Calling all Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG fans

[davidwaples]

Photos of the Nulka are common on the Internet both by itself and aboard various ships. Try looking at photos of Burkes. Here's an example of the launcher.

Excellent, I started hunting around for more photos but this is the best I've seen so far. A great start! Thanks for posting.
Dave

[navydavesof]

All you have to do is google search "NULKA launcher" and you will find a lot





As you can tell they're kind of big.

[Timmy C]

Hmm, I was not aware that twin .50 cal are a thing on today's ships.

[davidwaples]

Thank you Navy Dave. Excellent reference photos.
Dave

[carr]

I'm wondering if anyone has any more information about these Nulka launchers.

Dave, I assume you're intending to build the Nulkas for use on an FFG. Note that on the FFG's, the Nulkas are mounted on top of the pilothouse and in order to make room, two platform extensions were added to the aft side of the pilothouse roof, one for the starboard Nulkas and one for the port Nulkas to provide a walkway. If you're building an FFG using the Academy kit and want to add Nulkas, you'll have to scratch build the extensions if you want to go to that level of detail. Just a heads-up for what it's worth!

Here's a photo showing the Nulkas (big circle) and the extension on the port side (small circle).

[davidwaples]

That's exactly my plan Bob. My goal is to build the Reuben James in her current configuration with the Academy kit. Great observation on the deck extension. This one's going to require a bit of scratch building but should be a good project.
Thanks for your help
Dave

[Willie]

Hi all,

After the summer pause, I have some spare time again and have resumed work opn this frigate. I have already solved one of the basic problems in this kit, that is one of the main headaches of this model.

As the placing of the structures on the no. 2 deck was all wrong I had to cover off all the drillings, and now I would have to drill again the deck, making some studs under the basis of the structures, at least two per structure, and both studs and drillings have to adjust with absolute precision, and correctly aligned with the center line of the deck.

Very easy to say, but far beyond my ability, so I had to think in something else, that was to draw little plans of every structure, set them on deck and draw the relative positions of the elements, cut little pieces of stretched sprue and adjust every piece until each leg was placed in the correct position, well aligned with the center line, until I got this :.

It is possible to observe the substantial difference between the positions offered my the kit and the real ones, as far as I have been able to find out based on pictures.

With everthing on deck, the legs of the masts are correctly set in place, but slightly buried, something that can be corrected with some sanding, and they are going to be painted in the dark grey of the deck as well. It is not perfect because there are some elements on deck that are not real, but this is the least evil because the elements can now be glued to deck with CA, with precision and without fear to fatal mistakes in the forest of handrails that this deck will have.

It will be like this :

And all things together, the deck has anyhow a close resemblance to the real deck :

This is a very disgusting problem to solve but one of importance, because it is of little use to make good structures if they are not set in place with precision.

So things are like this :

I hope you like it, and warmest regards from Spain,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

Hi all again,

The next task was to finish the tramson of F81 Santa Maria, with the TACTAS and the looppholes for the AN/SLQ-25 NIXIE. This is the tramson in fall 2006 :

The pic is no great thing, so here you are another one corresponding to F85 Navarra :

The first thing was to carve a plactic rod until I got a 3.5 mm. diameter bar -- which is the width of the TACTAS 1/300 scale -- to cut a section and to adjust it with file and sandpaper to the curve lines of the tramson.

Then I simply added a ring of stretched sprue, the reinforcements of the hull and the loopholes for the NIXIE, to achieve this :

Compared with the real tramson, I think it is not too bad :

I hope you like it, and best regards,

Willie.[/size]

[Guest]

And Hi again.

After the tramson I devoted to the bubble mattress -- to call it some way, I have not been able to find out the real name in English, sorry -- that is a device that creates under the ship a mass of air bubbles that allows to reduce the sonar signature of the ship. FFG�s have two systems port and stbd, along with a water exhaust stbd, under the SAT aerials added in one of the refits. We are talking of this :



Santa Mar�a has both systems, of course, as can be observed in this pics sailing off the Brazilian coast, Feb. 2007, pic courtesy of her former CO.



The pipes seem to have some kinf of intake on the maindeck, with the pipe protected by a steel defence :



As for the reproduction of the system, I used Evergreen half-rods, with stretched sprue for the defences. The upper intakes are stretched sprue reheated until it made a tiny buttom



Another distinctive element is the lower side of the pipes, with a defence placed in the middle of the waterline :



I made the using Evergreen stripe, a 1 mm. drilled hole and then cut to shape :





As these tiny defences are placed in the middle of the waterline, they will be glued when the hull is painted. The system look then like this :



This is a minor details, but that gives some life to a hull is otherwise quite boring to see.

Brgds to all,

Willie.

[Willie]

And Hi again.

After the tramson I devoted myself to the bubble mattress --to call it some way, I have not been able to find out the real name in English, sorry-- that is a device that creates under the ship a mass of air bubbles that allows to reduce the sonar signature of the ship. FFG�s have two systems port and stbd, along with a water exhaust stbd, under the SAT aerials added in one of the refits. We are talking about this :

Santa Mar�a has both systems, of course, as can be observed in this pics sailing off the Brazilian coast, Feb. 2007, pic courtesy of her former CO.

The pipes seem to have some kind of intake on the maindeck, with the pipe protected by a steel defence :

As for the reproduction of the system, I used Evergreen half-rods, with stretched sprue for the defenses. The upper intakes are stretched sprue reheated until it made a tiny buttom:

Another distinctive element is the lower side of the pipes, with a defense placed in the middle of the waterline :

I made the using Evergreen stripe, a 1 mm. drilled hole and then cut to shape :

As these tiny defenses are placed in the middle of the waterline, they will be glued when the hull is painted. The system look then like this :

This is a minor details, but that gives some life to a hull is otherwise quite boring to see.

Brgds to all,

Willie.[/size]

[oneslim]

Willie,

The system is called 'Pairie-Masker' Here is a link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie-Masker

Bob W

[Willie]

Hi once more,

The next step was to make all the water exhaust and scuttles all along the hull. As this kit doesn�t have a general plan I had to make one before anything else to complete it with the bubble mattress and all the scuttles that I was gathering from many pics. The scuttles vary widely from one ship to the next in the series, and the work took longer than expected, but I was more or less able to have the necessary info except from the stbd. side of the flight deck. At last I gave up and took the scuttle arrangements of FFG-57 USS Reuben James, and end of the story :

The general plan was like this :

The rest was easy, opening all the scuttles with three different drill to imitate the different diameters of the openings, and finishing the work off with a round nail.

The effect is extremely realistic, the hull is not over detailed at all, and all the scuttles disappear from sight at a mere 50 cm, as would be the case of the real ship. As an added bonus, I have discovered that adding some extra pressure on the nail at finishing off every scuttle I get a raised ring of plastic around the hole, imitating to perfection the real holes on the hull. It is a fine detail that can be observed only with good light, but it is perfect for this scale, and costs absolutely nothing at all.

Best regards from these distant Atlantic shores,

Willie.[/size]

[carr]

..

[Willie]

And hi for N-th time,

At last, the whip antennae, of which every FFG has three models : Double abating (1 set), single abating (3 sets), single fix (1), which are like this :

And after some attempts, this is what I was able to produce :

The arerials themselves are made of stretched sprue, the base thicker than the tip, with the base reheated to get a buttom that was afterwards sanded to get a flat base. Everything set in place :

As I was making them I had the impression they were somehow overscaled, but when set in place they more or less fit the 1/300 scale.

The problem was that next day I discovered with surprise that all of them were combed backwards, as if the ship was sailing at 35 knots, with the Ulithi hurricane blowing from the bows :

I have to say that the side effect of this painful discovery were some words in the line of "shitty", not very praisable but excusable under the heat of the circumstances, specially after the work that I took to make a set of antennae that were identical in thickness, and definitely straight in shape. I cannot understand how this mess can have happened. I will try to solve this, but I am afraid I will have to make another set.

Warmest regards from Spain,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

Hi Bob W and Bob Carr,

Thanks for the input. This is the good thing of being in this authorized forum : you always meet somebody who knows more than yourself.

Thanks a million and best regards,

Willie.

[Willie]

Hi all once more :

I finished yesterday the RAN 12L, which is the radar providing targets for the Meroka gun, the Spanish CIWS. It is placed on top of the main mast. It is like this :

The two first pics are taken onboard two different FFG�s, the other one onboard the Spanish Knox-class F74 Asturias. As it can be seen in pic. 2 the base is quite strange, with two "V"-shaped legs, coming out from the main mast at a 45� angle. After some tests, this is what I managed to produce :

The aerial is made with the tip of a plane wing, to get a curved piece, with nothing else to do than cutting and refining with sandpaper. The rest is only Evergreen of different thickness and shapes. The bar pointing forward tries to reproduce the set of wires coming out of the mast. Set in place, it will be like this :

Brgds,

Willie.[/size]

[pingjockey]

Looks great. Can't wait to see the finished product. I have two 1/350 OHP's on my workbench, but have not had the time to do anything with them.

[Mk 75 Gunner]

Hello all, it has been far too long since my last update but life has been busy between work and moving into a new house. I have had time to work on this and will post alot more soon I hope but I do have a few pics to share, let me know what you think both good and bad.









The bollards were all shaved off and then I used .015 rod and .005 sheet to remake them, looking back i might have used .015 music wire so that they would be a bit more sturdy. I started on this back in March and only now getting ready to put the main deck on the hull, this has been a real learning curve for me for scratch building but a lot of fun also.

Thanks for looking and have a great day

[Willie]

Hi there Mk 75 Gunner and all,

let me know what you think both good and bad.

I think that as far as now it is perfectly OK., very detailed and very complete, so keep this excellent work.
If you need some critic, simply thin the paint to a 50-60%, so that is does not leave marks when painting. As for the rest, I would say excellent, because all we know that macro pictures have never been the modeller�s best friends.

Best regards from Spain,

Willie.

[Willie]

Hi all again,

The crop of today was the Stb. scale, a quite complex element, completed by two support bars and a davit. It is like this in Santa Maria herself, in a pic by courtesy of her former CO :

And another better pic of the same element, in F86 Canarias :

Aftert thinking for a while I decided not to make a scale from scratch but to use a piece of Tom�s Modelworks PE that I have around here, bought to use only the vertical ladders. This set :

I removed all the handrails and completed the set with Evergreen, stretched sprue and a surplus piece from another model. It is like this :

The davit is very simple as well :

So this is now the whole set :

Perhaps the scale should be a bit longer, and the round piece a bit thinner, but all things considered I think the elements are perfectly recognizable, and it can remain as it is.

I hope you like it anyway, and very best regards from Spain,

Willie.[/size]