1/72 ALFA Turnkey Build, Part-8

A Report to the Cabal:

With next months SubRegatta breathing down my neck, I'll be working to complete the turnkey subs I have to bring with me to the Carmel Indiana event. So, I'll be bouncing back and forth between this 1/72 ALFA, a 1/100 VANGUARD, a thirty-one inch long Disney NAUTILUS, and a 1/96 MIAMI ... and, time permitting, I'll complete the 1/16 KAIRYU video camera equipped model and a few other 'personal' projects I hope to bring along with me.

If you can make it, the SubRegatta is the place to be for those interested in the
craft of r/c model submarining as practiced here in America. For more information
on the event, here's a site for you:

http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/8622/subregatta06poster9he.jpg

I understand that there are still some vacancies at local hotels. Come one, come
all! I'll be speaking at the Saturday night seminar and will be offering people the
opportunity to drive one of my r/c boats.

In this installment I'm outfitting the Thor 1/72 ALFA kit with practical running

lights. I've elected to use incandescent type bulbs because I like the look of 'em: LED's, the so-called 'white' ones, burn with a very pronounced bluish color to them, and the yellow LED's are ... well ... yellow!

What I'm using here are the little bulbs you buy at model train shops. These things are available to burn at either six or twelve-Volts. It's a good practice to under-drive these little bulbs in this application. They burn too hot at the rated voltage and the filament will pop sooner or the glass bulb itself might shatter as a consequence of thermal shock as the hot lamp is yanked in and out of the water. As these models operate in fresh water it makes no sense to go to the trouble to make the wiring or the bulbs watertight. Electrically speaking, these lamps work as well submerged as in air.

As I worked out the installation of the running lights I set about the task of painting the model, anti-foul red below centerline, black (actually, accounting for 'scale effect,' a very, very dark gray) for the areas above centerline. Then the markings, weathering, outfitting, a final set of trim dives and test runs, and this thing is off to the client so he can join me and the other submarine driver's at the SubRegatta.

Gonna be a busy six weeks!

Here I've cut in with the red 'anti-foul' color to the inside edges of the flood/drain penetrations as well as the hard-to-get-at spots like the stern stabilizers and intake

side of the main condenser scoops. The best choice today is the DuPont ChromaSystem paints and ChromaClear overcoat. These products are available from automotive refinishing supply houses. Though, if you want to do the painting on the cheap, the Krylon rattle-can 'red sandible primer' is a dead ringer for anti-foul red and their black is, well ... er ... black. Krylon also has a semi-gloss clear coat that isn't half-bad. So, you have choices. But, please, don't use those crappy hobby paints on r/c models -- they just don't have the mechanical and chemical robustness to tolerate typical handling and environmental hardships presented by your pizza-stained hands and the Great Outdoors!

Grain-of-wheat bulbs are fine for r/c submarine use. Here I'm showing the two units that will fit within the upper vertical stabilizer. One for the 'stern light' (that V shaped cut in the trailing edge of the stabilizer) and one to represent the 'anchor light' (which plugs into a hole atop the vertical stabilizer).

A conduit was drilled through the stabilizer, about a half-inch from the leading edge, from the top down into the hull. I used a long-shank eighth inch diameter drill bit to do this. I then drilled about four additional holes near the top of the stabilizer to form an internal 'L' shaped transition, one leg of the 'L' at the stern light location, the other end of the 'L' terminating within the hull. Of course, this turned the top of the stabilizer into Swiss cheese, but some filler covered all the holes after the fact. The objective is to form a conduit that would permit me to run the wires from the two bulbs through the stabilizer and into the hull. Within the hull the two sets of hookup wire are joined in parallel and run up to the bow where they connect to the main twelve-Volt battery through alligator-clips.

Most of the time the models running lights will not be energized. The lights are only useful for dusk and night runs -- a big deal during the SubRegatta Friday and Saturday night 'fun runs'.

And here's the endgame: the wires of these two bulbs project into the hull, and the bulbs themselves are slipped into friction fit holes. The idea is to be able, anytime, to pull out and replace a burned out bulb with the minimum of fuss.

Why use short-life incandescent bulbs and not LED's? Because I hate that blue component to the so-called 'white' LED's. And the yellow standard LED is .... well ... too yellow! Simply put: the incandescent bulbs burn at the right color. I like 'em. And they work just fine wet. No special effort is made to make the leads or connection points watertight. If the filament fries or the wires corrode away, I just replace the lamp -- access is easy. No sweat.

One thing I do nowadays when operating incandescent bulbs is to reduce the current by installing a resister in series with the parallel wired lamps. Of course, you have to first insure that all bulbs are rated for the onboard Voltage. In this case: twelve-Volts. The inline resister drops the current, hence the power dissipated in the form of heat, thus the temperature of the bulbs, reducing the wear on the filament and thermal shock to the glass envelops as they make the transition from air and water as the model submerges and surfaces.

By the way, the single bulb up on top of the vertical stabilizer is an 'anchor light,' and in proper underway operations would not be energized, though it is common in model submarine circle to energize it to increase the visibility of the model when submerged at night. The proper array of navigation lights (conforming to maritime law) underway is: a single white stern light; single white mast headlight; green starboard running light; red port running light and; in some situations, an amber 'submarine recognition light' mounted atop the sail.

Wayne Frey provided me some simply outstanding photos of a dry-docked ALFA. Here I'm taking advantage of a shot showing off the anchor and stern light installation on the boats upper vertical stabilizer. There are several shots of this area and in not one of them do I see any indication of a clear lens over the stern light cutout in the trailing edge of the stabilizer -- great! Makes my job easier.

Coincidentally, the anchor light hole falls just above the hole needed to provide a bearing surface for the upper rudder operating shaft. I'll secure the upper rudder with a short pin that will terminate just under the base of the anchor light, the larger hole above that pin accommodates the anchor light bulb. Perfect!

The twelve-Volt model train bulbs I'm using were only available here in red! However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the clear glass bulb was only coated with a red dyed gelatin that could easily be abraded off with a little Moto-Tool mounted wire-brush, no sweat.

Different manufactures of these tiny grain-of-wheat bulbs use different lengths of lead wire. So far I've found that the Model Power brand has the longest attached leads, coming in at about nine inches -- enough to shove the wires through the upper vertical stabilizer conduit, into the stern of the hull, and still have enough wire to reach an easily accessible terminal.

The red and green lenses needed for the sail mounted running lights were formed from pieces machined from translucent toothbrush handle plastic (an old model airplane trick). I produced rectangular sections from each color and then punched rectangular holes, one on each side, in the sail to receive them. This way I can use clear bulbs, simplifying the logistics of the running lights (Hey! Stop laughing, Subculture!). When time comes to replace a bulb I don't have to sweat whether or not I have a green or red one on hand.

Anyway, that's the way the real boats do business: the bulbs burn white, its the running light lens that projects the required red or green color.

After sticking the end of a squared off section of toothbrush plastic into the square hole punched into the sail, CA adhesive was applied and, after that had cured hard, the excess plastic snipped off with a set of dykes, about a sixty-forth-of-aninch proud of the sails surface. Final contouring is done with file and sanding block.

Question:: "What do you call a set of Philippino aviator's?" Answer: "A pair of pliers!"

Get it?!...

The mast headlight. Seen in the photo of the prototype above, fits on top of the forward slop of the sail. Though this and the two sidelights are retractable units on the real boats, for simplicities sake I'll make them fixed units on the model.

I turned a mast headlight bulb holder from a piece of discarded resin sprue turned on the lathe to a thin walled barrel. This foundation is jammed into a hole, you can see it just forward of the foundation sitting atop the sail. CA secured the mast headlight foundation for keeps. I then filed the top of the bulb foundation flush with the top of the sail. The bulb is a friction fit.