Some Day, I'll Build This

I have not posted in ages. In fact, I hadn't even thought much about my blog until Monday, when my friend and fellow gamer, Will, happened to mention it. I've been very busy with work and family since my last real project update post. Plus an unexpected and unpleasant incident occurred a month ago. It was in the form of the dismissal of one of the faculty members in my department. As department head, I've had to scramble to take up much of the slack. I am now teaching one more course, I had to find two last-minute adjuncts to fill the other two courses, and I now find my self have 20 more student advisees than I had before.  Let's just say I've had zero time for anything. Let's just say I am approaching major burn out. Fortunately, the semester is just about over!

I was cleaning up my office yesterday and found these plans I had made under a pile of papers:

It is for the Brazilian U-17 river monitor named the Parnaiba.

Source: Wikipedia

Its the oldest active warship, if you don't count some sailing ships that are still officially commissioned like the HMS Victory. Its undergone some modifications over its 75 years of service, including the addition of a helicopter landing pad.

I am not sure if my plans are 100% accurate. Its based on the few pictures I could find, plus a drawing from Shipbucket.com. Therefore, there was a lot of guessing going on.

I plan to use built one or maybe two for the Southern Chalupastan navy. One, I plan to build as is; the other, I will probably upgrade its main gun. Currently, its sporting a WWII vintage 3" gun, but I might try for a more modern rapid-fire weapon.

New Project: Modern River Monitors

The General's strategy (Operation: Ike & Tina) is based on moving down and attacking from rivers. I already built the small patrol boat, but I figure that there needs to be more firepower. I have no idea if any of these 1/300 scale ships will be used in any games, but they are fun and challenging to make.

The Plans
The former Soviet Union/Russia seems to have employed a number of river monitors within its borders. I thought I would design one based on theirs. The book by A. S, Pavlov, Warships of the USSR and Russia 1945-1995 (1997, Naval Institute Press) helped me find what I was looking for. There are two that I am considering.

The Slepen' is the larger of the two. It is armed with two T-55 tank turrets, plus 2 AK-630M 30mm turrets. The Shmel' is armed with a PT-76 tank turret plus a variety of smaller weapons depending on the ship. While most ships depicted in Warships of the USSR and Russia 1945-1995 have both a deck plan and a top view, entries for these two ships only had the deck plan. So, what I need to do first, is to make up top views based on what I can tell about deck plans. Easier said than done!

The Project
Once I get my top views drawn, I will come up with my own monitor design, based on a combination of these two existing ships. Once I've got my plans down, I will scale it down to size and build it much the same way as I did the patrol boat. The members of the Shmel' class seem to carry an number of different weapons including multiple rocket launchers, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as anti-aircraft gun turrets. Therefore, I'm thinking of making a number of different weapons systems that can be swapped in and out. They will be held onto the ship by a rare earth magnet. Stay tuned for more updates!

1/300 Patrol Boat Project: How to Scale

I noticed in an earlier post that I didn't really answer a question about how I scale down the boat plans using a copier. I thought I would just post it rather than add to the running comments, which is about two weeks old.

What I do is print out the plans. I then scale them down. My boat is 30 meters long, so I am going to solve for x; x being the length of the boat at 1/300 scale.

If 1 meter = 1,000 mm, then 30 meters = 30,000 mm.

Why first convert to mm? I could have also used centimeters, but the important thing is that units must always be the same in both the numerator and the denominator. Therefore, the scale or ratio is 1 mm = 300 mm.

Now, you solve for x:

x mm/30,000 mm = 1/300

x = 1/300 x 30000 mm

x = 100 mm

So at 1/300 scale the 30 meter boat measures 100 mm or 10 cm in length.

Now, comes the reducing part. You want to reduce the drawing down to 100 mm. You measure the length of the boat in the drawing. Let's say its 15 cm long. You know you have to reduce it in size so that its length is 10 cm. You divide 10 into 15:

10/15 = 0.66

When you copy your original, go to the ZOOM menu and reduce down to 66% That should do it. It helps to have a ruler handy to make sure it is at the proper length.

I hope that helps. There are are some online scale converters to speed things up. There used to be a pretty good online calculator, but I noticed that its gone. The nice thing about this one was that you could enter any scale you want to. Others that I have seen have pre-set scales that are either for building doll houses or standard models. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of app that will do it for you. Eh...its not that hard to do it on your own. Besides, its good to dust off and exercise those neuronal connection involved in algebra!

A Magnificant Obsesssion

Lately, I've been so swamped with work and family activities that I have had little time to sit down and work on anything. The nice thing about my earlier post on making the bamboo forests is that they were very quick and easy to do. How to soothe those primal hobby urges? Answer: Shipbucket! If you haven't been there, check it out! These folks digitally draw warships of all nations and time periods, but focus on WWII to Modern. They are sticklers for details and accuracy, but the results show up in superbly-rendered ship illustrations.

Well, I took the plunge. I wanted to do some illustrations for my Gambusia campaign. I have not done much yet, but here is the results so far. These are before and after pictures:

Imperial Class Corvette

Above is my original drawing of a modern corvette built by Northern Chalupistan. It was done in Adobe Illustrator. Nothing too exciting. One big problem is that I just slapped radar antennae all over the thing. I had no clue about the types of radar that are needed. I really had to research my radars for my first rendering of my corvette in Shipbucket style:



The folks on the Shipbucket forum pointed out various things that could be done to make it better. First,they mentioned that ships of this size are not big enough for anti-sub warfare, so I got rid of the torpedo tubes, and added an extra gun. The SSMs were oriented in such a way that the sailors would be unable to walk around them! They also suggested a SAM instead of the rear 20mm AA gun. So, then the ship evolved into this:



Making shipbucket illustrations is a little like building a highly detailed model. The nice thing is that I can work on them anywhere and anytime I have a chance. Will this replace minis? No way, but it is fun and challenging to do.