Hello guys,
After my account got lost several years ago and since I had topics on 3 other forums I didn't bother fixing it.
Those of you who hang around here for several years might well remember my previous topic which seems to have been lost as well.
Since my last post here a lot has happened.
I started realizing my dream of having everything apart from the crew that moves or does something aboard the real ship and can be seen from outside will be working on my model as well.
For this I started looking for other means of controlling a shipmodel then a standard transmitter.
Via a friend I ended up with Arduino micro controllers.
I bought such a device and started experimenting.
Soon I found myself trying to control the boat with it.
It was then (now almost excactly a year ago) that I made a disastrous test trial.
The wiring for the servos and ESC's were doubled so I could, in theory, control the model using either Arduino or the standard transmitter.
The doubles took away the control over the model and soon the helodeck was blown overboard and later even the superstructure (which didn't look all that good) went overboard.
I needed to get a canoe to get the hull back from the other side of the lake.
A few months later I had a test trial making me the first person to ever control a ship model using a laptop.
The laptop control proved too slow for any use apart from quite waters with no-one around.
Then I decided to make myself an instrument panel which has room for much more controls and acts like a standard transmitter though it can get signals back and can control waaayyyyy more functions, the new systems limit is the imagination of the person working with it.
That made it ideal for what I wanted, every single function will have it's own control.
Just before last Christmas I decided to sand the hull so I could start detailing.
That is when I found out how ashamingly bad I started this project.
When I found out the worst part I decided that what I had would be kids toys so they could destroy it and I would build an entirely new model and I would do it good this time!
My goal had always been a real good and mostly realistic model with as many functions as either the controls could handle or the real ship could offer, whichever comes first.
The aim is to have a model that can hardly be distinguished from the original when one sees a photo or a movie, even when comparing movies of the ship whilst doing what she was build to do.
That's enough talk, here are a few photo's of the new hull, up to now as I've only been working on it a little less then 2 weeks.
Construction for the new hull has been sawed out a little rough because I had decided I would sand the entire thing to make sure the plates and planks would fit properly.
A first for me, I actually used a building board.
This building board was placed on my flat desk when the construction was being glued, which is shown in photo's that will be placed below.
Possible arrangement of the aft engine room though I still need to take the Speed 500E's out of the old hull, the engines seen here are the Johnsons that will power the 2 bow thrusters.
Here the construction has been glued.
And here with the maker.
With the old hull behind it.
The new hull is almost 2cm less wide as the first hull was made wider because of the keel in the middle causing the frames to be placed against the keel and then the hull plating was applied and then some more and that all was build on a incorrect measurement leaving me with a wider hull by any means.
On other forums I was told I shouldn't have taken the hull off the building board but I should have applied the first plates and planks first.
Though I tend to go that way I'm still open for other options.
Greetings Josse