In this competition each ship, directed by its' captain, gives and receives damage from on-board BB guns.  If the damage received by a ship is great enough the ship will actually sink!  The damage, though, is easily repaired and the ships are quickly ready to battle again!

Damage like this can be fixed in minutes using paint as glue and small silkspan pieces for patching material.

    All electronics are sealed to prevent water entry, and the major structural pieces are BB proof.  All that is damaged, from even a sink, is the thin balsa skin on the hull.  Battles are of course done in shallow ponds to allow easy recovery of sunken ships.

    The success or failure of any ship or team depends entirely on the Captain's skill and the ships reliability!

    While some people can not understand why we would build ships only to get "shot up", except for the replaceable skin, the ships themselves are not damaged badly.  In fact some ships have been fighting for over a decade!

Never get stuck against the shore, or the sharks will come to feed!
Photos courtesy of Tom Tanner

Click here to go to an article I wrote shortly after attending my first Warship Nationals.  (Or Nats as we call them).  I have added a couple notes, but otherwise it is unchanged from the original.

Click here or on a picture to go to the Photo Gallery.

Click here to go to to Construction Articles. (Updated 02/04/2001)

    1.  Homemade Deck Hold Down Latches (Added 02/04/2001)

Click here to go to to an Overview of Warship Combat Ship Systems.

For more information and pictures on R/C Warship Combat click here for the links page.  There are many more great pictures and articles at these Pages!!!

    I also have other pages with sections on my other hobbies, and interestes.  I invite you to visit them by clicking here Ron's Web Page, or you can go to the title page by clicking on the links below:

The Miniature Live Steam Engine page.
The Atlas lathe I am restoring - FAQ and other useful information on Atlas lathes.
The Metalworking Projects Page.
The Public Domain Graphics page.
A page with links of interest to both hobbies
Nathan's page.

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