Welcome aboard.
@Builder2010 Congrats. Was nice to see Ryanās video. I was in ER#3 with him last Spring (you were so right about access and the darkness in there). While we were there I believe he took a photo and a measurement (which he was sending to someone). Iām think that was for you!
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Welcome aboard Dave.
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Would you consider additional work to create additional versions of all 3 of the models youāve created for the other Iowa Battleships? I feel Iowa herself (given the limits of our self guided route) could really use all of them?
I have thought about itā¦a lot. That said, there are two significant obstacles that need to be overcome. The first is cost and time. I could not build them for donation only as I did for New Jersey. I would have to charge for time and materials, and it would be expensive. Second is logistics of getting them to the ships. I am able to drive the models to the Big J in Philly since we have family there and use the trip for other reasons. With this method, Wisconsin is within reach, but Iowa and Missouri are not. That would entail more expenses as they would to be packed, crated and shipped as works of fine art. I am assuming youāre making this suggestion as an interested person and not as a CEO or curator of the other ships. I have no doubt that lessons learned in building the first ones would reduce the time needed to build copies, but they would still takes many months to complete. Thanks for the interest!
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While Iām officially getting underway on building the steering gear model, thereās one more thing going on with the engine room. I wanted to created an animated walkthrough of the entire model to serve as a movie to complement the model for those who will never be able to walk through the real thing; especially ER #3. With my older MacBook Pro 2019, it didnāt have the chops to do all the screen prints and render them. I bought a new MacBook Pro 2026 16" M5 Pro. This one was able to let me smoothly walk through the model and render every visual. Itās not a full-motion movie, for many reasons. But the visuals are pretty convincing.
Hereās an example.
I wrote a script, but was not happy about me narrating it. So I did some research in ChatGPT and found that it can read aloud any text you give it, AND you can tell it what kind of voice and what purpose it would be. So I did a test paragraph in a voice kind of like Gregory Peck. It did a beautiful job of reading it for a technical narration. Thereās a glitch. Apple computers canāt capture audio directly from content on the screen because of copyright blocks. Thatās kind of oxymoronic as you CAN record any visual on the screen. Thereās a work around and my genius daughter-in-law has an app that does just that. You may notice that there are a lot of geniuses in my family. Tech is great especially when used for good things. When finished it will be posted on YouTube. Stay tuned.
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Marvelous! You are amazing. I look forward to seeing the video and your next project.