Inside of a Warship

USS Honolulu Class 3 Cruiser

Built by Paul Erdman

Paul has is rudder placed just behind the rudder skeg on the Swampy hull. On his ship he had a blade come off of a prop and break most of the skeg off. Just in front of the rudder is a screw that is glued through the hull to stop the rudder from going too far over. This not the recommended way to adjust your rudder as it is hard on the servo, but it does work. A better way is to have a radio with adjustable end points or have a gear system that moved the rudder the correct distance. He uses 1 ¼” 3 blade 25 deg pitch Swampy props. The angle of the shafts could be a little flatter, but with this set up he does not get sucked under in reverse.

There is a lot of room in the back of this class of ship. Paul does not have solenoids for his guns giving him even more room for his rudder box, guns and motors. The lid of the box has a screw threaded into it to let the water out without removing the lid. It’s better to not let water in the box but it will happen and this is a fast way to drain the box and keep battling. The guns are Swampy coil guns. The magazines have been unbent so the fill ports go into the upper turret. This was the only way to get the coil guns to fit in the same turret and makes for easy reloading. The motors are direct drive and held in place by a metal hose clamp. The clamps are easy to open and close but will rust over time.

The motors and pump are connected with Deans Ultra connectors. The pump is held in place with a U shaped piece of ABS glued to the hull with round legs. The entire housing is surrounded by screen material to keep the gunk away from the pump. The battery (5 amp hour 6 volt) goes in to the left of the pump and is held down with a velcro strap. Paul has the entire deck come off in one piece you can see one of the clips on the deck at the left. This slides under one of the cross braces.

The radio box holds a receiver and three servos. The top right is the throttle, bottom right is the pump and top left is the guns. Only one stern gun fires at a time when the servo pushes in a popit valve. The box could be smaller if the receiver was moved next to the gun servo. This box was part of the Swamp kit Paul bought. Paul uses shower pan liner for interior armor.

A close up of the radio box. You can see the extra room up front. All of the wires come out of the back of the box. Note how there is an extra piece of wood the wires are epoxied into. This gives more pace for the glue to take hold and helps prevent leaks. You can see the channel 62 take in the receiver. Always a good idea to try and make this visible.

The bottle, regulator and main hose are at the box of the ship. Paul does not have water channeling in his cruiser and use to sink by the bow. By turning the bottle around with the heavier regulator towards the box he now sinks level. You can see on the deck were he use to have the bow gun mounted in B turret. He also glued the front section of the deck on to the main deck.