1-7-07 The first building meeting of the new year was held on Sunday. A lot of people were at the meeting but not a lot of work got done. Ron was there still trying to get the St Louis resheeted. Ben brought his Frog Light Cruiser along. He has the windows cut out the shafts, motors and gear boxes installed. The rudder and sub deck are also in place. The upper deck looked like it was finished and Ben cut out the lower deck at the shop. He had the Swampy foam super structure set in place but not glued together. Moe was there to shoot the breeze. I had the last five guns we started building this summer with me. I finally tested all of them and handed them off to Mike for installation in his Baltimore and Rod’s Prince Eugene or Lutzow. I used a testing method for power of the guns I heard of at NATS last year. I lined up pop cans and fired to see how many cans the bb would go through. I was able to get the guns to go through one can and into the 2^nd. The bb would make a dent in the backside of the 2^nd can but did not come out. Three layers of aluminum seamed to be pretty good. Mike has brought his Baltimore hull a long way. He has all of the ribs done and was working on the deck. Ron helped him out with some sanding of the hull; it’s nice to have access to large wood working tools. I helped Mike start a list of things to buy to finish out the ship. Motors, pump, switches, clipard parts, bottle, regulator… It was a long list. Lars and Grant also made it to the meeting. Lars brought his Tiger for some show and tell. Grant shared his college stories. It was the first time I had seen Grant in almost two years. He now has a beard! Peter once again was working on his convoy ship, adding another layer of fiberglass to the hull. We had two prospective new captains visit to check us out. Randy and Colston both got a short history of Model Warship Combat and took tours of several ships. I brought a couple of DVDs along and we watched some of the 05 NATS video on my computer. Both of them seam very interested in getting ships and joining the club. For those of you that lost count that was ten people at the building meeting. Not a bad turn out. There should be a lot of ships on the water this spring. The new ships seam to be coming along fast enough to hit the water when the ice melts. I did see some open water on the way to Ron’s shop, so you better get working on those ships. The next meeting will be in a few weeks, hope to see you there.

2-11-07 We had another building meeting at Ron’s shop on Sunday. The usual suspects were there working on the typical things. Ron looked at his Lion and St Louis but did not do anything to them. He showed us some prints of the new ships he is thinking of making. He spent some time with Mike sanding the St. Paul down. Mike had a good birthday as he got a USS St Paul hat and sweatshirt that he was wearing. Sounds like he got some other USS St Paul apparel too. Mike and Peter put the first coat of epoxy on the hull. I stole parts from several ships and put them in the St Paul to show Mike how everything is going to fit. We also put it on the scale to see how the weight was coming. It’s going to be close to the 14 lbs limit, just like it should. Ben had his little Frog CL along, with the guns installed and superstructure foam taking shape. He had the smallest radio box for a warship I have ever seen. Ben also told us that he made a jet engine in his garage. Peter had his Sharny along and now as superstructure on it. It looks very nice and is very bb proof. Peter and Ron made several secondary turrets and one main turret. Ryan had the VDT at the shop and gave it a new paint job. He had already changed the props and rudders around. Lars came by for a visit in-between shopping for books and taking the family to the movies. I had the Warspite along but did not do anything to it. I have been changing motors, accumulation tanks and fixing water channeling. I even fixed part of the superstructure. Our next meeting will be March 11 at Ron’s shop. This might be the last building meeting of the year. If it warms up enough we could be battling in April.

3-11-07 Work has been busy so I’m a little behind on my reporting. A couple of weeks ago we got together at Ron’s shop for a building meeting. Ron had the first Altmark hull out of his new mold. Ben came by without a ship and helped out Mike. I had the Frog CL I was working on cutting out the hull. Ryan made a new deck for his VDT. Peter was working on his Sharny’s super structure. Lars had the Tiger in the shop getting it ready for the battling season. Mike had his Baltimore along and we helped him get the drive shafts and gear boxes installed. It took a lot longer then I though it would. Never cut the tubing with a tubing cutter use a Dremel cut off wheel. Tyler had his wood hull Minneapolis along. Ron helped sand it to shape and I showed him the layout of my Mpls. Ryan also had a remote control tank along. It’s about two feet long and a foot or more tall. He said he had it in the snow and broke the gear boxes. It’s short on details but that’s all I can remember.

3-25-07 We had a small building meeting at my house yesterday. Mike and Andy both had their Baltimore hulls in the basement. We got Mike’s accumulation tanks installed and mounted the guns to the deck. We also installed the outer shafts and made plans for the radio and rudder boxes. Andy’s Baltimore still needs a final sanding and needs to get sealed. It sounds like he has a big order from Battler’s Connection coming in the mail soon. Paul E. had his St. Louis getting a new rudder post and getting a switch installed for solenoids in the radio box. Mike and Andy spent a lot of time going over the two hulls.

4-22-07 The first battle of the year was held yesterday in Chanhassen. Well it was not much of a battle and turned into a building meeting. Ben had his Frog CL down at the pond doing some sea trails when I arrived. I had The Bike and Warspite almost ready to battle. They just needed to be patched from the last battle last year. After I got done patching Ben had the Frog gassed and loaded so I got the Mpls ready to battle too. Turns out I should have tested the guns last night because I had a leak in an accumulation tank. I took her out without guns to see how the winter shaft and rudder refit helped her turning. I’m glad to say that she turns a lot better now then before. Ben was shooting his guns at a pop bottle in the water and wanted to take a few shots at me. So we did a little mock battle and he got a dozen holes in The Bike. He also knocked off my A turret. I put on the waders and tried to find it. We marked the spot with the ships but the water was too murky to fit it. Maybe we’ll pull it out later in the year. We both ran a speed check and tested our starting, stopping and reverse. The Mpls was looking a little low and the pump was not coming on so I took her into shore just as she sank. Something has come lose in the water box and the pump switch was not pushing down far enough to turn on. The Mpls was done for the day, before the day had started. Ben did not have any armor for the frog so he was not going to be a target for anyone. Peter, Ryan and Andy all showed up around 12:30. Andy had his hull for the Baltimore he is making along. Ryan had the VDT and Peter had the Sharny. Both of them got to testing there guns and found most of them not work very well. At this point it started to rain a little and we (Mostly Peter) decided to go back to my place and working on ships instead of battling. If we had been in mid season form we would have stayed and battle through the rain as it was light and off and on. If you happened to go to the pond and did not find us we had skipped out, sorry, come back and see us May 6^th. Just as we were leaving Paul Erdman came and all headed to my garage. We set up tables and got to fixing ships. Ryan had a stern sidemount problem and Peter was trying to get his triples working. Andy started fiber glassing his hull. Lars showed up just as we started work. He came in carrying an I-boat and tossing rain jackets at us saying we were wimps for not battling today. Peter took the blame for running from the rain. The I-boat had not seen the water since 2003 and was in partial working condition. I know Lars patched it, from NATS 03(???) and was working on the guns. Not sure if he got it running again. It took awhile but we got Ryan’s and Peter’s guns working. Turns out the stainless steel screws I bought last year are not really stainless steel. Any of you that got guns from me should check the pistons as they will get rusty and sticky. They should make it one year and will need to get replaced. It continued to rain on and off all day, sometimes a little heavy. Around 5pm people started taking off and heading home. Next battle will be May 6^th, get yours ships ready and come to the pond ready to battle. This will be our warm up for the Fray Memorial Day weekend.

June 10^th (Right Ben?) is the Edina model yacht club’s Parade of Ships. Ben and I are going to set up a table and bring some ships to show off, hand out lots of flyers and show some battle videos. Maybe we can pick up a battler or two. If you want to bring your ship let us know so we can make plans.

The next weekend in June, the 17^th will be a battle in Roseville.

July has NATS 15^th to the 20^th.

August will be our Ice Breaker battle. Looks like the 18^th & 19^th, if you have a conflict that weekend, wedding, family reunion let me know so we can pick a different day.

5-6-07 This day started out looking like it would be Weather 2 Port Polar Bear 0. High winds and rain were making battle look like a long shot. Ben called in the morning to see if things were better here then at his place and it was not. But right as I got into the car, just before noon, the wind died down and the rain stopped. It helps that the pond is in a low part in the area and we have a lot of trees to the south and west blocking the wind. Ryan and Peter showed up shortly afternoon and Ron came down just as they were getting set up. I had my table and Peter brought a pair of saw horses but Ryan was without a table. My wagon and a garbage can did the trick. Ron had spent some time in the shop getting his ship working and was confidant that all of his systems were working. He sat around and talked and helped Peter get his Sharny ready. I was helping Ryan get his guns, that worked great the last time we got together, working again. That pesky stern sidemount keeps causing problems. But soon we were ready to go. Ben was still not at the pond but we were ready to start, until Ron started having problems with his stern gun. As Ron was working on his guns Ben arrived and was able to get his ship together at the same time Ron got his ship ready to go. Fleets were the British (Ron & Bob) vs the Germans & French (Ryan, Peter & Ben). Peter was running a two gun battlecruiser due to one stuck stern gun and a missing bow sidemount. Ron took off after Peter and I went stern to stern with Ryan. Ben stayed off to the side looking for an opening for his deadly stern guns. Ron was working Peter over with his sidemounts when Ben found his first opening and opened up some nice holes starboard side under B turret. Ron was laughing at the big hole in his ship as I was trading bow sidemounts with Ryan. Ryan did a good job on my bow with a nice grouping of belows. As the battle wound down the German ships started to look a little low in the water and Ben had lost reverse. All ships made it off their five and came off the water. Durring this sortie Blake, a prospective captain, arrived. He got to see the last part of the sortie and then started looking ships over on the bench. Andy made it to the pond with his in-progress Baltimore at the same time as Dave, another prospective captain came down. We all went over the basic and finer points of the hobby and ships with Dave and Blake. I had The Bike ready to go for one of them to run in a battle. Ben was replacing a burned out servo in the Frog and Ryan had a sticky throttle switch that also needed to come out. This gave Ron and Peter some time to get the stern guns working on both their ships. Oddly enough Peter’s center gun, the one that worked the best first sortie, now did not work at all. We headed back to the water with Blake running the Mpls and added to the British fleet. Ryan and Peter were both hurt pretty bad and did not make it long in the battle before they sank. A few quick sidemount passes and they were on the bottom. Peter had the wadder duty and picked up Ryan’s VDT as his ship went under next to shore. The Mpls was having problems with it’s pump priming and I was trying to help Blake turn the pump on. I was not looking at my ship but did notice it sink because I had not turned my pump on. Hopefully this is the only time this year I have that problem. This got Peter back in the water again to pick up the Warspite and to keep things easy the Mpls sank before he got out. Since most of the ships were done I gave the Warspite to Dave and he chased the Lion and Mpls around the pond for a while. We counted and patched up for the next battle. Ben was working on his guns in-between battles and was no longer able to fire. It looked like his test switches were not working. Scores were Warspite 5-5-18 (Sink), Lion 58-4-9, Mpls 3-0-1 (Sink) vs Sharny 34-5-19 (sink), VDT 12-2-18 (sink) Frog 6-0-4. After we patched up we got out for another battle and changed up the fleets. Ben was working on his guns in-between battles and was no longer able to fire. It looked like his test switches were not working. It was now VDT & Warspite vs Shanry, Lion & Mpls (with Andy as captain). I started going stern to stern with Ron. Ryan went right after Peter with his bow sidemount. Peter now had his triples stern all firing but they are not much use on a VDT. Ryan locked into the side of the Sharny and fired away. I swung around for a few stern gun shots and the Sharny was soon under the water. Ryan and I chased the other faster ships for a while and got the Mpls under before we ran out of bbs. It was getting close to 5pm already and it was starting to look like rain so we called it a day and packed up the gear. Scores were Warspite 5-0-2, VDT 0-0-0 (Is that right???), vs Lion 44-3-13, Sharny 28-1-16 (Sink), Mpls 12-3-6 (Sink). Andy and Ben came over to my place to talk ships for a while. We looked over Andy’s progress on the Baltimore and checked on the layout for the insides. What started out as a battling bust turned into a great day for battle. The next battle is the Fray Memorial Day weekend. If you need to come over for a preFray workout let me know. In June we have the Parade of Ships on the 10^th and a battle on the 17^th in Roseville.

6-10-07 Sunday was the Parade of Boats with the Edina Model Yacht Club. We set up a couple of tables with five ships on them at this event trying to recruit new members. We had Peter’s Shanry, Mike’s St Paul, Ben’s Frog CL, my Frog CL & CVL. The CVL had the pretty top Ron made with all of my planes on it. The two Frog CLs served as a before and after for fiberglass hulls. The St Paul & Sharny did the same for the wood hulls. There were several hundred people that stopped by to look at the ships. We handed out over 100 flyers and several DVDs to interested people. I think that we should have 15 or so spectators at the battle this Sunday. Mike, Peter, Blake, Ben & I had a good time showing off our ships and looking at the pretty scale ships on display. A big thanks to Ben for getting us a spot in the building and to the Edina Model Yacht Club for letting us take part in their event. Several of their members remembered us from the last time we set up 7+ years ago. Get your ships ready for this weekend, they’ll be a few people there to watch us battle.

6-17-07. Sunday was hot, sunny and windy, but it was still a nice day for a battle. Ben & I got to the Roseville pond at noon and set up his tent. We checked out the pond and found a few weeds below the surface. We got set up and Peter and Andy arrived. Peter’s Sharny was looking nice with its new coat of grey paint and a white bow. Andy had the first coat of epoxy on the stern of his Baltimore. Tyler came without his Minneapolis hull. Even Moe came down; I had left his gun at home. I never bring it when come shows and when I do bring it he isn’t there. We had a few visitors from our Edina recruiting day. One of them brought an old 1/200the scale Iowa. It is made out of balsa ribs sides and deck. Half of the super structure is gone and it has one shaft. It through me as to what class it was. I had to get Jane’s Fighting Ships out and start comparing. Chandler and his brother Brandon came by to check us out. They took off before I could give them a turn at The Bike. For battling we went out for five sorties, a death match. I had Warspite, Tyler took out The Bike, Ben had the Frog and Peter has the Sharny. First sortie we split into Bob’s ships vs Ben & Peter. Just at the start of battle my bow sidemount stuck open and I started to bleed air. The rest of my guns did not work very well do to lack of air. Ben got some good sterns into me and The Bike. Tyler was able to get a few shots into Peter. We all ended the battle stuck in a bank of weeds. I walked out to remove the ships from this mess. I was surprised to find the bottom of the pond very soft, very sticky clay. But it was not very deep. Out by the weeds it was not even up to my shorts. I changed out my piston in my solenoid and was back in business. Peter changed props as his new one was not moving him fast enough. The second sortie saw Ben blow large holes in the Warspite and The Bike. I chased Peter with my sidemounts and put him down. I had a few haymaker bbs left and was able to get close enough to Ben to get a couple of dents below the window and one below in his Frog. We came out and Peter patched. I gave the Warspite to Andy and it we battled again. Andy chased Peter around too much and sank twice. He also backed into the Mpls and put a big hole in her side. We came out and patched some of the ugly holes and went back out again. One of the last two sorties Ben changed fleets and was against Peter. He put a lot of stern guns into his ship chewing up a large hole in Peter’s white bow. After the 5^th sortie we packed up and headed back home. Time to get ready for NATS. Total scores from all sorties with estimate of holes patched was Warspite 90-10-9 (sinkx2) Sharny 156-5-34 (sinkx2) Frog 2-0-1 The Bike 68-3-5.

7-1-07 We had a get ready for NATs party at my place. Peter & I resheeted the Sharny, Warspite & The Bike. Moe stopped by and picked up his gun. Ryan had the VDT on the table testing all the systems in it. Tyler came by and I made two guns for his USS Minneapolis. He also got some info on the insides of my ship tp copy for his. With all my helping others I did not get the ships sheeted completely. Had to finish up durring the week. Peter also got half done before he left.

7-13-07 to 7-22-07 NATs was a blast. I wrote almost daily updates on the mailing list. Ryan got Best of Class 4 and Rookie of the Year. I got Most Feared Allied. Lars did not sink all week, a first for him. Peter on the other hand sank a lot but learned lots of new stuff and had a good time. Ron battled Monday and Tuesday but had to take off on Wednesday.

8-17, 18 &19. The Ice Breaker. See Ice Breaker article.

9-16-07 Where was this kind of weather for The Fray, NATS & The Ice Breaker? A sunny day with mid 70 temps and very little wind. We tried getting things going a little early this time by having the battle set up start at 11am. I was a half hour late and found Peter & Mike just getting set up. Moe was pond side for a visit and left before the battling started. I took the gun barrel that had fallen off of the St Paul and somehow stayed on the deck during the Ice Breaker and soldered it back together. Slowly but surly more people started to get down to the pond. Chuck had his Graff Spee, Tyler had the Mpls, Andy made it down in time to take out The Bike. I was starting to wonder where Ron & Lars were. We decided to start battling without them. Just as we started to put ships into the water Tyler’s pump motor fried. I did not bring my spares with me and sent him to my house to pick one up. Renae was not surprised when one of the “Boat guys” rang the door bell. Just as battle started Ron and Lars both came down and started to set up. The fleets for the first sortie were The Bike (Andy), TMGBC (The Mighty German Battle Cruiser, Peter), Graff Spee (Chuck) vs Warspite (Bob), St Paul (Mike). Battle started and I took off after Peter. I chased him around and trading sidemounts and stern guns. The St Paul took a couple of shots and was looking very tippy. She rolled completely on here side and sank. I had wader duty so I grabbed the ship, emptied it out and put it back on the water. Mike was able to keep her king of floating to make it off of his five. Meanwhile Chuck had lost power and floating in the water. I was still chasing Peter around. He was able to make a nice turn out and hit me with some good triple stern shots. I left Peter and went over to the Graff Spee and put enough sidemounts into her for the sink. We emptied our guns and pulled the ships to get ready for the next sortie. Chuck patched his damage (20-0-5). Ron & Lars got their ships ready to go and Tyler got a new pump put in his ship. I came back to find my smoke stack filled with rusty bbs. All the rain from the Ice Breaker had got into Ron’s bbs and turned them into a rusty mess.

We had a lot of spectators stop by. Peter brought Jim, a friend of his. There was a large family from southern MN, who names I now can’t remember. One of the older boys, Dave, ran Lars’ I-boat in a sortie. I had just enough safety glasses to go around. The 2^nd sortie fleets were changed around to be Warspite (Bob), TMGBC (Peter), The Bike (Andy) vs Lion (Ron), Tiger (Lars), Mpls (Tyler), Graff Spee (Chuck). Peter had a hard time adjusting to not shooting me as we hardly ever battle together. I was just glad The Bike was on my fleet so I didn’t have to shoot it. The fleets moved around the pond trading shots as they came. I don’t remember any interesting exchanges early in the battle. I do remember that The Bike and Mpls both sank at the same time. Neither had a lot of damage. Tyler jumped right into the water to get his ship out. He had two spots were the top was coming off the radio box. He duct taped it shut hoping this would keep things dry if he sank. The temp fix worked no water in the box. Since this was only the 2^nd sortie for some of the ships no one patched for the 3^rd sortie. Lars was pretty shot up. Ron was having gun problems, getting bbs stuck in the barrels. He came into the battle late and with only one gun. Dave took Lars’ I-Boat to battle in this sortie and Jim took control of The Bike. Lars said he spent more time watching him then battling his own ship. He was right too as the Tiger sank at the very start of the battle. “I forgot to turn my pump on.” was Lars’ excuse. I picked up the ship and dumped out the water so battle could resume. Peter & I concentrated on the Tiger. Peter was able to get some good triples into her side and opened up a couple of big holes. After the punishment the Tiger’s sheeting took at the Ice Breaker a few spots no longer have balsa on them. We must have found a few of them as she sank without taking as much damage as normal. We had to stop the battle and look for a piece of Tyler’s super structure that had fallen off. It floated for a little while, until I tired to prop wash it into shore. We could not find it and battle started again. Ron got the Lion on the water with one working gun. He quickly emptied this gun and called five. The Graff Spee was again dead in the water but had very little damage. I backed in with my haymaker and took care of that, she sank very slowly. Back to reload and out on the water again. My family had arrived to watch. I gave the Warspite to Andy and took The Bike to battle it with my son Zach. This would be his first time in combat, he’s four. I’ve been trying to teach him how to drive but that’s not going too well. So I would drive and he would press the button to fire. Lars had dropped out of the battle and Ron took over the I-boat for this one. The fleets changed to TMGBC, I-boat (Ron), Graff Spee vs Warspite (Andy), Mpls, The Bike (Bob & Zach). Peter said he wanted to sink in this battle. Zach & I tried to help out by putting most of our stern guns into him. Andy got a few sidemounts in for good measure. Soon TMGBC was in it’s normal resting place at the bottom of the pond. Everyone else had run out of air or bbs except for Andy. I took The Bike close to shore and did some practice shooting with his. I drove slowly and let him try his sidemounts. He put enough holes in The Bike to sink it. Peter said he was happy with the way the ship is handling now that he took some weight out of the superstructure and other places. He ran around a lot with damage that normally would have sunk him. Most guys headed off for the day but Chuck, Tyler & I patched up for a cruiser battle. Steve Dickow stopped by to watch the last part of the battle and stayed to see the cruisers. It was a three ship free for all with the two Mpls trying to hit each other. I think Chuck did more damage with his guns then either of us did. But Chuck again had power problems and was barley hanging on. I brought The Bike over and prop washed him until he sank. Total Scores for the four sortie fleet battle were Warspite 49-5-4, Tiger 88-13-19 sink, Lion 41-6-18, I-Boat 43-8-15, Graf Spee 26-7-16 sink, The Bike (Andy) 28-1-5 sink, Mpls 7-3-0 sink, TMGBC 26-7-16 sink, St Paul 5-0-0 sink, The Bike (Bob & Zach) 33-8-17 sink. The Cruiser battle was Mpls 10-1-0, The Bike 12-2-7, Graf Spee unknown with a sink. I think some bellows on the bike got missed. A few holes were too deep for stern guns, but maybe Chuck’s bow gun has enough down angle to get belows. Start thinking about the next battle in early October and maybe early November if the weather holds out.

10-14-07 I looked back on the past battle reports for PPB. We’ve had 5 battles with rain and 3 without this year. Saturday was sunny and warm, a perfect day for battle, of course we were battling on Sunday. Sunday was cloudy, cold and rainy. Just enough drizzly rain that came and went to make it a pain but not enough to make you put on a rain jacket. If it just would have been warm it would not have been as bad. This battle was held in Ramsey at Veteran’s Lake, the pond we are hoping to have NATS 2008 at. It was our test battle to see if the electrical lines over the pond caused any radio interference with the ships. During the battles no one noticed any strange things happening to their warships. I took out one of my CVLs to test the 27mhz AM radios and found some dead spots directly under the power lines. When the ship drifted from under the power line or when I moved from under it the signal came back. Not a big enough issue to prevent NATS. The pond was chest deep, just a little over wader deep, and had a nice hard sandy bottom. The few weeds at the edge of the pond did not cause any problems. I think it will work fine as a NATS pond and will be proposing NATS 2008 to the MWC BOD today. This means you new guys have enough time to get your ship started and ready for the biggest battle of the year in your backyard.

The night before the battle I got the new Frog CL sheeted and trimmed. It was a little bow heavy and I had to add some lead to the stern to get it to sit level in the water. Sunday would be its first sea trails. Peter came to my place to ride up to the pond in the van with me. It looked like we packed for NATS with seven ships in the car. After making two wrong turns we made it to the lake at noon to find John Worley and his dad waiting for us with John Enstrom the site owner. We set up the tent, tables, gear and ships. John W started asking questions while John E finished some lawn mowing and went back to the house to get warm. Slowly everyone else started to arrive. Ron & the Lion, Tyler and the Mpls with new superstructure, Andy, Steve with his Bismarck hull and Sean (a prospective captain) with his son. After getting my ships set up I took the Montcalm out for her first sea trial. She made it about 30 seconds and 30’ before she sank. She’s a little too heavy and the deck developed a tiny bulge in it. The turning put so much water into the hull the pump could not take it. Back to the bench to take the weight out of the stern. But this did not help and she almost sank again. I put it back on the table thinking it would just miss battling today. We hit the water with the teams set up to be Warspite (Bob) & The Bike (John) vs TMGBC (Peter), Lion (Ron) & Mpls Tyler. Tyler found that his new superstructure cause hi ship to be really tippy so he broke it off for battle. John & I moved towards a corner and waited for Peter & Ron to move in. Ron came flying down near the shore and exchanged a few shots then moved off. Peter also came in and shot a few bbs. I chased Peter and took a few triples trying to turn away. Tyler was having pump priming problems again, need to get that fixed, and sank. I dumped the water out and put him back out on the pond. Ron was chasing The Bike around and Peter came back to give me some more triples. I chased him off with a few haymaker shots and he started to settle. His pump was not turning on and I backed in to give him some stern shots in the red and he tipped over and sank. It was a little farther I had been with the Montcalm. As I walked out the water came up to the very top of my waders and I backed off. Peter had to go get his own ship and be wet the rest of the day, sorry Peter. Turns out I had found the deep spot and might have been able to get to the ship but I would not have been able to pick it up without getting the waders full of water. Battle resumed with Tyler sinking again. I took his ship out and started chasing Ron. I was hurting from the triples Peter gave me, chased too much and sank. When I got the ship I found a very large hole with to other large hole in the bow. Peter said knowing he sank me made him feel a little warmer. We went back up to the tent and Peter found that his pump motor had died. I got the Warspite’s ugly holes patched and got the ships ready to go again. Andy took the Warspite out and I duct taped the Montcalm’s deck to see if I could get it to stay on the water. This worked pretty good as she stayed on top of the water. There were no teams for this battle as it turned into a free for all. Tyler’s pump had issues priming again. He sank like a veteran, right next to shore and was put back on the water 2-3 times. One of the times he sat waiting for the pump to prime Andy backed in with the haymaker and got a nice grouping of shots into him. I had the Montcalm running around taking stern shots as I could find them. Since I took the weight out of the back the stern set up at an angle and the guns were hitting too high. I blew off part of the Warspite’s superstructure and hit the Lion’s a few times too. Andy and Ron both were able to get guns on the little ship and I took some damage. Cause I need to work a little harder to be more like Ben. Everyone was out of bbs except for Andy’s haymaker. I took over The Bike and let him line up some shots. This was too much for The Bike and she sank. I could not get it too shore but got it far enough in that the waders held up, I did get a little water in them as I picked it up out of the water but my pants soaked it up. We would have done more battling had the weather been nicer but we were all cold so we packed up and went home. Maybe if we can find a good day before the water freezes we can have one more battle. Get the ship ready and wait for a nice day. You might only get a few days’ notice. Scores were not counted lake side so please post them. My ships had Warspite 23-3-29 sink, The Bike 15-5-7, Montcalm 2-3-3, USS Mpls 18-3-4 1^st sortie sinks 2^nd sortie 14-6-11 sinks, Scharnhorst 32-3-11 sink, Lion 31-3-11

11-18-07 It was a great day for battling yesterday. It was windy, cold (38) with some rain and a little snow. Good thing we were inside building ships instead of battling them. I had the NC in the shop getting the hull ready to be cut. I also cut 14 gun barrels for Peter, Andy and myself. Peter had TMGBC’s superstructure to work on. He is making it out of fiberglass to cut some weight out of his ship. Ron put wax on the Prince Eugen hull plug and packaged it up to send it to Florida to start the hull making process. Lars had the Andria Doria in the shop to start the rebuilt. He took out the old sub deck and started the prep work to install the new deck. We had the first NATS site host meeting and got some of the tasks handed out. We decided that all the people that did not make this meeting would do all the work. Good luck guys! NATS is quickly approaching; get your ships ready to battle so you can make it too. Our next meeting will be December 2, 2007 at noon at Ron’s shop in Blaine. If anyone is interested in coming over to my place Thanksgiving weekend to work on ships let me know. I’ll be getting work done on the NC.

12-2-07 The last meeting of the year was held on Sunday. Over Thanksgiving I had got the Washington’s hull cut out, water channeling sanded to fit, the radio box wired up, all of the motors & solenoids are wired too. The plan at Ron’s shop was to put a little bondo inbetween the balsa wood to fill all the holes in the water channeling. Used a lot more bondo then I thought I would, good think Ron had some light weight stuff. Ben had his NC there and stripped out parts of it for its winter refit. That took all of 10 min then he sat around and socialized. Mike had his St. Paul on the bench finding ways to lose some weight. Peter gave him a how to on building the light weight fiberglass SS. At the end of the day it looked like he was about a half pound under weight. He could still take some weight out with a light weight regulator, pop bottle armor and the lighter SS. Peter was working on his TMGBC superstructure. Lars had the Andria Doria and a LST with him. He got the LST’s deck cut out and ready to be installed. Not sure if he worked on the AD at all. Ron had the Altmark on the bench. It had drive shafts and motor mounts in it. He was getting the ship ready to cut out and trying to fit the rudder in place. Steve Dickow had his wood hull Bismarck on the bench. He looks to have it all sealed and ready to get the water channeling installed. He had the motor mounts, motors and rudders in place. We went over radio box construction and gun placement for his next step. Lars had a super pump motor we tested. It had a ton of RMP and drew 5.5 amps with no load, when placed against the wood table to put some load on it the amps went up to 18 amps. Comparing this to a Stinger we got 2 amps at no load and 10 amps against the table. I know that on a pump a Stinger takes 20 amps. Wonder what that motor would due on a pump, how fast it would melt down and burn out. Hope to see you at the next meeting. We’ll have it at the beginning of January. Not sure of the date yet. Have a nice Christmas everyone; make sure you get a little ship building time in.