By Don RC
1/200 Japanese Battleship Yamato (RC conversion)
This the battle ship Yamato. It started out as an 1/250 but ended up as a 1/200 after I went into it. It took about a month to do this. This ship was at about 3 ft with the beam of 5 inches I did not know at the time there was a larger one then the 1/250 scale until I started doing some research. I Could not afford what I wanted, so the next best thing to do was work with what I had as I picked this one up at one of the swap meets. It had the Plastic decks with very little detail single motor with gear drive ( very noisy) no added goodies it was at 3 ft not 4 ft , OK time to do some of my or Dons custom work . The first thing I did I pick up another 1/250 complete kit from pacific front hobbies The next thing to do was look up a set of plans for the 1/200 not a problem at all for me .since a buddy of mind had a set handy , Then it was time to figure out where to cut and start and what to use for expanding , I knew they did it with real ship so there was no reason I could not do it with a model . I Then figure it out where to cut , Then took the cut and off i went to build a new custom 1/200 ship that I could not a ford. I added new ribs, added a foot then resided it and glass it . you can not tell where it was cut for it looks good inside as well , I added new ribs. a new complete deck and use wood instead of the plastic. Completely rebuilt the main guns , But did some changing to this one I set up the turrets to turn back and forth, Then added a new working radar to rotate as well as a complete of set of lights inside and out , Then added about an inch and redid the Superstructure , Then I completely redone the motor set up by adding four small 12 volt motors and got rid of the single gear box Works much better . Added a lot more detail on the ship and a crew , did allot of other little goodies , So now I have a one of kind 1/200 custom scale yamato , Here is the process it went through and NO I have no signs of leakage . Even have a picture of my sub stocking it for a fight . The Beam did not change and it work out just as good and did a complete paint job , Power is a 12 volt jell cell , Manual speed control , As well as a 4 channel radio ,
