Japanese BI I-25 in 1/72

[RCSubGuy]

Following this thread with great interest! I have a 1/48 Scale Shipyards B Class boat that I'll get to one day!

[oztruck]

On with the build. The quality of the plastic and the fit of parts in this huge kit is very good. The hull has quite thick plastic and is supplied in 4 pieces. The instructions only tell you how to build the Lindberg "THING" and as such are not much use other than a basic guide on how it is assembled.
The first thing I did was join all the hull parts together to see what I had to work with. It was big, gray, and if I closed one eye and squinted with the other one I could just see a real boat hiding in there. While it was sitting there I went from the bow to the Stern and made a list of thing that needed to be adjusted and there was a lot of them.
The first thing that needed adjusting to convert this thing into RC was the control surfaces, then the drive shafts and last but not least the pointy bit at the front of the boat.

I started with the easy bit first. the prop shafts. I used 1/8 brass rod for the shafts and 1/8+ id brass K&S tube for the bearings through the hull and in the skegs. Using the kit parts of the rear dive planes a few photos and the kit prop shafts I was able to line up and drill the holes and install the tubes with little or no problems.







So far so good

[oztruck]

Here is some of the information I am using as a guide for this build. Looks like it is going to be a fun build.















NOW where did I put my dermal?

[oztruck]

I have found a B1 that I think would be a good boat to model, It is the B1 type I-25 and its Skipper was Lieutenant Commander Meiji Tagami.
http://subart.net/tagami.htm It seems like he was at every big event from Pearl Harbor, Sydney, Melbourne, Pacific islands and even bombed the good old USA mainland. http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-25.htm He and the boat didn't make it to the end but few did.

So with the prototype found to base the build on, a good history of its movements all that is left is to find some photos of the I-25 and start working on getting the Lindberg thing to look the way I want it to. Let the games begin.

[oztruck]

The plastic kit that Lindberg produced is a bit of a challenge, seems like they BLENDED 3 or 4 IJN subs together and then added what they thought would be COOL on there new model. Makes one wonder what they have in there water cooler. I soon realized that there was no way with my very limited skills to turn this thing into a C1 class sub like I wanted to. What can a man do?. Being Australian and having "GIVE IT A GO" drummed into me from an early age I started to look at what other possibilities this heap of junk could be turned into. At first, information on any IJN was hard to come by but after a lot of looking and asking I started to build a good reference base on what I might be able to build. The info came in very slow to start with but after a while the quality and quantity started to build to a point where I could at last make a decision on what type of boat I could turn this heap of plastic into.
The boat that was going to be the easiest to convert the Lindberg thing into was a IJN B1 class, But the big question was which one?

[oztruck]

Here we go, looks like I will be the first to have a go.

When Lindberg announced the release of there two 1/72 scale subs I thought all of my Christmas's had come at once. Being an Australian and borne in Sydney just after the war I have always had a special interest in the Jap subs that raided Sydney harbor. So I just had to have a model of the sub that carried the 2 man mini subs that managed to beat the harbor defenses and fire two torpedo's sinking one ship. After much waiting and a lot of disappointment in what was actually being released I placed an order with Mike at Caswell and sat back waiting for it to arrive. What found in the transport box was akin to finding out there is no Santa. That as we all know now looked good on paper but was a big let down in real life. Apart from the model itself I was also having trouble finding any good information on ANY IJN sub but after a lot of digging I found enough to get started.

This is what I had to work with

[oztruck]

I hate going first. Sorry about the posting in the wrong area MR "C"