Thanks for all the good wishes for my auntie folks - I shall pass them on of course. She's probably staying in hospital until next week now: they're struggling to keep her heart-rate down so she might yet need a pacemaker. She seems fine of herself and is more frustrated at being stuck in hospital than anything.
Still think I'm going to miss the deadline with the submarine. However, progress has been made.
1. Hull together and modified with bulges, 'skegs' (sea legs) and new hatches:
2. I forgot that the design needed maneuvering thrusters. Fitting transverse ones in the bow was no problem because I'm deleting the original torpedo tubes, so they just need oval scribed doors replacing with round ones. However, there's not much room in the aft ballast tanks because they have the drive shaft and a lot of other equipment running through them, and a self-imposed limitation is that none of the mods must be visible while the sub's on the surface. The solution I've adopted is steerable thruster pods hanging from the horizontal planes. Here are the pods, made from 1/72nd RP-3 rocket warheads and LVTP Buffalo idler wheels (God those things have proved useful!):
