# Flying sub bay doors



## kidcury (Jun 26, 2008)

Did anyone figure out how to make the flying sub bay doors on the seaview work ( i mean open and close) Kidcury


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

Yes. Right now my Seaview is one heck of a mess. It's just been roughly covered with thin filler to fill all the sanding scratches and pinholes and is all uneven and stippled and hasn't been sanded yet (tomorrow, and going to finally get primed, too). So please don't hoot and mock my in progress photos. It'll look better than this soon. I hope. I described how I made these on another thread.


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## kidcury (Jun 26, 2008)

*Great job on bay doors*

Hey that looks fantastic a realy great job and the red lighting makes the bay look just like the tv series bay. Looking foreward to your post on how you did it. I finished my seaview some time ago ( pics posted under heading seaview finished at last) however i wasnt completeley satisfied and started taking the bay section to bits, unfortunatley i did a good job glueing it together and it sustained a lot of damage in the process of taking it apart. My wife was horified as i spent a few months building it now she says its ruined. women dont understand these things. i have managed to make a good job of making the diving planes on the conning tower work even though its only a display model. Ive also decided to re spray the whole model and have nearly striped the old paint off. Im begining to think the wife is right , i am crazy.


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

I snap them on and off.


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## X15-A2 (Jan 21, 2004)

As starseeker2 has shown us, the only way to make the FS bay doors work is by first re-contouring the whole underside of the bow. Not for the faint of heart. Unfortunately the doors cannot work when they are curved in two directions (compound curve). One set of edges (in this case it needs to be the port and starboard edges) must be straight. The doors on the filming miniatures were built like the cover on a roll-top desk, a piece of fabric with strips of molding attached to both sides. This allows the door to be ridged in on direction (fore and aft) and flexible in the other. Something similar should be possible on this model too.


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## Captain Han Solo (Apr 5, 2002)

X15-A2 said:


> As starseeker2 has shown us, the only way to make the FS bay doors work is by first re-contouring the whole underside of the bow. Not for the faint of heart. Unfortunately the doors cannot work when they are curved in two directions (compound curve). One set of edges (in this case it needs to be the port and starboard edges) must be straight. The doors on the filming miniatures were built like the cover on a roll-top desk, a piece of fabric with strips of molding attached to both sides. This allows the door to be ridged in on direction (fore and aft) and flexible in the other. Something similar should be possible on this model too.


 
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:


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## Capt. Krik (May 26, 2001)

John P said:


> I snap them on and off.


That will also work.  I considered making working doors on my Seaview but when I considered the time and effort involved I decided against it. Hats off to anyone attempting this.


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

kidcury said:


> I finished my seaview some time ago ( pics posted under heading seaview finished at last) however i wasnt completeley satisfied and started taking the bay section to bits, unfortunatley i did a good job glueing it together and it sustained a lot of damage in the process of taking it apart. My wife was horified as i spent a few months building it now she says its ruined. women dont understand these things. i have managed to make a good job of making the diving planes on the conning tower work even though its only a display model. Ive also decided to re spray the whole model and have nearly striped the old paint off. Im begining to think the wife is right , i am crazy.


But it's a good kind of crazy. The only parts of my Seaview that I haven't hacked to pieces are the cylindrical sides of the hull between the bottom of the deck and the top of the side keels. And even they I have reinforced inside with bulkheads to keep round. Here are a couple shots of this Frankenstein's monster mess as of yesterday. I'm finishing up the 100 grit sanding, have to have another go with 240 before I prime and start the many endless rounds of spot filling and sanding with finer and finer. The only part of model making that I don't like is sanding. I'll do anything to put it off, like spend hours obsessing over artwork for Chariot photoetch. But sooner or later, I guess it's gotta get done. 
And I do mean literally hacked to pieces. The hull must be composed of 50 pieces now, especially around the nose, plus 100s of reinforcement strips inside, and a quart sized can of Featherite filler. Maybe 8 bottles of Tenax. 
But no matter how much you destroy your Seaview, no matter how horrible it looks, you know it's going to come back together again and be all the better for it. The more disasters you have, the more new ways you'll find of fixing them. So next time you know if you don't like the look or the shape of something, you just lop it off and move it over or add something new and proper. That's the fun, making it all your own.


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## kidcury (Jun 26, 2008)

Loooks good to me, Is your seaviw going to be Radio control, as i noticed the cool vents in the bottom of the hull. Kidcury


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## nautilusnut (Jul 9, 2008)

*Flying sub doors*

Starseeker 2,

Are those torpedo tubes I see on the Seaview just behind the closed FS doors on the starboard side? I always wondered where they were!


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

No, it's a purely static model. If you mean that pair of five oval holes on either side of the bottom keel, years ago when I was researching my Seaview drawings (another thread), I spotted them on a Seaview fly over on one (and only one) episode. I have no idea what tape I had in at the time. The 17' never had those holes, as far as I can tell. If I remember the fly over correctly, it began at the nose and continued along the lower stbd side until the Seaview was past, which would rule out the 4' as this was a STTMP stately beauty pass. So I'm assuming that they had to be part of one of the 8' miniatures. It wasn't the one with the bubble tubes under the side keels (which I've pretty much decided not to add). Whatever, I did think they were cool so I made sure to include them.


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## nautilusnut (Jul 9, 2008)

I've attached your photo showing the torpedo tube-like openings. What are they?


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## starseeker2 (Jun 13, 2008)

Torpedo tubes. The Seaview was always firing torpedoes from the front and looking at Ohio class and U boat class subs, they have these long rectangular openings that doors somehow slide over or into or something. On one side I recessed a panel and angled the tubes for a firing line as to the hull as I could and still have a brass rod clear the nose. On the other side I just scribed an Ohio type door. I figured that the torpedoes could be fired at a down angle, or even straight down, and whatever control mechanisms they have would get them going toward their target at some point. 
As far as I remember, this is the only total creative liberty I've taken with the model. Oh, and the minisub bay. I seem to remember reading somewhere many, many years ago that one of the miniatures was fitted with spring and/or compressed air pistons under the hull that actually fired miniature torpedoes. Some of the miniature torpedoes (I don't know if they were the Seaviews or an enemies) were 10 1/2 and 22 inches long.


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## jbond (Aug 29, 2002)

I always thought the flyover shot was done with the 17 foot miniature--the scale of that shot is just so convincing, it looks way more impressive than any of the other shots done with the 8 foot model.


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