The story started during our major
club event of the year in early February. Myself and another club and forum member (delboyandrodney) were chatting away about what we would do for ANZAC Day, roughly 10 weeks away. Traditionally the club sails warships on the pond on this day, which commemorates the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.
Neither of us had any warships ready for sailing. Delboy has a half completed scratch build of the offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Otago but that wouldn't be ready in time. At the same time I had been looking at the simple girder like plans often seen in Model Boat magazine from the likes of Glyn Guest and Eris kennedy.
A plan was soon hatched to build the never built Type 24 frigate based on Glyn Guest's Paladin plan. As one of our club members had previously built the Arleigh Burke design there was much discussion around the pond on the stability of such narrow vessels. This particular member had found his to be very unstable and had to add about 50 mm to the keel to make it stable. We decided to err on the side of caution and add 30 mm to the depth of our keels - mine eneded up being about 40 mm as I used 9 mm balsa for the deck and keel.
Now to set the scene this was the first ever boat I had built - not even a kit had been attempted before. Delboy has completed a couple of kit builds before and has some experience with scratch building. Ten weeks seemed like quite a long time - no worries. The kitchen table was the shipyard for the start of the build. SWMBO didn't seem to mind and only on a couple of occasions was the build required to be moved to make way for domestic activities like eating at the dining table. Our six year old was much more curious and during the first stages - at least until painting sent the build to the garage - would wake up and cast his eyes over the previous nights endeavours.
This was a fun build and we swapped notes and would send sms pictures via smart phones as we progressed through the various stages. There was the odd bit of friendly rivalry that went on as well - for instance when delboy announced that he had upgraded to a brass 5 blade prop I just had to do the same. Of course there are some variations in our two ships - but I'll let the photos tell that story.
The fun part was trying to decide on the names of our two ships. As they were never actually built we had quite a bit of leeway in choosing names. Here wikipedia and the history of Royal Navy frigates was invaluable. We spent one night trawling through old names of frigates trying to find something suitable. In the end we settled on the Type 15 frigates of 1950-1970's. I chose HMS Troubridge as I remember the radio series with which it is associated while delboy chose HMS Relentless. (I'll let delboy explain the different pennant number).
The ships were completed on time and on budget (well maybe). Troubridge had sailing trials in the 6yo's bath while Relentless managed to get some seatrials in the pond before ANZAC Day. It had been raining for about a week before ANZAC Day so were a little worried about the weather - the drizzle of the dawn service turned to a nice afternoon and a great afternoon sailing was had.
I'll post some of the 'built' photos with this post and add some more of the construction photos over the next few days.
In Company by
White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr
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White Anglia, on Flickr