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USS Artemis to date This is a compressed version of 4 seperate pages showing the progression of the finished fibreglass hull (see the how to articles on building plugs and moulds for more information) to fully operational ship. |
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The hull as it came out of the mould. The bottom is a little up and down (just by a few thou though!) |
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I cut the lower deck window out and left the supports for the landing craft davits made from fibreglass. This doesn't give a scale look but it should stand up to combat better. If it were a non combat model I would have made this from styrene sheet. |
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Perspective shot of the ship. Finally starting to look a bit like one! The water channel is made from angled balsa and glued in place with resin. Motor mounts are a short length of PVC pipe cut in half. |
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The bow. You can see clearly here how I did the cap rail. I laminated several strips of 3/8" timber (allowing them to dry between laminations). Then I sanded the timber to the correct deck level. I cut the mortice for the deck with a router. It got a bit dodgy at the ends because of the hole in the middle of the router plate, but it gave me a nice uniform level to mount the deck on. I made a mistake and had to refill parts of it and do it again - not a big problem. Also it is quite thin down there, but it's strong enough. |
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USS Artemis hull sheeting I would have added more pictures, but the battery in the camera died. Well that, and it's not finished... More to come! I used "Airsail" weak dope to glue the silkspan to the inside. This is done before the balsa is glued with CA glue to the hull. Once the balsa (with silkspan on the inside) is glued to the fibreglass frame, I sanded the edges fare to the hull. I had an overlap of about 1/2" to play with. This worked well. Then I put the final layer of silkspan on the outside of the hull. There were a few wrinkles on the outside layer of silkspan which I DID NOT WANT. I want the outside to be as fare as possible. These wrinkles I removed with strong dope. Strong dope has more shrinking agent in it. Weak dope is for treating balsa surfaces (and attaching silkspan for combat ships!) I will probably use some very light filler to fare the edges even more before I paint it. I covered 2 or 3 rib 2 inch windows with each piece of balsa amidships and up forward. At the stern I had to use shorter pieces (one length per window - 2 inch) because of the compound curves. I used these shorter pieces on the last 6 windows. |
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Sea trials of the USS Artemis (held on January 20th 2001) On the afternoon of January 20th 2001, New Zealand saw it's first operational R/C combat warship. These trials were held in Art's test pool in Waiuku, Auckland. There were a few initial problems with the rudder throw. These were remedied and the other systems were tested. The Swampworks gun seemed to work temperamentally at first (despite having had no problems when bench tested). This was due to incorrect setup of the ammo feed - my fault. The tests revealed that the speed of the ship is approximately right (about 0.5m/s). She can stop in about 1.5 boat lengths from full steam. However her maneuverability isn't that great (should that be classified?!!!!). More tests will need to be conducted in a larger test pond and experiments can then be done with rudder throw and turning. |
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She touches the water for the first time... |
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AND FLOATS!!! |
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Art having a look at the gun... "you're going to sink me with that?!" Any other R/C combat captain may reply "yeah why not?!" to answer that - look at his ship below! |
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The IJN Shokaku had her first outing as well. Art only had to put a car battery and about 15kg of lead to get her floating on waterline! |
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I bent the magazine up to get really good gravity feed for the bbs. I don't think that was the problem though. Turns out it was a problem with the angel I mounted it on. |
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A hit right on the waterline! You can see some more holes just aft of where this round hit. Sure to let some water in... |
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Getting awful low there! |
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Going down by the stern. |
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We should have fastened the deck down - it would have looked much prettier. |
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A size comparision between the USS Artemis in front, fibreglass hull of the USS Gearing and the IJN Shokaku. |
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March 2001
After some more painting and modifications to the motors and rudder, the next lot of sea trials were held at lake Pupuke. There was a strong wind and this caused some anxious moments as the ship started to roll and take on water (time for those bilge keels?) larger motors were installed for this outing and proved to be much too fast for scale speed. The gun is now working flawlessly and I plan on modifying it so it can rotate with a servo |
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February 2002 The USS Artemis is undergoing a refit. See also: |
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Backs to the corridors were installed as well as a wall for the fantail. |
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Internal shot of the bottom level on the superstructure. The vertical surfaces on the SS are all 3mm styrene with reinforcing braces behind them especially on the lower levels as seen here. All the gluing of the lower 2 SS decks was done with 2 part pvc pressure pipe adhesive (primer is purple). The decks are 1.5mm styrene. The middle section of the superstructure (underneath shown here) weight approximately 750g. |
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Stern deck. A white metal cast base for a 5" 38 cal single open mount was modified with the back cut out so the deck could be fitted over the gun elbow. Also see the photo further down. |
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The main deck was cut into 3 sections and another will be cut by the bow for the float. The stern is also removable. Work has also begun on a 5” 38 cal single open mount that fits around the gun. |
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I also completely remade the crane near the stern. I’m quite pleased with it as it’s much better than the original aluminium one. |
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Top level detail. |
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Superstructure from the port side. |
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The USS Artemis is nearing completion. |
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Stu ran out of stanchions for the lower level of the SS. These are currently on order. For now the holes were masked and the tape painted over. |
| More to come (2002-02-04) | |
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