YMCA in one hour.

[bigdave]

Be there or be square!! BD.

[crazy ivan]

Well it was good to

Well it was good to finally get back to our old winter home at the Y. Attendance was 100%, with Don and Patty Osler, Big Dave Welch, Paul Strassner, Don May, Larry Kuntz, Scott Russell, Mike Caswell along with two friends, and yours truly all present and accounted for. It was a chance to get caught up on what everyone else has been up to all winter, shoot the bull a bit and, of course run subs! Well some of us got to run anyway. It seems we had a visit from the RF gremlins a short time into the run.

I was in the process of trimming out my newly reconfigured Revell Gato when suddenly all my servos went berserk. About this time, Mike's Seawolf went out of control to the bottom and had to be retrieved with a net. Big Dave's Seawolf also refused to answer its command signals. The common factor? All three of us were using Polk Seeker II receivers. These units are synthesized, and must acquire the proper signal to initialize. They just could not get a lock. I tried to set my Tracker III transmitter to another channel, but everything kept coming back as "BUSY". A quick check of the local electromagnetic atmosphere with Don Osler's frequency scanner showed at least half of all the available channels lit up. Something drastic inside the building had suddenly changed, and we never did determine what it was. The three of us were drydocked for the night, so we just watched the other subs run and socialized a bit. I took some pictures. Here are some of them]Right click on "View Image" for larger view[/b]


Paul Strassner and his kayak




Larry running his Akula and Don Osler






Big Dave and Don May






Mike Caswell and friends


Mike's boats






Scott Russell and his little Yellow Sub






Happy Faces!

[Larry Kuntz]

Great photos CI. At least

Great photos CI. At least you got time to snap some photos since you couldn't run. Nice to get back together again.
Now to figure out the Seeker II problem.

[seahorse]

CI, thanks for the write

CI, thanks for the write up and for posting the pictures!

Haven't had a chance to sift through the videos from last night, but hopefully I will have a few to post later tonight.

It was great to finally get out and stretch my R/C legs. Nothing like sniffing pool chemicals in that 90 degree indoor temperature.

[bigdave]

I would not have missed

I would not have missed it.
I even got to see Paul do his banana dance. Dam video camera was off at the time.
I hope I got some good video of the subs.
I will check tonight. BD.

[crazy ivan]

Needless to say, my radio

Needless to say, my radio worked fine as soon as I got home.

[kazzer]

Well, at least I got

Well, at least I got another ten minutes 'stick time'! I must be up to all of three hours total now!

When you don't know what you are doing, it comes hard to see your boat playing up. Finding out that it wasn't my fault, didn't help much!
I did get to see my Snort working on the Valiant.

My pool is melting around the edges, so with luck, I could be finishing off trimming her out in the next week or so.

It was good to see the gang again. Did I see a Holland there?

[Larry Kuntz]

As an after thought, we

As an after thought, we should have switched off all of our regular transmitters and see if you guys could get a lock on the Seekers first. Always hard to simulate problems once we leave the Y. We may have been flooding the room with multiple interference signals. RF wise, that is a strange structure.

[bigdave]

I was thinking that too.

I was thinking that too. We need to do some testing. I was running for 1/2 hour fine until the Trackers turned on. Then I lost lock on the R/X. I am using a Seeker-6 R/X in the Seawolf but my Multiplex T/X. Strange. BD.

[JWLaRue]

We had some perhaps similar

We had some perhaps similar problems during some of the SubComEast runs a couple of years back. The Tracker either wouldn't lock to a frequency when turned on.

The work-around was to greatly increase the distance between the Tracker (receiver and transmitter) and the *other* subs running while trying to get a lock. The thinking is/was that all the metal roof beams were causing some sort of reflectance problem.

It would be interesting to see if you can replicate the problem and then see if putting distance between the transmitters helps any.

-Jeff

[dono]

More pictures from the run

[Larry Kuntz]

Thanks Don. These are good

Thanks Don. These are good photos. I have a new mount for the camera to try Sunday. Hope to get some good video.