Building an 'Improved' Wallace RC 1/16 scale KAIRYU Suicide Submarine Kit, Part-13

A Report to the Cabal:

Louvers In the upper portion of the sail there are three louvered sections that break up the normal solid platting. I assume the upper openings, port and starboard, are to facilitate venting of the sail structure as the boat transitions between submerged and surface trim. The single louvered panel on the starboard side, just over the step between lower and upper sail, I assume is there to permit the free passage of air into the boats main-induction valve. Normally a boat is ventilated on the surface through the open bridge hatch and one or more induction valves.

These louvers were represented on the model with thin sheet polystyrene plastic pieces stacked one atop the other and jammed into a square opening cut into the side of the sail. Every other piece was CA'ed to the sides of the opening. Once the adhesive had set hard I removed the unglued plastic 'spacer' pieces, revealing equally spaced louver pieces permanently bonded to the hull.

Side Portholes The sail of the KAIRYU's was a thin free-flooding metal skin that covered the conning tower/access trunk (equipped with three portholes through which the standing conning officer could look through either surfaced or submerged), periscope shear, main induction-valve, exhaust valve and some other devices -- I'm still unclear if there was a retracting radio antenna on these boats or not.

The main porthole cone at the front of the sail fairs into the deeply inset conning tower structure. Two smaller portholes, one on each side, also fair out from the conning tower with cones. The cones for the side portholes were vacuformed and mounted to the sail. Later, I'll glued some clear lens' to the inside opening of the cones to complete the effect.

Practical Lamp As far as I can make out there was only one navigation light, located just above the forward porthole cone. I decided to make this practical and acquired, from Polk's Hobbies, a model railroad product, their grain-ofwheat, eighteen Volt lamps are perfect. For further information on this product I recommend you visit The Polk's Hobbies site, you'll likely find them on the Aristocraft side of the business.

This lamp, on the KAIRYU, looks very much like the typical bulb-within-a-waterproofcylindrical-glass-lens affair you see used as shop lamps (well, if you're old enough to remember them!). Additionally, there is a metal protective cage around the lens. The models bulb is a grain-of-wheat light, the lens was a lath turned piece of acrylic rod that had one end shaped to a hemisphere and then bored out to fit the lamp, and the wire cage built up from soldered pieces of thin brass wire.

All right, now for a more detailed look at that work.

... To the Bat-Cave!

Rose holding the KAIRYU's sail. Here you can see the finished upper port louver area, and the installed, but still in the raw plastic sheet louvers on the upper starboard side. The large opening on the starboard side will soon be filled with horizontally oriented pieces of sheet plastic, all stacked one on top of the other. The trick to achieving evenly spaced louver slits is to glue every other piece of plastic to the vertical edges of the opening -- removing the unglued pieces (used to set spacing distance) leaves an even array of open slits, representing the ventilation louvers unique to this type miniature submarine.

The upper set of louvers were bisected by a near vertical break of the slits. This was achieved on the model by cutting in a trench with a Moto-Tool spun cut-off wheel, then inserting a piece of plastic strip and CA'ing it in place. Everything was then filed down flush with the surface of the sail, then primed. After the primer had a chane to dry I examined the work, then used Evercoat Metal Glaze to fill any observed depressions and/or file/sanding marks.

A completed set of primed louvers atop the sail, and raw plastic pieces forming the lower array of louver slits. Here you see some of the tools used to work the louvers: The files knocked down excess CA adhesive, the putty-knife used to apply small quantities off filler to depressions observed, and the knife to even up the fore and aft edges in the slits.

This is rather exacting work and requires a set magnifying glasses (you youngster's wouldn't understand!).

Two side porthole cones were vacuformed from twenty-five-thousanths thick polystyrene sheet. The cones were marked off for height with a surface gauge, the excess material trimmed off with a cut-off wheel, and the cone glued into the hole drilled into the side of the sail, sized to receive the wide end of the cone, with CA adhesive. The seams between cone and sail were filled with Evercoat Metal Glaze, filed, sanded, then the area hit with a heavy coat of 131s DuPont Lucite Automotive Lacquer primer.

To the left is the RenShape plug used to form the heated plastic sheet into the cone shapes needed. Middle is a marked vacuformed cone, ready for trimming, and set into the sail one of the two porthole cones.

The KAIRYU's featured a prominent 'navigation' light mounted in a recessed area just ahead of the bridge well. Whether this was a traditional mast head light or a special submarine identification light, I don't know. I suspect the lamp was there for training and non-combat missions where the boat would have been underway in conditions of darkness or fog. Possibly the light was used by surface units to track and evaluate the tactical skills of the submarines crew during training mock-attacks. (The American 'T' Boats, designed and used to train our ASW surface forces, also had upward pointing underwater lamps, used to ID the boat as it conducted submerged mock-attacks).

I made good use of the excellent little grain-of-wheat incandescent bulbs offered by Polk's Hobbies. Here you see one lit up and casting a healthy glo through the lens of a KAIRYU navigation/training lamp.

These bulbs are designed to burn at eighteen-Volts. But, as I'll connect them to a nine-Volt source (the same battery used to power the sail mounted wireless video camera), the bulb within the lamp will burn relatively cool. This minimizes the chance of a chattered bulb do to thermal shock, something that happens when the bulb is dunked in the water as the submarine dives or coming out of the water as the submarine surfaces. And frankly ... between you and me ... the incandescent bulbs burn with a much more convincing yellow component than those freakish, out-of-this-world blue burning, so-called white LED eyesores (damn you, and your little FS-1, Rick Teskey!).

I made extra lamp lens' just to be sure that I could replace a broken unit at the lake. Sometimes it gets a little harry out there and things do go bump-in-the-night with sickening regularity. Hey ... If you're going to play, PLAY!

I made three attempts to make the guard that surrounds the lamp lens. Here there are. Third time was the charm.

Close-up on the lamp lense and soldered brass wire guard. Damn, I'm good!