On July 16th, USS Missouri set out to engage all opponents upon the Alta Mons Sea. A Reconnaissance Report indicated a substantial minefield (moss) that would restrict Missouri's operational area. While no hostiles were encountered, the day did not proceed without incident.
Missouri was testing out her new more redundant propulsion system, which worked with mixed results: Her starboard engines ran without problem or failure the entire day - marking her first meet that she did not require some form of recovery. Unfortunately, the port motor kept blowing fuses (and still is even on the bench a week later - there is some weird ground short which even took out my multimeter fuse this evening, putting debugging on hold until morning).
This afternoon Kyle and I made some rudders for Nassau. I decided to make nice looking airfoil shaped rudders out of brass. It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. Its actually a fair bit easier to make the airfoil rudders than soldering up flat brass rudders. Here are the steps we took when making the rudders.
This is the first ship I have built since Diana gave me the lathe (don't I have a wonderful wife!?). Instead of using small bits of telescoping tubing I decided to make proper bushings for my propeller shaft assemblies. To make things a little more interesting I decided to make them tight enough for an interference fit so I would not need to glue or solder them.
This weekend I spent a lot of time determining what motors would fit where in Nassau. If possible I really want to only run the center propeller. The fast gunners have some experience with this hull shape and tell me that will result in the best maneuverability. Unfortunately only a little 280 motor will fit inline behind the aft turrret - and then only if I move the turret 0.5" out of scale. I doubt that the 280 by itself would be powerful enough so I made a motor mount that places the motor above the propeller shaft instead of inline with it.
This weekend I took some time and installed Nassau's stuffing tubes and rudder posts. The trick is to get everything installed with everything lined up. This is the second time I have used this technique and it works well. This post gives an overview of the techique I used and shows pictures of my progress.
So, I determined it was time to replace the U-Joints on Missouri. The U-joints that came with Seydlitz were pefect for the job, so I went out in search of a matching pair this morning. Unfortunately, I got met with blank stares at my local RC Hobby shop (repleat with boats, planes, helicopters and cars - but a U-joint for a scratch-built boat.... unthinkable!), so I scoured the racks in search of suitable parts to make my own.
After a recent facebook exchange with Greg McFadden I noticed his