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PT 515 Ron 35


Arjan

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 I ordered the 1/35 late Italeri PT kit on ebay (in France) and I expect it will arrive in the coming days. The pics of PT 515 known to me :

 

HXKKNB7.jpg

jqbAU9l.jpg

 

Portland Bill :

 

MKiZtXr.jpg

 

Yesterday I noticed that Ron 35 boats had an unusual cylindrical storage locker in front of the port spray shield (indicated by a crude arrow) :

 

ZU0n9Iv.jpg

 

There appears to have been quite a bit of variation in the colours used on the boats of Ron 35, PT 515 for instance appears to have been much lighter in colour than PT 518. I think I will try to copy the colours used on this one :

 

6MIKaDy.jpg

 

Yesterday I ordered this Echelon decal set :

 

https://www.luckymodel.com/scale.aspx?item_no=EC-D356005

 

Arjan

Edited by Arjan
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Hi, I think the trough was meant for stowing/transporting stuff, perhaps even a spare torpedo ? It looks as if there are some loose straps inside the trough, no doubt for strapping down  some cargo items.

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

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Hi Arjan

Good to see you posting your WIP progress on here, I'm sure you will get more support/interst on here than that other site.

I guess you're going to model 515 with the jeep on the front? Will this be for R/C?

 

Interesting that storage rack on the bow . . . .. might be worth dropping a line to the PT boat forum

 

Looks like she was loaded for bear with all that ammo stowage aft. I take it that's a DC forward though it looks a bit long :hmmm:

 

Looking forward to your progress reports

 

Kev

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It seems an odd place for a spare torp, no davit or crane so the crew couldn't move it unless it was just from dock to dock.

Did any of the squadron mount 4 torpedoes? in the 3 pics where torps are visible I can only tell the forward mounts fitted including 505 (also the 40mm barrel?)

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Hi Kev,

Yes I'm sure it's going to be PT 515 with its Jeep. And yes it will be a working rc model. I use neodymium magnets a lot, they are small, light and very strong and I use them for fixing figures, fixing the deck onto the hull and for anything that should remain detachable. I also plan to use these magnets for fixing the Jeep to the foredeck. These magnets come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but I mostly use cylindrical ones with a diameter of 1.5 or 3 mm. 

 

I have registered in the PTboatforum, the pic taken at Portland Bill was posted by a forum member for my benefit. Nice forum, I'm sure you would enjoy the vast number of threads about your hero JFK and PT 109 .....😁

I'm afraid I don't know what "DC" stands for. 

 

Hi Modelholic, I agree that the "cradle" was probably not used for a spare torpedo. This would  be a bad idea in terms of weight distribution. As far as I know Ron 34 and 35 boats usually had two torpedo and two depth charge racks.

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

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Hi Arjan.  Welcome to the Work In Progress forum.

 

The late father of one of my friends in the US served on a PT in PTRon 35, when they were transferred to the English Channel.  I'll be watching your build with interest.

 

FYI, here's a excerpt from the Nav Source web site about the boxes at the stern of 515 - "The boxes aft probably held spare parts, which the Elco would carry to a forward area."

 

John

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Hi gentlemen, thanks a lot for the warm welcome ! John, about the spares carried.  According to Ted, an old hand at the PTboatforum, the boxes would simply have contained 4cm ammo. I really don't know, but I'm certainly not going to build eight of these boxes 😁. I have also learned that several transport ships carried the PT boats to Britain, perhaps the Wikipedia entry about HMS Oceanway is even wrong. All in all I have experienced a rather steep learning curve in the past few days (which to me is part of the fun of my type of modelling).

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

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Hi Niall, I think you are right. Search and rescue operations were probably envisaged from the start and indeed the Channel PT boats were used for this purpose. Two more pics :

 

OYgbKb2.jpg

MZSksB0.jpg

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

 

 

Edited by Arjan
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1 hour ago, Niall said:

Could the rack be for a scramble net(for picking up men in the water), it looks similar to the racks fitted to some larger ships.

I was thinking the same thing.  Here's a link to a photo showing what looks like a scramble net laying on a PT's foredeck - http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/120550702.jpg.

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16 hours ago, Niall said:

Could the rack be for a scramble net(for picking up men in the water), it looks similar to the racks fitted to some larger ships

 

My first thought was they seem rather large for basic scramble net and I would question the position, this being the highest freeboard.

Second point first. Later pics clearly show nets in this position.

First point @robgizlu was asking me about float nets which I had not heard of before. The only decent pic we've found so far is on shapeways

https://www.shapeways.com/product/X36L8DACJ/1-72-royal-navy-flota-nets-x4?optionId=64805212

These certainly seem a lot bulkier

 Could this be the answer

 

Kev 

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Hi Rob, indeed there are plenty of pics and I think one of the reasons is that quite a few American sailors had cameras. I was surprised that there seem to be so few private pics of WWII British MTBs. I think one of the reasons is that in general British sailors had fewer cameras and I also believe private photography was not encouraged by the British authorities (perhaps even restricted ?). There are masses of German WWII pics because many German sailors and soldiers had cameras and private photography was actually encouraged by the German authorities .

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

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Best wishes for the new year  !  My PT kit is still in transit from France so I started converting two figures from the Italeri PT crew set. I made the legs slightly longer by inserting plastic disks at the kneejoints. Swapped the heads and used a British officer's cap from a vintage Italeri figure  (I doubt if anyone notices the difference between a British and US officer's cap at this scale). Figures are not quite finished yet :

 

Helmsman:

 

Wsmcv2i.jpg

a62YeEj.jpg

 

Commander:

 

bij7AgA.jpg

 

I noticed there are quite a few clips of the American Channel PTs on Critical Past. One film roll was apparently even shot from PT 515 :

 

3GFon31.jpg

 

This gunner on PT 515 wore the oversized helmet  used to accommodate head phones :

 

8kj1rrW.jpg

 

One of the Channel PT boats had a shark's mouth on its bow :

 

HwG3uDN.jpg

 

I learned from a member of the ptboat forum that the special lockers ahead of the port spray shield contained an inflatable rubber boat. PT 504 appears to be the only boat that didn't have this locker :

 

r6qLcP7.jpg

 

A pic of an O.S.S. Higgins PT boat which also had two of the cradles we have discussed in some detail. On the ptforum it was suggested that these cradles were probably for rescue nets and were probably intended for O.S.S. operations.

 

6ZSmotk.jpg

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

 

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The kit has finally arrived from France. Since this is going to be an rc boat I started by dry fitting some of the rc hardware. This is probably boring for those who are only interested in static modelling but who knows, I  might be able to convert some of you 😎.  I always make my own propshafts, this is very simple and quite cheap. The propshaft struts are quite oversized but I didn't fancy making some smaller ones from brass (this would have taken me several hours and soldering is difficult because you don't want the plastic of the boat to melt or distort ). I have ordered some smaller rudders but these are still in transit from China. 

 

OykMUkZ.jpg?1

WXymUms.jpg?1

jkSRWcw.jpg?1

 

Arjan

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Can I ask some daft questions please?

 

The brass tube is the tube that the prop shaft goes down. I assume that the tube is sealed at either one end or the other around the prop shaft, how do you seal the tube?

 

Is it the unversal joint that is managing the alignment of the prop shaft to the motor shaft?

 

Is it difficult to to RCise a model like this?

 

This is probably not something I would do (but never say never) but I am interested in how you go about it...  Maybe there is a use for those old RC helicopters I have been given over the years...

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Hi, all the components of the shafts are in the pics of the above. The inner shafts are 2mm (bought in the UK by the way), the outer tube has an inner diameter of 3mm and an outer diameter of 4mm. In this outer shaft I insert two bushes (at both ends). These bushes are bits of brass tube inner dia 2mm and outer dia 3mm. The two bushes are glued inside the outer tube. On the outer tube I will solder a vertical grease tube so I can fill the space inside the tube with grease. This grease prevents leakage and I have never had any problems with leaking shafts. Some pics of these grease tubes. My 1/16 Lindberg Sport Fisherman :

 

H03YSDY.jpg

 

My Italeri Vosper :

 

AsJoqKa.jpg

 

My Italeri Schnellboot :

 

8DW0irE.jpg

 

The universal joint is to compensate for misalignment between propshaft and motorshaft. Nevertheless it's always best to make sure that the shafts are properly aligned, any misalignment increases wear of the bushes and shortens battery duration. It's definitely not difficult to convert 1/35 plastic boat kits to rc, My first 1/35 PT boat started life as a static model and so did my Schnellboot before they were converted to rc,  so it's even feasible to convert models that were finished as static models (not the best approach obviously).  One of the things one has to keep in mind though, is weight, I always try to get rid of every gram of superfluous plastic. For instance I use 0.5mm plastic card instead of 1mm card whenever I can. 

 

Regards,

 

Arjan

 

 

 

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