wise even in the rain last sail not a drop of water got inside as for electrical failures we have a few tugs and a regular 1/50 scale tug whose job it is to bring boats back in luckily there's only been a couple stranded models, one a small minesweeper with a 43 MHz radio and was constantly dropping out of range - he quickly joined us with using 2.4ghz, so no signal dropping out if range or needing to worry about who has what crystal.

Been busy making and detailing the two RHIBS adding the grab rails, steering wheel, transom flap, radar etc.







Painted up. The rails and bar for where the hook is attached are still in primer but will be painted silver to imitate the chrome aluminum that they are. Also the radar will be white. Still have the shaft for the inboard/outboard to make up and add the windshields out of clear acetate. I'll have to make a few decals up for this also to liven up the control panel plus add a few other labels and the pennant numbers. RAN RHIBS carry the same pennant number as the vessel they're on. Some also have individual names which are also labelled.

I would love to have a real RHIB of my own. Now that would be great for staging RC boats from...

Nice job on your 1/72 ones!

G'day Anton,

noticed in an earlier post you are using one of the small 6mm dia gearhead motors for SPQ9B radar, the gearboxes on these don't like having large radars on them....they turn then fine enuff but can't handle the vibrations when being transported! the weight of radar body breaks the plastic gearbox body (as Scott found out on his SPS48 on USS Scott) I would recommend a slightly larger gearbox (10mm dia) same height(approx 25mm not counting shaft) from this ebay (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6V-DC-13RPM- ... 3cb767a3aa) seller for about $10..including shipping. Just need a bigger hole in the radar base....

Cheers Bruce

PS don't forget RAN RHIBs have jet drives now not stern drives....

G'day Bruce, yeah those motors are very fragile I damaged one just by looking at it! This one at the moment I've got a brass tube which is fitted around the gearbox itself and the radar rests it's weight on that. Inside the radar I've put a smaller tube which is attached to the radar and slips over the shaft to turn it. This way I can just slip the radar off during travel, it does fit snugly when on and have left it for a day just to see if there were problems but as I need two more motors for the smaller Nav radars I may do as you suggest. The motor I have can be for the Nav radar on the mast - being small enough the base won't be too over scale and it would only turn a plastic strip basically that motor you suggested should easily fit in the SPQ9b base leaving the third radar which is on the bridge roof. That can be any size technically as it would all be hidden in the superstructure. Funny when I was looking on fleabay for planetary motors these never came up! Haha

I had a feeling the RHIBS were now jet-drives which is why I left it initially. An added plus as it's much easier to make up something that looks like a jet drive than an outboard

Yup I use same small ones for Nav radars on masts and butcher cheap servos for ones I can hide drives!!, If only they could be about 15mm high instead of 25! I am going to be using a 6mm dia one on USS California to spin her photo etch SPS10 on top of fwd mast, luckily I can hide the whole gearbox and motor directly below the radar in the 7.9mm Mast tube.

Cheers Bruce

Thanks for the pics Bruce, might have to make those extra seats also for the RHIBS as I think all the J3 RHIBS are fitted with those now so I assume the ones on the AWD's will have them also

Do you have any pics of a butchered servo? The Nav radar on the bridge roof has a compartment under it which a servo would fit in easily.

Perth_shipyard wrote:Do you have any pics of a butchered servo? The Nav radar on the bridge roof has a compartment under it which a servo would fit in easily.

I will be doing one for the Nav radars on my tug shortly, but for now (If I remember correctly) it goes like this....

Step 1 disassemble cheap $3 hextronik 9gram servo (4 tiny screws), take the top of first exposing the gears and potentiometer,

Step2 SNIP wires from pot! there should be a couple of metal plates beneath the lower gear on the pot shaft(silver n copper) gut them out too... and the top gear has a plastic tab that needs to be trimmed off too....(if you want a fwd n rev 360deg micro servo leave the wires n plates!! just trim the tab)
Step3 snip the red n black wires from the circuit board to motor and discard the PCB n servo plug cable and add leads to the motor wires.

Step4 reassemble (having a untouched servo nearby so you can see how the gears went back in!!) and test

pictures to come!

Bruce

Awesome thanks Bruce! I'll have to give it a try.

I've started some of the railings. There are three different types, a 2 bar and 3 bar symmetrical molded fiberglass railings in sections on the upper decks and the 5 bar plastic coated black cable railings ok the f'cstle, waist and fantail. Basically similar to an FFG or an Arleigh Burke. I do have som PE stanchions on their way which I originally planned to use but they're only 3 and 2 bar. I'll see how this goes and if I don't like them I'll just use the PE stanchions. Won't be a waste as I can always use the stanchions for future projects.


5 bar cable railings


2 and 3 bar railings on the bridge structure. The splinter shield is where the .50 cal mini typhoon will be mounted. There's one either side of the bridge roof as well as one on each quarter above the hanger. I'm tempted to continue the splinter shields right around the front of the bridge roof as our FFG's have been fitted. I'll leave it for now but they're easy enough to make as they're just sheet attached to the railings themselves.






More of the 5 bar cable railing on the waist.