Isle of Man flag

Kadet has a flagpole at the stern and without something fluttering, this looks a bit empty.

Not any more. At the recent Mobile Marine open day, Mike Allsop of Scale Flags sold me this lovely Isle of Man flag for a very reasonable amount of money (less than a fiver anyway). It’s printed on silk giving a diaphanous result. Actually I’m not sure how much is printed and how much is hand painted. Whatever, the result is a little work of art.

The instructions show how to roll the white bordered end around a suitable rope but I cheated and wrapped it round the pole itself. Glue used was Bostick Solvent-free and this has held well enough during sailing. I’m not sure a rope would work well in this scale and since the flag is stiffer that it would be in real life (Mike can explain how to drape the flag correctly but I prefer fluttering for this model) wouldn’t hang properly anyway. However if it was draped properly you wouldn’t see the design and I think that would be a shame wouldn’t it ?

Lifebelt

Lifebelt
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Kadets lifebelts are the usual single white plastic moulding found on model boat supplier stands at many shows. A quick coat of paint is all that is required before they can be fixed to the superstructure.

Since this is a reasonably large scale model I felt I could get away with gloss red for the main body. Over a white base this works pretty well - red paint has hopeless coverage so if the moulding had been whitemetal I'd have gone for a matt base coat followed by gloss.

The ropes are painted with an off-white colour. My pot of Humbrol 147 needs replacing so they are a bit greyer than normal but still OK.

The white bands are IMHO the masterstroke. Rather than try and paint them on neatly, I used some strips of insulating tape wrapped around the edge of the ring. The tape was stuck to the modelling board and 2mm wide strips cut and wound into place. In hindsight I realised that this is pretty much what the prototype has (not with insulating tape obviously) so it looks pretty good.

Kadet's maiden voyage

On a nice sunny Sunday, the Billing's Kadet took to the water properly. Not the bat this time, real water with other boats and everything !

The model really looks smashing. After a little detailing which I'll mention in a future post, there is just enough complexity to make a plain boat look interesting. The colours have been copied from the instructions and work really well. I'm not sure if left to my own devices I'd have plumped for as much orange but it is right. The blue seat would have probably been black or grey yet it seems to fit the scheme.

On the water we had some issues. Firstly the model had no power and made a terrible rattling noise. Battery life was almost non-existent too. The bow was low in the water and top speed pedestrian.

Returning to the bankside workbench I worked out that the cabin back was low enough to touch the drive shaft coupling. Some work with a pen-knife cured this. Not pretty but effective.

The waterline was sorted by levering out most of the ballast weight I'd put in the day before. With the model in the bath this appeared correct but then unless you fill the water all the way up, seeing the level isn't easy. A small spirit level showed the deck to be level but on the pond this just didn't look nice.

Battery life should just be a case of cycling them through charge/discharge cycles a few times. I've just bought a new charger which will apparently do this for me and get them back in condition. If that doesn't work I'll be looking out for something that holds more charge and isn't much bigger than the pack in use now. While the model isn't supposed to be a speedboat, it ought to move around a bit faster.

On that subject, I did have a spare battery pack and thanks to my whittling the model was quieter and faster. There's work to do though.

Wiring Kadet

For some time I've had my Dad's Kadet kit in the queue for work. The boat needs wiring up and a few finishing touches with the paintbrush before its maiden voyage.

As it happens, the result gives quite a good picture of the basics required to run and control a simple model boat.

On the right there is the receiver. Wires run from this to the steering servo at the bottom of the photo. Another set runs to the right where we have the speed control (Viper 15A as I had one handy and they've never let me down). This is wire to the motor and also the battery - on charge while the picture was taken but will lie in the middle of the wooden frame.

The aerial wire has been fitted around the edge of the hull just under the deck. Not sure if this will work OK until I get the model on the water. In the bath, its sitting quite high in the water so there is a chance I'll be adding a bit more ballast to sort this out. Mind you, if that is as bad as it gets then I won't complain - far better this way than trying to lighten the model to raise the waterline !

White ?

What has happened to Halfords paint ? You used to get a spray can with a colour coded top that looked like it had been painted with the contents. Now the caps are clear with a paper label stuck on apparently indicating the colour within.

Kadet is white so I selected Peugeot Arctic White as a suitable colour. Painting something as big as a model boat with aerosol is a lot easier than trying to work with an airbrush, the later doesn't really throw out enough paint. In a perfect work I'd use a paint gun but that would need a bigger compressor and more cleaning up than I can, quite frankly, be bothered to do.

Anyway, you would have expected paint called Arctic White to be, well, white. Nice clean white white. The label indicated that was what it would be. At no point did I think pale beige. Not until using the stuff anyway. At that point of course it's too late, you have a pale beige model (I know, try the paint on a test piece etc. - the can said "Artic White" and I wasn't that fussy or so I thought) which doesn't look any better in day light no matter how much you squint at it.

The box lid didn't help either. That showed a gleaming model with no hint of rusty cream colour.

There was only one thing for it - more paint. Back to Halfords for a can of "Appliance White". Washing machines and 'fridges, that's the colour to emulate. The paint is white but also very runny and took a fair bit of fiddling with, heating and generally messing around with to get a nice finish. Good shine though. But if you scrape your dishwasher, go and buy a new one as this stuff would be all but impossible to use on a vertical surface.

And if the Artic is beige, I feel sort for the penquins.

Kadet front issues

Kadet front
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Just a quick update on the Billings Kadet build - all seems to be progressing well except for the front windows. These are supplied as a single part in 3mm ply which has to be bent around the front and tucked under the roof.

Trying this with the supplied part it became obvious that this simply wasn't going to work. Not least because the top of the part had to pass through the roof !

To solve the problem, my Dad made up two copies of the part from very thin ply. The first was fitted and then the second added to it. There's still a little filling and fettling to be done but even making the parts from scratch was easier than trying to bludgeon the original item.

Kadet building

Kadet building
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Is nothing sacred ?

At Birdingbury I'd taken along the Billings Kadet kit in case anyone wanted to know how the boats on display had been built. Since most people won't have seen a model boat kit, never mind poked around inside the box, it's a good idea to take one along to help explain things. During the weekend the box was opened several times for the benefit of visitors, so it was well worth adding to the load in my van.

However someone else was examining the kit - my Dad. In fact he had a good look at it and like what he saw. The hull and deck seemed to fit very well. The instructions looked simple. The fittings were nice.

So when we packed up, instead of returning to my kit maturing pile, it found its way onto his bench.

More detailed inspection showed things weren't quite as simple as expected - the fist parts to fit are an inner base to fit all the mechanical bits to, and under this a couple of triangular pieces that fit between this and the hull underneath. After due consideration, these later parts have been ignored, the edges of the base beveled and then glued in place with 5-Star adhesives epoxy. This seems to work very nicely and strengthened up the vac-formed plastic hull.

The deck has been fixed with the same glue. Once it went off but before drying those clips were removed so they didn't become part of the boat !

So, my kit pile has gone down a little and another boat will soon be launched. I think this is progress. In the meantime I will put a lock on that cupboard...

Kadet

Kadet box
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

I like to have a boat kit on the go even if I'm not working on it immediately. With this in mind I've hauled something out of the kit pile to tinker with when I'm not building model railways.

This kit is a now discontinued Billings Kadet. It came to me with some MacGregor radio control gear in an eBay auction. I wanted the radio for a vintage boat project and thought I'd sell the kit on eventually. When it arrived though I decided that the model looked so nice I'd hang on and build it myself.

Now I know I've just said no to more second hand kits of dubious parentage but I don't think this refers to Billings. I know their kits can be entertaining to build - the African Queen isn't quite as simple as you'd think for example - but generally they are some of the better ones. This model is apparently even suitable for beginners, which should be even better news for my chances of getting it on the water !