Chief
10-31-2007, 07:41 PM
A couple of years ago, I decided I finally had to have a model PT Boat, and found this site doing research for it. I ended up buying one of John Drain's hull kits, built the hull and ended the project short of armaments and engines. It's a neat hull kit, that he is laser cutting out of plywood and it is absolutely to scale. He had computerized the original builder's plans, and has captured the true lines of a PT boat like no other supposedly "scale" models have. I've seen the best ones on the market, with molded huls, and they do not have the ture lines or exact scale details like John has so laborously reproduced.
The biggest difference in John's models is that they are true triple screw boats. He has three hot motors and about forty pounds of good batteries in his boats, along with his own RC electronic speed control that adusts the outboard throttles in sync with the rudder commands. Sophisticated stuff...
But he also makes his own armaments, and that was the hook that drew me in. This fellow has designed scale electric-powered torpedoes (sans warheads of course) that you can launch, and will run like hell once they hit the water.... I had visions of making hot torpedo runs in the slough with this thing, and it's big enough to need that much water. You couldn't get it up to speed in Battle Ground Lake...
http://www.pt-boat.com/shop/
I put this in our History thread on purpose, becasue a great deal of the spruce plywood these babies were built from came from right around these parts. John has pictures on his site of the building jigs they used to lay up the hulls by hand in, and install over 1 million wood screws by hand in every hull...
Interesting site even if you aren't a modeler. John is a well respected repository of PT Boat information, becasue there were so many of them out of Australia during the War. take some time and surf this one, explore all of his links, and be sure to look at his pictures and videos of his models running...
enjoy!
;D
On edit...check that about his vids....they apparently aren't there any more...he used to have 2 of his 4' PT doing the speed of heat on a lake near his house....
The biggest difference in John's models is that they are true triple screw boats. He has three hot motors and about forty pounds of good batteries in his boats, along with his own RC electronic speed control that adusts the outboard throttles in sync with the rudder commands. Sophisticated stuff...
But he also makes his own armaments, and that was the hook that drew me in. This fellow has designed scale electric-powered torpedoes (sans warheads of course) that you can launch, and will run like hell once they hit the water.... I had visions of making hot torpedo runs in the slough with this thing, and it's big enough to need that much water. You couldn't get it up to speed in Battle Ground Lake...
http://www.pt-boat.com/shop/
I put this in our History thread on purpose, becasue a great deal of the spruce plywood these babies were built from came from right around these parts. John has pictures on his site of the building jigs they used to lay up the hulls by hand in, and install over 1 million wood screws by hand in every hull...
Interesting site even if you aren't a modeler. John is a well respected repository of PT Boat information, becasue there were so many of them out of Australia during the War. take some time and surf this one, explore all of his links, and be sure to look at his pictures and videos of his models running...
enjoy!
;D
On edit...check that about his vids....they apparently aren't there any more...he used to have 2 of his 4' PT doing the speed of heat on a lake near his house....