Hello Phil. Pleased to find this thread on coming back to the forum after some time. As I am probably locked down for months due to my missus being highly vulnerable, I went up in the loft and dug out all my half-finished and yet-to-start projects. One of these is my Billings Banckert, which as far as I can work out I actually started somewhere around 1985!! I got it complete except for some detailing and had it powered up and on the water with a 27 MHz set. For a variety of reasons it has been consigned to the loft for years, until the start of the lockdown. It took a helluva lot of cleaning!
I have kept the old 6v Monoperm motor with the original prop as it worked very well on the water. I am replacing the r/c with a modern 2.4GHz set, new battery pack obviously, and a solid state speed controller to replace the old resistance unit. I have had to get the old stuff out through the top deck cutouts, which has been a bit of a job, but the new stuff is all smaller and easier to get in.
I have only had a relatively small amount of detailing to do, masts and aerials, top deck railings and fittings, etc., but all I have to work from is the drawing and two photos that I cut from the original box. I see from your photos that you have started the railings from the top, can I just offer a couple of observations?
The pipes to the fire monitors are a right pig because they have to be bent in three planes, and you have to make the port one a mirror image of the starboard one, which is easier said than done. On mine , part of the monitor-deck railings had to be cut away for the pipes to go through, and I also found it very difficult to get their entries into the base of the funnel evenly lined up.. What probably made things worse was the 25-year -plus gap between making the port one and making the starboard one!
Hopefully your instructions will remind you, but don't forget to fit the access rungs onto the deckhouse side that go from adjacent to the wheelhouse doors up to the deck in front of the funnel - BEFORE you fit the other railings. I didn't realise I had missed them till all the railings were fixed in place, which makes it very, very difficult to fit them , and that's what I am currently struggling with.
I'm looking forward to following your build. I think your modelling standards are probably higher than mine, which makes me a bit embarrassed to attach photos, but what the hell, mine will be the best I can manage. And I think I might be able to stake a claim for the longest time to complete a model!