1/700th scale HMS Habakkuk WIP (aka Project Habakkuk)

[Roger the Cabin Boy]

Great model - and I don't even like ships...   

Take your time, but equally, don't fret about glue spots.  Once done, just enjoy the table reaction, watching at a distance, or better still, park it away from the comp area and stay there, just talk to the amazed onlookers.  That's way more fun than trying to validate it with mere pothunting by leaving it on a table,  and returning hours later, only to find you lost out to yet another Bf109E (this one as flown by Hans Joachim Marseille on the 23 Aug 1942 shortly after breakfast, when it's known that there was a shortage of RLM 71 paint, but it's incontrovertibly documented in the Geschwader files discovered in Munich in 1963 that they borrowed Italian paint to patch up the panel, which had been damaged the previous day, according to the maintenance records in the Bundesarchiv...) 

Over here in the UK we are truly blessed with being able to get displays together, both club and SIG. Comp tables at the Nationals last week might have been 10% of all display space - if that.  Instead, we all form communities, much like this online one, where the JMNs and pothunters soon get frozen out or advised of the error of their ways, and reminded t's about showing, sharing research and spares etc and above all, FUN.  Some Americans visiting our club still just couldn't get past the competition thing.   But Scooterman most certainly has! 

"that someone would be walking very oddly as they would have something jammed somewhere..."    ;DStill laughing 5 mins later, that's a superb line...  Avoid the self-appointed experts!!!

[PR19_Kit]

The one thing I would say is that if you want to do well in a competition, you've got to play by the rules of those organising it.  So if they expect the finish of your Hull to be smooth, it'll have to be to compete.  Be prepared that competition judges are really going to pick it to bits, every last blemish, glue spot etc. will be found & exposed to the light of day.  And in most cases you won't be able to talk to them to explain why you've done it a certain way, it's a very faceless.  I'm not criticising the judges approach, they have to select a winner from several participants that will be very hard to pick from, so it may go down to an almost microscopic scratch in the paint.  Us modellers can be a very critical & hard to please bunch & the harshest glare will be found in competition.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from entering, just that you will be expected to tow the line.

Some years ago I had the unenviable task of being 'volunteered' to be a judge at the Avon Show. For some bizarre reason they gave me the Figure Class to judge, together with a serious figure modeller, who happened to be female. I was ASTONISHED at the measures she went to to mark down seemingly excellent models (to my mind anyway) almost all of which would have been classed as 'nit picking' by normal people. In the end I refused to add my commendations or otherwise to her judging, much to the Competition Committee's chagrin!   But there was no way I was going to go along with what I saw as blatent 'halo factor' judging. By that I mean 'Oh he must have got that colour right because he won the class last year, and the ridges on the armour don't really matter all that much'

Never again will I be persuaded to be a judge!

[Roger the Cabin Boy]

Of course, further immediate online research by the competition awards committee, when considering the top trophy for the apparently perfect Bf 109E model, unfortunately revealed gross errors.  Everyone knows that by the given date the Bf 109F (trop) had replaced the earlier variant. And what's more, the tyres weren't treaded, either. 

   

[seadude]

The one thing I would say is that if you want to do well in a competition, you've got to play by the rules of those organising it.  So if they expect the finish of your Hull to be smooth, it'll have to be to compete.  Be prepared that competition judges are really going to pick it to bits, every last blemish, glue spot etc. will be found & exposed to the light of day.  And in most cases you won't be able to talk to them to explain why you've done it a certain way, it's a very faceless.  I'm not criticising the judges approach, they have to select a winner from several participants that will be very hard to pick from, so it may go down to an almost microscopic scratch in the paint.  Us modellers can be a very critical & hard to please bunch & the harshest glare will be found in competition.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from entering, just that you will be expected to tow the line.

I need to reply again to the above quote. How are the judges going to nitpick the Habakkuk if they've never even seen or heard of it before? They won't know what's right or wrong or what to look for since this'll probably be the first time they've even seen a model of the ship. At best, they'll probably just have to take my word on everything and judge the model at face value. Granted, I'll probably get nitpicked on colors of the aircraft or the types of armament used or something else, but as for the overall shape of the ship or the wood outer insulation layer, Who's to say what's right or what isn't about that? The Habakkuk is one big SPECULATIVE model. All I've been able to find on the Net is lots of different artist concept sketches and blueprints, but nothing really 100% SOLID for a true design, color scheme, insulation layer, superstructure design, etc. In fact, who's to say that what William Wallace wrote in that Warship article about the outer wood insulation layer for the Habakkuk is even right? Though I will have to admit that what he wrote does make a bit of sense. Take a look at the following pic and look where the red circle is. See the small squares/rectangles?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/icyhusky/HMS%20Habakkuk%20model%20project/hab17b.jpg
I'm guessing that would be the composite wood outer hull insulation layer. But should I add such a layer on the sides/top/etc. of my already painted wood hull or should I just let the wood hull be as is to "represent" that outer layer? If the sections of wood masonite are supposed to be dovetailed together as Wallace had explained in his article, you would see a joint/seam/panel line where the pieces fit together on a real Habakkuk, but since 1/700 scale is small, the joints/seams/panel lines would be barely noticeable. So why bother?
I have no way to contact him and verify his claims. If I could show you guys all the pics I've seen and collected on the Net of the Habakkuk, I would. But I know this forum has some sort of rule about not posting copyright stuff and fair use, so I can't.  

[Sauragnmon]

I would question that, since if you look at it, the rectangular sections seem to extend into the hull, and if I recall, Habakuk was planned to be made from blocks of pykrete, thus those would be the sectional blocks of pykrete demonstrated there.

[seadude]

I'm taking a few days to rest and relax from working on my Habakkuk model. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm stopping from doing more Internet research. While looking for more articles and/or pics, I came across this article from an October 1932 issue of Modern Mechanix magazine.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/27/ice-island-in-mid-atlantic-proposed/

[seadude]

Here's a question I forgot to ask long ago and could use advice on.

I'm building the Habakkuk with 20  5" gun mounts: 8 on the starboard side, 8 on the port side, 2 at the bow end of ship, and 2 at the stern end. And I've got 4  Mk.37 radar director units which are located on the bridge structure as shown in this older pics:









So my question is this: Is 4  Mk.37 directors enough for the 20  5" mounts that I have? Or should I add a few more Mk.37 directors on the front, aft, and/or left side of the ship?

[Sauragnmon]

I think more than four might be necessary for effective direction of the mounts.

[tinlail]

I think that a director at each end might be needed.
I doubt that there is a particular problem with the number of guns per director, but the fire control system might not be able to handle the issue of having a gun so far away from director. Since that implies a correction being need to handle the fact that other wise a gun would be shooting thousand of feet to the side of the plane. I have no knowledge if such corrections were done for the different guns on a navy ship.
Having director at the far ends of the ship would also seem to be good from a point of view of battle damage redundancy.

[rickshaw]

4 directors / 20 mounts = 5 mounts per director.  I would suspect that is more than adequate.  The only problem might be their location.  High on the starboard side might be sufficient for fore/aft/starboard but they may have difficulties with attackers low on the port side.  However, I suspect this is a HA director, therefore the guns on the port side would likely have a local directors for attackers on that side for LA attackers.

[Mossie]

Not related to the directors, I've just realised your island has a single smoke stack, rather than the two you see on most drawings of the Habbakuk.  Would probably mean a lot of cutting & chopping to add one in.

[Hobbes]

The one thing I would say is that if you want to do well in a competition, you've got to play by the rules of those organising it.  So if they expect the finish of your Hull to be smooth, it'll have to be to compete.  Be prepared that competition judges are really going to pick it to bits, every last blemish, glue spot etc. will be found & exposed to the light of day.  And in most cases you won't be able to talk to them to explain why you've done it a certain way, it's a very faceless.  I'm not criticising the judges approach, they have to select a winner from several participants that will be very hard to pick from, so it may go down to an almost microscopic scratch in the paint.  Us modellers can be a very critical & hard to please bunch & the harshest glare will be found in competition.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from entering, just that you will be expected to tow the line.

I need to reply again to the above quote. How are the judges going to nitpick the Habakkuk if they've never even seen or heard of it before? They won't know what's right or wrong or what to look for since this'll probably be the first time they've even seen a model of the ship.

I recently had this discussion about the competition at the Dutch nationals; the response was that accuracy wasn't judged. Just workmanship. This to avoid the obvious problem of the builder knowing more than the judge.
This may be different in the States, of course.

[Sauragnmon]

I know that's the same response I got in Canada when I asked about CapCon and where I'd file a Ship Whif - the steering committee mulled it over, threw a question back, I responded, and then the Judge said directly to me:

"Put it in the appropriate scale, and we'll judge it on the modeling work alone without any ties to the prototype or such."

So that Might be where it hits the fan in places.

[Mossie]

I think it's pretty much the party line in the UK, having not entered a competition I can't tell you, but there's usually a whiff category.  If you put a whiff in one of the other categories, it will probably be disqualified, especially in the bigger competitions.  Talking to others, although accuracy isn't supposed to be an issue, it all depends on the judges & they don't always abide by their own rules.

[Sauragnmon]

I would say it's not quite that way, but there's a Whiff Category for each subject, at least at CapCon in Ottawa, though there isn't one for ships, so it goes in the appropriate scale and is judged accordingly.  I would still be tempted, if I can get to CapCon, to put one or two of mine in and stump some people.  "Wait a minute, there's Ship Whifs?"