Meanwhile I've airbrushed most of the boat in an anthracite gray base color...
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The RCSubs Pe Kit contains parts for a searchlight that was located on the front platform of the conning tower. Nice detail that took quite some work. As it was to fragile and basically flat, I replaced the PE tripod with a soldered one made of 0,5 mm brass wire. The rest was bending tiny PE pieces and gluing them together using superglue. The front window was made of a pice of clear plastic that I took from a blister pack. For painting I masked it using Vallejo masking liquid (green when not cured).
Meanwhile I've airbrushed most of the boat in an anthracite gray base color...
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Progress with some little and some big things.....the kit has two revolver cannons. As the original only carried one, I'll stick with one and put it o the forward deck. The kit provides already nice detail, but with the PE by RCSubs it really becomes a jewel. Positive note: RCSubs has put 4 ammo belts on the sheet ... I needed 3 of them to get it correctly on the gun.
The boat itself got some final details, i.e. a guard bracket to protect the signaling whistle on the conning twoer and I added some piping for the whistle using 0,2 mm diameter fishing line.
Finally the baot was ready fro primer which has already been put on. As susual I used the Tamiy primer out of a rattle can....
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Next topic I wanted to address it the missing keel. I guess the original boat didn't have one, but I have strong indications, that later a keel was added, As I'm displaying the late version, I decided to add a keel, at least an the stern side, where it helped to protect the rudder from damage in case of ground contact. I have no exact references for the keel, so I went freestyle. I took my "Konturlehre" (what's the English word for the tool?) and took the contour of the underside of the boat, transferred that to paper, took the dimensions, designed the keel in the CAD and made a 3D-print of it. After making sure that it fits, I glued it into place. As the bow side of the keel was very thin, I decided not o remove the support structures until the glue had set. Looks good....
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Not for punishment, just for practice.....one drawback of the kit is the hard an brittle plastic. This results in fragile parts like the flag post or the rods for the plane protectors are super susceptible to break. I won't go into details, but those parts are now made of brass with steel interior, the flag post is pure steel. The advantage, besides better stability the diameters are now closer to the original. So no accident, just an improvement ;-). Besides that....PE, PE, and more PE parts. Lugs, steps, handles, and whatnot. Looks good....
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Nice!
My wife got me one of these a year or so back. After looking it over, I got another to build as RC. Space in the hull is tight, but I found a WTC that should work.
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continued with changes on the model to closer match the original. I'll build the later version, where the antennae masts could be set upright using a pneumatic actuator. This version of the boat hat an insulator mast for the antennae cables. I made a CAD drawing and 3D-printed it. Looks good to me. I also decided to depict the forward deck hatch open. Late decision, after the deck has been glued into place. So I widened the hatch opening a bit, 3D-printed the shaft into the boat and glued it into the hatch opening. If you do your boat, do that before attaching the deck. Much easier....
On the left side tank one can also the opening for the pneumatic actuaor for the forward antennae mast nicely hidden under a PE detail by RC Subs
The next fix were the bow dive planes. The U9 had two pairs installed on two levels (I guess to improve their effect). There was also a third attachment point, that was not used. The kit wrongly places the planes on the top two levels. The real boat had them on the lowes and the tp level, leving the middle point free. The planes didn't have proper streamlined profiles, the ones in the kit do. So I printed new ones and installed them on the correct positions. Finally the rods for the plane protection were glued into place, too.
The stern also got plane protectors and the flag pole....
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I made a mistake and started some research about the boat, i.e. I asked Bernhard Wenzel, who did the CAD files for the kit, about some details and got all the shortcomings of the kit as reply. E.g. the fairing for the chain locker..only on the port side. So I filed the starboard side flat and evened it out using putty. The rubbing strakes are missing...easy fix using 2 mm half-round styrene profile. Besides that allot of PE...tons of manholes on the side tanks, PE on the aft torpedo tubes, on the conning tower, PE replacing the hinges on the chain locker, and much more....getting there.
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On with the finer deck details. After the relatively large deck panels I glued some hatch handles into place. About 2,5 mm diameter and about 30 pieces. Really nothing for the impatient but worth the work....
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I continued with adding the RCSubs PE parts to the dec. For the ones who love drilling....that's ine for you. All the holes in the deck have to be opened with the respective drill bits. Problem: The holes in the deck do not line up with the holes in the PE parts. That makes drilling challenging as the drill tends to deviate for its ideal track. That has then to be corrected, either by a cutting with a scalpel or by drilling with a larger diameter. When that's done one can glue on the PE panels. I used slow drying super glue to do this, as it allows for re-positioning of the panels.
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