PS Britannia

[Derek Warner]

on Sunday, November 16, 2003 3:22 PM, Tony Mattson wrote :
I've also posted a painting of PS Britannia, one of my long
term 'best intentions'. She was a double ender of around 119 ft. You
can just make out the wheel at the "other end", left of the last
three passengers. Wld appreciate any and all advice re potential
pitfalls and issues. Stablility and windage strike me immediately
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Tony - in 1905, after 27 years on the inland river system, PS Decoy [113 ft & similar vintage to your PS Britannia]
steamed from Adelaide [SA] to Perth [WA] under her own power thence fitted out with an upper deck & became a
'show boat' on the Swan river typical of you have showed with Britannia & I thought she [Decoy] looked or posed as a
great subject model, however reverted to the pre 1905 version for my build

So pitfalls yes - all that upper deck area could act as a sail & lack of stability when combined with scale draft =
a potential disaster - Derek

[Tony Mattson]

Hi Paul, et al.,

I'll get a scan into the Britannia folder this evening.

As far as switching between forward and aft rudders is concerned, I have a tentative idea for managing the rudder locking and unlocking process that I'd like to float past the group for a sanity check.

What I envisage is cutting into each rudder servo lead and wiring up a latching switch into the positive wires, then controlling the latching switch via ch5 on the Tx to turn one servo on and the other servo off. If I connect the navigation lights to the same switch then they also would operate appropriate to direction of the ferry.

Of course it'd be simpler if I just ran both rudders all the time - but that's not as challenging! So many compromises! So little time!

All suggestions welcomed.

********

As to Britannia's keel laying, I hope to make a start early/mid next year. I'm presently splitting my time between two projects - Paddle Tug Reliant and a twin azimuthal stern drive tug for my six year old boy - and have not long started drawing plans for Britannia so am torn in several directions at the same time.

Fortunately the ASD tug is multichine and stand-off scale as the designers of the prototype won't release their plans to me (commercially sensitive - and fair enough too) so it'll be a short and sweet project to get on the water.

Cheers for now
Tony
Akl, NZ

[rob4559]

Tony
Your idea for locking and unlocking the rudders on PS Britannia
sounds good. Changing the running lights at the same time sounds
even better. What you describe is very similar to the method I used
to start one power wheel on a robot whenever the other was turned
off. (This was very handy for light seeking or sound seeking
devices.)

If you hit a snag we could look into an electronic control for the
relay but I believe your idea will work just fine.

Bob P.