Hi Steve

I also know a "little" about the Phalanx
The crew stands some decks bellow, working together with the air warning radar/ surface warning and with fire control radar.
They are mounted on container modules that usualy are near the outboard of the ship, so a large amount of shells take the dip!
It is fed by a belt like ammo container, small, but large enough to contain the rounds necessary to kill up to 5 incomming missiles...

Hope this helped

Skipper

And back to topic

Tom,
I noticed that you have acquired L'Arsenal forecastle replacement
Is it that good? Does it fit like a glove to the hull?
Can you take a photo of both next to each other?

Skipper

It seems to be slightly more "accurate" with respect to the placement of items like hatches, vents etc, and includes a real set of chains for the anchors as well as lots of PE to finish out things like the windlass capstans. The breakwater in front of turret #1 is also more to the right size as far is thickness.

I have a couple of shots of the replacement in my gallery, but NOT side by side with the original for comparison. I'll try and do that this weekend. Overall it' s probably a nice to have item, but the expense probably makes it hard to justify for most. I can guarantee that virtually no one but a true fanatic would be able to see much difference.

The fit isn't TOO bad for resin, I think. I did some dry fitting and it appears to fit very nicely at the bullnose in the bow. And the fit seems to be pretty good most of the length. However it appears to be just a little too narrow at the back end where it mates to the main deck section. And the "problem" appears to only be on one side (port).

The gap is small enough that I expect to be able to compress the port side of the hull against the deck and get it to bond tightly with CA, and not really have any noticeable "shift" in the side of the hull.

However, because the kit supplied main deck section IS the proper width at that point, I've had to trim it a bit to make the two sides of the joint the same width.

I am hopeful that putting the hull, the fore deck and the main deck together isn't going to be too horrible, but we'll see.

The sequence is what I'm struggling with at the moment. I suspect what I'm going to do is, after making sure the main deck will fit properly when the hull is "pinched" to fit the foredeck, I'll glue the unpainted foredeck to the hull. I've got to repaint the Haze Grey portion at the front of the hull anyway, so I'm planning on masking everything else on the hull off, glue on the separate "bullnose" piece, make sure I've got all the gaps properly closed and sanded, and then airbrush not only the upper front section of the hull Haze Gray, but the entire foredeck as well.

I realize that all the horizontal surfaces will then have to be re-painted the 20-B deck Blue, but I used the same proceedure on the main section without too much trouble. With all the small items I simply could not figure out a way to mask BOTH surfaces for airbrushing and this sequence seemed the least difficult.

Tom

I think if I were to do it, I would fix the stern section and the main section to hull. After they were good and set then add the replacement piece. If there is a gap you can't take care of a small thin strip of styrene or filler could be used. Putting bow piece in first could cause you to have to trim the other two pieces giving fate the opportunity for an accident.

I concur with Steve Joyce here

Skipper

I'll do some dry fitting over the weekend and see what it looks like. The LAST thing I want is to get to the end of the project when I've got most of the big pieces completed and not be able to put the whole thing together!!

Tom

Boy !! Then you'ld have a real hull down situation :-) :-) :-)

Sorry just had to throw that in being an old tanker where hull down actually means something good

Tom ...
Simply outstanding !!
And thank you very much for the great descriptions and responses about your work because it sure helps us mortals learn something ...

John

Ouch!!! :-) :-)

Tom