Converting the Bronco type XXIII to RC

[MFR1964]

David,

Good to hear that you've hit the water, turningradius twice the lenght, hmm, not bad, must be the direct driven rudder, as for the CG, i'm aiming at direct under the conningtower, as with most of my boats.


Those two XXIII's at the meeting, one is mine, the other from a fellowbuilder nickname GJB at our dutch forum, which gave me the link to get my hands on the type XXIII, lucky me, he even drove the boat that day, as expected the conningtower gives a bit of a problem, much to heavy, he still has to strip down all internal stuff inside the conningtower to get the weight as low as possible when at the surface.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Slowly i'm getting there, before i started cutting into the exhaustcover and tower, i've studied as much pictures as i could, it took me some evenings to determen which holes i liked the most.



The holes profided by Bronco are modified into this, complete with the bars inside.





As for the tower, i took a gamble, and decided not to place the railings, and went for the later version, they placed more floodholes and added bars inside to offer the crew more grip around the tower, i was inspired by a picture of the U 2322.



Even the front needed some modification, those two diagonal floodholes above the dingy holder, main motivation to add all those floodholes is, there will be a lot of type XXIII's being build, i will try to give mine a different look.
Right now i'm working at the "wooden" deckplanks, i've discovered some nice things on the pics which i've not noticed before, looking at the right pics the puzzle came together, and it made sense why they did that in such way, be patient.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

There was something odd about the plancked modules they used on this boat during maintenance on the shipyard, accourding to the drawings i have, the wooden deck has to be longer,
But with this kind of info, a picture of the real thing will have to back up this theory.



When hunting down my little archive about the type XXIII i found this one, the front boat has a wooden plancking beyond the bollards, proving to me that it was indeed longer, this was my first clue.



Second clue was, those strange rails on top of the deck, they go all the way, from the tower beyond the bollards, only be seperated by the batteryhatch.



They apperently made some modifications during the builds, at the background the railtype and in front some kind of lips, i personally think those lips where used due to having less metal at the end of the war, by saving material, this matches with the higher U number of the front boat.
As a matter of fact, they did two things at one time, designed a way to fasten those wooden modules and a kind of barrier to prevent those guys from slipping from the wet deck, clever move.



I still had some styrene in stock to do the job, used the "wooden" deck planking as a mold for getting the styrene straight onto the deck.



The styrene itself has a H shape, allowing me to "click" in the wooden deck modules, the only drawside is, i have to replicate such a module myself, Bronco delevered four of those modules, and i need to have five, so it's back to the shop to fix me one.



Manfred.

[greenman407]

I found these color pictures in one of my Books, Manfred knows the one. They clearly show a Yellow stripe. Taking a picture of a picture doesnt usually produce good results but I think that you can make it out.

[trout]

Mark,
Great photos. Something I see also is a white stripe across the deck towards the bow, any idea why?

[greenman407]

Yes, I see that. I dont know. Unfortunately this book is in German. A English one was not available. Ill bet Manfred knows. HEY MANFRED!!! OLI OLI OPTENFREE!!! Or Something like that. Or Von Hilde.

[MFR1964]

Nice pics Mark, there are not that much full colourpics about WW2 uboats

That stripe is used in combination with the yellow one on the tower, found some pics from a XXIII with a simular stripe on the exhaustcover, it was also yellow like the stripe on the tower.
Probably used to show the guys in the air that the boat was still used at the UAK.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Made the missing planking module and pimped her up with the stanchions and antenna wire, pictures



Not as good as the Bronco one, but after painting and weathering you won't see the difference at a distance.



All three parts can be lifted from the deck when needed.



Next step was to make the stanchions, since Bronco included the plastick one's, i could take some measurements and make a copper replacement, most tricky part was, drilling the 1 mm holes into the 1,5 mm rod.



Made a connection at the tower for hooking up.



Dryfitting the elastick cord to see at which place the connection will be placed at the deck.



This little thing gave me some grey hairs, only after the second attempt it worked out fine, the difficult thing about this is, you have to get your wires at both sides of the insulators, just like the real thing.





I've seen pics with three and four insulators, first i made the four insulator modification, to my taste there wasn't much antennawire left, so i broke it up and made the three insulator modification, giving me more lenght of antennawire.
For now im modifing the dingy hatch, got myself some good pics to make it more accurate, to be continued.


Manfred.

[goshawk823]

great work Manfred. Nicely done.

[alad61]

That is amazing Manfred. I love the attention to detail your doing. And David calls me a detail nut... :biggrin:

[trout]

Excellent work!

[MFR1964]

Thanks Guys, slow as a snail, but i will get her to run.

Steve,

With this boat i jumped in, normally i do a lot of research, now this info is pouring in, i have to alter my plans time after time.

Alec,

Yep, just like me, he even gave me the title King of Complexity, we both have to carry our burden, those details will make my boat stand out in the coming fleet of type XXIII"s, at least i know which one is mine when driving in the midst of that fleet.

Tom,

Yeah, work, sometimes i hate myself, at the beginning i speed ahead, only being stopped by those lovely details, i need a slave!!!!


Right now i'm working on the hatch, glad this has to be made on scale 1/35, at the end of the week i expect to have it finished, the list with other details is growing like a mad man, (name of the lord), you got to love this hobby!!!!


Manfred.

[roedj]

Manfred,

I really love your work on this boat. I just realized that you may have the answer to a problem I've been struggling with on another boat - German Type 202 - namely how to move the rudder and rear dive planes without those ugly external push rods. Attached is a picture from page #2 of this thread showing your rudder/dive planes fixture.
...

My question is this - what is the dimension between the two arrows - between the two attachment points for the fore and aft control rods? Do you have any idea how small that dimension could be and still function reliably? I just may steal... I mean borrow your design.

Dan - Commander Klepto

[MFR1964]

Which mortal dares to disturb the eternal rest at the Olympic Mountain!!!!!, oh, it's you, wait and stand still so i can start up the lightning generator.

It's 10 mm, it's near the limit, now get rid of those awfull arrows on my picture, and run for your life to build the same and dodge the lightningbolts


Manfred.

[trout]

Puny god......