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Topic: Early Elco 80'--Which Boat to Build? |
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zeusbheld
Advanced Member
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Posted on: Dec 13, 2014 - 8:07pm
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Ted, it's settled. I've not finished reading PT-105 yet, but that will be the first boat I build. I got to the part about his bluffing his way through the launch of the PT-103, with all the brass looking on, and then navigating to the Brooklyn Navy Yard by asking tugboat skippers for directions due to the fact that many items including the charts had already been 'transferred to other parts of the Navy'.
As you say it's also a Northeast/New York thing. When you describe Capt. Green taking the boats on acceptance trials, I can see it vividly in my mind's eye because I know the geography of the area.
Can't wait to get my hands on Levy's book, 59'll probably be my next build.
Making these little boats RC would be easy enough... except that I insist on having wing engines rather than one engine. I'd like to have all three, but I fear the weight. Need the wing engines though as many PT skippers describe maneuvering the boats into docks, and I'm trying for scale (or scale-ish looking) performance. So maintaining a shallow enough draft on a boat with at least two little engines in 1/72 will be ... interesting.
I myself didn't spend a lot of time on the sea (grew up in the Finger Lakes; Seneca's pretty docile and the boats weren't too fast). I don't even actually like having my teeth rattled and spine shook on speedboats at sea.
That said, Keresey's path into PTs as he describes it is something I can really relate to and probably would have tried to follow a similar path had I been around at that time (in spite of knowing I don't like speedboats). I dropped out of engineering school and transferred to art school, so I'd have had enough math but I wasn't much of an athlete: lousy basketballer, not many other sports. I could swim, though, and was a half-decent middle distance runner so I might've got in.
I speculate on these matters not because I wish i was there; I don't. As I said I don't particularly like speed boats. However, the whole reason I got into modeling--even as a kid, and especially now that I'm getting back into it as an adult--is to immerse myself in the history as accurately and in as much detail as I can.
That's why the little PT boat needs to at least have two engines with separate speed controllers. Models can tell stories, I want them to be as close to the truth as I can make them given what I know and am able to find out.
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Total Posts: 61 | Joined:
Aug 12, 2014 - 9:54pm | IP
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