Rick Teskey seaview build

[greenman407]

It is time to put

It is time to put on some Cadillac fins. First ,they come in two pieces for each side. Since I wanted this Sub to be lighted I had to make provision for two lights in the fins. To do that I took some 1/8" brass tube and curved it and installed it in such a way as to allow relatively quick change of a light bulb when the time arrived. I terminated one end about 3/4" inside at the top of the fin to allow room for the bulb itself but also room for the lenses to partially recess themselves inside the fin to give them something to glue to. The other end I allowed to run wild. As it was to penetrate the hull it could help line up the fin and give some support. Its important to note that there is supposed to be a 90 degree( there is no degree symbol on this keyboard) angle between the two fins themselves and a 45 degree angle between the fin and the vertical centerline. After epoxying the two halves together and carefully marking the hull it was time to mix the epoxy. As usual it was tacked into proper position with CA. Then I took masking tape and made a dam underneath the fin and extended it upwards at both ends to trap the liquid epoxy from flowing out of the joint.




Now the hard part. Just to be different I wanted to put a wide fillet in the joint but because it would be highly visible the filet had to be perfect. I choose Green Squadron spot putty as it was readily available( read,,, it just happened to be what I had in my junk drawer at the time). I didnt realize at the time that my filet was going to be so wide and deep that the putty would crack as it cured. Oh well, I used the dremel to open up the cracks and put on more putty. Now to make it perfect I took a no. 2 pencil ( because thats what I had in my junk drawer) and wrapped it with sandpaper(220 grit) and started to sand the filet. It took a couple of sanding sessions and applications of putty but it turned out great.



The other bad thing about this stuff is it takes a lot of paint to ( relatively speaking) get the spot puttys surface texture to match the otherwise smooth finish of the gelcoat. Unfortunately I dont have any closeups of this operation but I hope you guys get the drift of what I am trying to show you.



I know that most of this stuff is basic to most of you but its a show and tell that I am having fun with. So humur me. Also heres a link that I would like you to check out. It is a website put together by Ben Cliffe from Canada. It contains excellent quality video and still photography. In it you will see some action videos of subs taken from underwater, quite a different perspective than what most of us are used to seeing. And low and behold there is even a Seaview in there. I wish you all a good evening! http://www.bcliffe.com/subs/Submarines.html

[Guest]

Rick Teskey Seaview Build

Mark, Is that a new Seaview build or the boat you've previously taken to the pond. In any case the tail fin have turned out real well. I always enjoy seeing the rough work come alive in the finished product and the comparison between the two. I don't know where you get the time with all the projects you've been involved with lately. Must be a single man. : ) I'm thinking of making a trip to the Den next month on the 21st, to check out the Gato in an alligator free environment Let me know if you think you'll be free. Al,

[greenman407]

Hi Al, No its the

Hi Al, No its the same boat, Im doing this build from photos ive taken previously. I try to add to it weekly, so I pull out of my archives so to speak, but im about to catch up. No im not single Im married. Jan. 21st maybe possibly. The club is supposed to be meeting there soon, we will see.

[greenman407]

Seaview build

Hello dudes, its been over a week and I thought that I would update my thread. One of the main things that drew me to this sub in the first place was the windows and the lights. It just wont do unless I can navigate the depths of the local lake at night. To be able to look down into the water at night and see my model sub lighting up the place, why just the thought of it gives me thrills and chills at the same time. So to be able to do this I contacted Ram products to see what was available. Here is a link to them
http://www.ramrcandramtrack.com/index.html I purchased their navigation lights kit. It gives you three LED lights. A red one a green and a clear to install on your sail. The red and green ones were the perfect brightness in my opinion but the clear one was way too bright for my tastes so I recessed it into the top rear of the sail and its just about right.

The nose lights were a different story. The main headlight I wanted to be bright so again RAM had the answer. A large LED lighting kit for a HO model locomotive. I drilled a large hole in the back of the lens that Dave Merriman supplied and siliconed it in. Since it comes with its own circuit board it was neccesary to put the board in a thick wall balloon and seal it shut to keep water out.

You can see it here along with the large front lens and a plastic sheet shelf that I made to go under the windows to keep you from seeing the floor of the sub hoping that this would enhance its appearance. But before the headlight can be installed you got to make a hole for it.

As you can see I now have a hole for it. But to get that hole there I started with a good accurate mark and began to drill. Using a 3/8" drill(motor that is) I broke out the drill index and started with a 1/16" drill bit.When drilling most anything a drilling operation is fraught with dangers. Anything from a damaged model as the drill bit grabs and tears away adjacent material to having the hole off center.So with white nuckles I went drill bit by drill bit until I had the right size hole 9/16" if I remember correctly.It came out perfectly. Of course I would recommend practice first. Too slow a speed will cause it to dig in for sure and throw your hole off. Too fast a speed will make control difficult. Perhaps a Dremel would be better for the average bear. If you screw it up there is always bondo.From there you can silicone in your headlight and lens. To provide the lights that show through the windows I paid Radio Shack a visit and bought 2, 12 volt lights that were small with low amp. draw. They were then siliconed to the top inside of the hull. You can see them here.



The tail lights we have already talked about are grain of wheat bulbs that were purchased from a model railroad hobby store. They are also 12 volts. The navigation lights are run off of 3 volts so I used Radio Shacks AA battery holders for that.



So how does it work? Here are some shots I took in my pool one night.













Awesome if I have anything to say about it. But to get the lights to shine out of the windows this good you have to have windows. So the subject of the next posting will be the windows themselves. Good Night All.

[greenman407]

Goodevening all, its been several

Goodevening all, its been several weeks since I last added anything to this thread, the wife is not home so here we go. I almost had nightmares thinking about the next step. Adding the windows presented me with a challenge. Since the windows consisted of a thin sheet of clear flexable plastic all kinds of bad things could happen!! To me the best way to attach the windows was silicone. But how to do an adequate job of applying it so that it doesnt come off and at the same time not get silicone where you dont want it. First I cut the plastic down in size to the rough dimension that I needed to cover the area of the windows with extra room all around for good adhesion. I then held it up against the inside of the hull about where I wanted it and marked each window with a pencil all around the edges from the outside. Then hopefully to keep from getting silicone all over the exposed window area I drilled holes in between each window up and down left and right to allow for a way for the excess silicone to be displaced. It would then go through the holes and form a bead on the backside of the plastic instead of squirting out into a visible area. Note please that the plastic was preformed into a compound curve by Rick Teskey and associates to perfectly match the shape of the inside of the nose. Note also that the holes were drilled in the plastic and not in the Seaview.






Perhaps through these views you can see what was done. It worked out very well.As you can tell from some of the pictures the windows are not flush with the skin of the submarine but as designed they are recessed. It looks good but it creates a lot of extra drag. Oh well, such is the price of looking good sometimes. I really sweated this one out, probably unnessesarily as the silicone could have been removed from the windows but I really wanted this to come out right. I think it did. I bid you goodnight.

[greenman407]

As a side note and

As a side note and addition to a previous post on lighting this submarine I would like to draw your attention to this photo.
You will notice the large headlight lens sitting on top of the semicircle shaped plastic sheet. Notice that I have painted it all over except for the face. This was done because of a highly unexpected side effect of using epoxy to glue the hull halves together. As you know 30 minute waterproff epoxy is generally clear. You will also note that I used it all the way around the nose. What else could I have done right? Well in the same way that fiber optics work, I discovered to my horror , this epoxy transmitted the light that the headlight produced everywhere that this continuous bead of epoxy was present all the way around the hull , right straight through the paint as if the paint wasnt even there. When you turned the lights out it looked like the Nautilus from Disneys 20,000 leagues under the sea charging the warship emitting a green glow. Only in this case it wasnt green it was a yellowish color. What to do???? Since it was obvious that no amount of paint was going to stop the bleed through, radical crazed alternative thinking was needed. First I needed to figure out what in the Sam Hill was happening and then rectify it. When it finally occured to me what was going on I just heavily painted the inside surface of the epoxy and the outside of the lens so that when the lens penetrated the hull and the epoxy itself, through the hole that I drilled in it, no light would be absorbed and transmitted. Wow! What a speech! I hope you got it. Sometimes I ramble. Sorry

[greenman407]

Hi guys, I just wanted

Hi guys, I just wanted everyone to know that I am still alive. After a computer crash, The flu,vacation,working every saturday,four other projects, waiting for parts from caswell,and other unmentionables I havent posted in a while. I even missed three sub runs in the midst of all this. But forward progress is being made and I plan on continuing this thread shortly. See Ya

[Rogue Sub]

I did hear where is

I did hear where is Mark a few times this staturday! Keep going at it man youll get there.

Kevin

[greenman407]

Since my first submarine project

Since my first submarine project , a Subtek Albacore was an ongoing, testing and experimenting project that was running at the same time as was this Seaview project, valuable lessons learned from each benefited the other. Case in point. What radio system was best to use?
You see here a Hitec laser 4 channel radio on 75 mhz. Not the best choice. I found out the hard way after I bought two of them and experienced many problems. They seem to work fine for surface craft(targets) but not for subs. For one thing if you want to run a failsafe unit with it , it wont work. Because if you turn off your transmitter(simulating a loss of signal) your sub will go crazy! The dive planes go bizirk with a capital B. They look like a pair of windshield wipers going back and forth. Then your speed control is liable to do anything that it wants including full speed ahead. Under these conditions the failsafe wont even try to function. But when you turn your radio back on again everything is fine again. Also if you set your planes and rudders at nuetral and then turn off your radio, when you turn it back on again they will be in a different spot. So you then have to get out the allen wrenches and reset them only to have to do it again the next time. A few other subcommittee members have complained of similar problems. So after listening to some advice from a few old hands I went onto EBAY and bought this.
It is a Futaba 9cap helicopter radio,( 9 channel PCM/PPM)I paid 120 dollars for it and it solved a lot of problems.It is Easily converted to 75 mhz by plugging in a different module ,and purchasing a used reciever(also off of Ebay) for cheap.The radio signal is super stable and in pcm mode you dont need a failsafe unit as it is built in. It also has mixing so you dont need a mixer if you are running an x-tail. If you are running twin screws you can use these cool slider controls on the sides of the radio to control them.

Of course you will need either two speed controls like this atomic subs speed control shown here on the left or,

one of these neet dual motor speed controls from dimension engineering for the same money.

They can be reached at

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/

It can also be used to make it possible to do some other neet things that I will share with you next time. be cool yall

[greenman407]

Also during this time I

Also during this time I became obsessed with being able to find nuetral boyancy(spelling). I wanted to be able to (without forward motion ) submerge on an even keel down into the water and hover. Then when I was ready saunter off unhurried anywhere I wanted to go. Of course you would need pretty clear water to do this. Looking into this I was told that the Dave Meriman WTCs were not able to do this. So I set out atempting to do just that, and I was sucessful. How did I do it? Easy and you can too. First I needed a way to better control the gas expelling the water out of the ballast tank. It generally happened way too fast. Venting of the air out of the ballast tank seemed to happen at a slower rate so this was deemed less of a problem. The joystick on my old Hitek radio was not the answer. This is.
Its a Futaba 9chp radio. Notice the three knobs above center of the radio. They are of course, rotary dials that have clearly marked detents on them. Then by taking the WTC out of the submarine and putting it in a sink or a bathtub and being very observant you can count the detents from the nuetral position on the knob until you can observe the gas just starting to expel the water. At this point it is happening very slowly and controllably. So you either mark it on your controller or remember it. With using the joystick on your radio you have no point of reference and its hard to know exactly whats going on inside the Wtc. With the detented knob you know right where you are at and it is quite repeatable. Another thing that made it easy to do this is a modifacation that Dave Meriman made in his wtcs.





You will notice in the middle of the hose running from the gas valve to the copper propel tank there is a small brass tube. Notice that it is crimped. This is Daves version of a Nascar fuel restricter plate. It slows down the release of propel for better control. It enabels you to do this



again and again



Of course this is not the Seaview. This is my Albacore that I used as a testbed. However there are a few other things that I need to mention. Next time.

[greenman407]

In order to get this

In order to get this to work well you have to set your sub to run a little bit in the wild. What did you say?!!? Its usually prefered to set up your sub to float with just a small amount of sail sticking out of the water when you have a completely flooded ballast tank. This is so you have the maximum amount of reserve bouancy that you can get. However notice this picture
The vent valve is located in the extreme rear of the ballast tank. When you have a small amount of air or gas in your ballast tank it will congregate all around your copper propel vessel and be unavailable to vent.Or if it is available at the vent valve ,through one of the laws of physics that I am not aware of there is not much force available to move it. Contrast that with having a completly full( of air )ballast tank and then vent it. It happens with much more force and speed. If you run your sub more in the wild (less reserve bouancy, more weight)there will be a greater amount of air or gas in your ballast tank with which to vent allowing you quick adjustments if you let in too much gas and your sub is heading for the surface. So you can add some removable weights with some screws to allow you to set it up and play with nuetral bouancy and them remove them when you want to run it in the traditional way. Its almost the coolest thing I have ever done. I would just go out to my pool at night by myself,turn on the light inside of my pool and practice submerging and stopping and hovering in one spot. Sometimes you overcompensate and your sub goes all the way to the bottom or bobs to the surface. After a while you get to know your sub and you learn to anticipate what its going to do and just spritz the control a little bit. After a while you will figure it out. Dave meriman didnt design his system for the fine control needed to dial a depth as some systems have. However Im having fun making due. seeyall

[greenman407]

Another problem that I have

Another problem that I have been contending with during this time was water getting into my WTCs. I attribute this to running in heavily chlorinated pools eating away at the seals. The problem is pinpointing the point of entry.So I took the WTC out of the sub and submerged it in my sink. Then I employed this
Many of you will recognize this as a inexpensive automotive testing vacuum meter available from discount auto or other such stores. Remove the valve core out of the shrader type air valve located in the rear bulkhead of the wtc and attach the hose over it and apply no more than about 10 inches of vacuum and watch what happens

On mine I could actually see water leeching slowly past the large o-ring. Since I noticed no damage to the o-ring I used silicone grease on it and that has ended that leak for good. In the past I used light weight machine oil. However, I could also see water slowly dripping from behind the motor through the gearbox. Since there is no way to see exactly where it was coming from(you cant crawl inside of it) I needed to do something else . Once again Dave Meriman came to the rescue and suggested that I take the hose off of the vacuum gun and blow through it and see from an external view where it was coming from. Sure enough it was coming from one of the motor shaft seals. Evidenced by the bubbles coming out. After installing a new one with some silicone grease the leak has been conquered.

[greenman407]

http://www.subcommittee.com/forum/icon_confused.gif Also plagueing me was

Also plagueing me was a continuous radio problem where one or more channels would not function properly. Sometimes you could vent but not blow. Or the motor just wouldnt function. Or the planes would jitter and then go to there extreme positions. As soon as you took it out of the water it would be ok again. I then thought it might be the antenna wire so I replaced it with another piece with the same results. I sealed and resealed the end. I also resealed around the antenna mounting nut on the outside of the WTC. Still no good. I then replaced everything else including the reciever, apc, speed control , and mixer. Still the same. At that point I was beginning to suspect the transmitter. But first I thought about the antenna wire again. What if the wire was not perfectly waterproof. What if water was slowly seeping in through a small imperfection. What if it was shorting out just a little bit? ( Is there any such thing)The wire I was using was a 20 gauge wire on a roll that I purchased from radio shack. This time I used some wire that I had laying around and low and behold the problem was solved. It caused me a lot of aggrevation and a lot of lost time. The moral of the story is that not all wire is indeed waterproof.

[greenman407]

Here are some pictures from

Here are some pictures from a fun-run that the subcomdeepsouth put on not too long ago at a park in Kings bay Georgia. Its not too far from the submarine base there.In each picture you will see the Seaview that I am in the process of building and modifying to my liking. I believe that this will continue for a good while yet.














This was the occasion of her maiden voyage. Unfortunately I had no one at the time willing to take video for me. Since I find it difficult to drive and take video at the same time I let the event go basically unrecorded. However I have since found a camera man(my wife) and there will be plenty of pictures and video in the coming months. In the meen time I am still tweaking. I will post it all here in time

[greenman407]

Here is a video that

Here is a video that I forgot that I had taken at the fun-run. sorry but its just of it sitting on its stand at waters edge.

http://wavelit.com/media/608/Seaview_at_funrun/