Rick Teskey seaview build

[greenman407]

Irwin Allen is going to

Irwin Allen is going to turn over in his grave. He is dead isnt he? All you rivet counters might want to look away. If you will remember back to episode number 25 I had just described how I had drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom of the nacelles to admit more water. I did that because I am not a rivet counter(well just a little bit,,,sometimes) If you look at a Los Angelos class sub, the U.S. Navy made changes to them to improve performance. For example they experimented with different propellors until they found the best one and they moved the planes from the sail and installed them in the bow. So I too make changes to improve performance. After I drilled those holes forward speed improved greatly. However there was one unwanted side effect. Since I was operating each motor independently for steering in tight corners, when I would go forward on the one side and astern on the other it would spin around properly but the sub would lean somewhat in the water. This was caused by the water exiting those drilled holes at the bottom . What to do , What to do ? Dave Merriman thought I should fill those ugly holes and build an internal flapper valve that would give the required flow of water but slam shut in reverse. Hey what a fantastic idea, where can I get one? His reply came, well you make one of course. Oh. Well perhaps someday but I want to see where this takes me. So how can I channel the water forward instead of down? I know , Ill make some cool hood scoops er intake scoops.
Here is a shot of the sub showing the aformentioned holes.So to make the scoops I needed long ones to cover all the holes yet be somewhat attractive but not so large as to detract noticably from the clean lines of the Seaview. So in the car I went to Homedepot. Looking up and down every isle and looking at all the possibilitys I settled on this.

Its a extention cord hider. Its made to conceal the wire from your ceiling fan as it runs down the wall. Out of it was cut two of these.

Since the material is flexable , especially after its cut down lengthwise I didnt cut the contour into it but rather I resolve to bend it and attach it and thus cause it to conform.Notice that it tapers from about 3/8" to nothing and the front face is not square but angled, quite attractive if I do say so myself







I will be attaching it with CA glue and then filling the seems with putty and repainting. I believe that the end results will be no more rolling in the water and perhaps improved forward performance due to forward motion assisting in pushing water into the scoops. Time will tell. But before I install them I will continue testing it as is. Keep the faith

[greenman407]

Here is a shot of

Here is a shot of the Seaview after her maiden voyage sitting on the work bench on site. Here you can clearly see the amount of foam needed to float it . Guess what? Ive since had to add more.
You can see up inside it the battery up front and all the foam surrounding it.

[greenman407]

Next thing that I wanted

Next thing that I wanted to do was an upgrade to the battery department. Previously I had pressed into service a 6 cell nicd battery of about 2000 mah. It was mounted in its own custom battery box surrounded by foam.


There is no battery in this view but I think you can see where it went. Problem was of course that it got wet. I had cut off all surrounding covers off the battery so as not to hold water and promote quick drying. I also applied a corrosion inhibitor to the connections. Still I was not satisfied. Then I saw that Caswell offered battery WTCs. Now I wouldnt feel so bad about installing a better battery without fear of messing it up. Also the wtc would take the place of some of the foam.



The battery WTC is 3" by almost 8" long. The battery is a 4200 mah 7.2 volt nimh. Exceptional runtimes. No need to worry about running out of power after 10 mins. or so like before. Here you can see it nestled perfectly in the space vacated by its predecessor. Still plenty of room between it and the main wtc for hookup of battery wires and placement of AA batteries to run the sail navigation lights.









Well Ta Ta for now dudes.

[greenman407]

If you click on some

If you click on some of my pictures in this thread more to likely you will discover that this guy doesnt know how to resize his pictures for posting on this forum. Well not so anymore. Behold some of my resized pictures for your amusement. They are some of the same pics from the last posting.






Thanks Jeff!

[greenman407]

http://www.subcommittee.com/forum/icon_biggrin.gif howdy yall, I had

howdy yall, I had 3 (three) problems preventing me from continuing on and once again they were of an electronic nature. One was that I could hear a grinding, slipping noise everytime that I would operate the ballast tank servo. This I correctly assumed was the internal gears of that servo slipping. Also everytime you would operate that servo the sternplane servo would jitter uncontrolably back and forth. If you were operating the motors for propulsion at the same time they would cut out. Not happy with current events I set out to fix it. Mind you it took a little time but we finally got it. You see the fine speed control that I installed, although a good controller, has a weak BEC circuit. So when the stern plane servo jittered back and forth in concert with the use of the ballast servo , it was too much for the BEC circuit and the speed control would momentarily cut out. The ballast tank servo is a HITEK HS-81. In this servo they sacrificed efficiency for power as it pulls 800 ma while a standard servo like a Futaba 3003 only pulls 300ma. Well the servo needed to be changed anyway so I set out to do just that.
Here you see the offending Hitek HS-81 servo. I dislike Hitek as you can probably tell.

And here is its replacement. surprise, surprise it looks identical. It probably is made by the same people with just a different label.Now getting the old one out wasnt so bad , but getting the new one in was going to be a trip.

This is the d&e 3" mod 2 and the servo is a long way inside.

As you can see my hand is too big to get inside for proper placement of the new servo, so I will have to bring out a special tool for this job.

Its a little hand and it belongs to " Nathan " Oh , Let me put a face to the name.

I had to bribe him to get him to help me, you know, food , clothing , shelter. Ok now that that was done the next step was to install the new BEC.

You see it here face up

And now face down

And here it is installed next to the Sabertooth speed control that I keep raving about. Both are Dimmension Engineering products.

[greenman407]

http://www.subcommittee.com/forum/icon_redface.gif Sorry. I forgot to

Sorry. I forgot to resize the pictures.

[greenman407]

Here is the WTC tray

Here is the WTC tray with the Bec installed so that you can see it if you click on the picture. See what I have to put up with!




And the Bec. Two down and one to go. What caused the servo to jitter sooo much you ask?

A Thor apc purchased from Atomic Subs. This is a well established Apc. So why would it be causing me problems. I am sure that it was a factory defect. Its sensitivity control was so highly biased toward the sensative side that you just couldnt turn it down. So I called ERV CROSBY at ATOMIC SUBS and told him about it. Well the next thing I know a package came to me in the mail from him. What a guy. His customer service is just outstanding. Even with this I waited until I could get my hands on another Subtek APC, my favorite.

Three down, none to go! I hope that I didnt wear you out with my problems. We are getting closer to our ultimate goal, that of having a fire breathing, diving , surfacing , and fast running SEAVIEW!!! IT will be glorious and will strike fear into the hearts of all you target lovers out there. er sorry , sometimes I ramble.

[Guest]

Rick Teskey's Seaview Build

Thanks for the info Mark, These are the sorts of issues that need to be addressed from time to time and you've done a great job breaking it down, identifying, and making the necessary changes. Electronics crampted into these hard to reach places only add to the frustration, but then what else would we have to frustrate us. : ) Al,

[greenman407]

Thanks Al for your support.

Thanks Al for your support. Did you ever see the Twilight Zone episode where there was a guy on a plane that was afraid of flying and was very nervous about it. After the plane was in the air for a while the plane entered stormy weather. It was then that our hero looked out on the port wing and saw a gremlin or a gargoyle looking little monster tearing the guts out of the far outboard engine. But nobody else could see it and they all thought he was crazy. Sometimes I think there is one of those things waiting for me just under the surface of the water! Maybe if I bought one of those cameras that Caswell sells I might be able to see it!

[Guest]

Rick Teskey's Build

Oh yea, I'm very familiar with the Twilight Zone Trilogy you've mentioned. Hell I've got a few of those Gremlins around the house here somewhere keeping me busy fix'n one thing or another all the time.

[tmsmalley]

The Twighlight Zone episode "Nightmare

The Twighlight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" featured a scardy cat William Shatner - you know, the guy in those Priceline commercials? I think he was involved in sci fi too...

[greenman407]

Wow doesnt that look familiar!

Wow doesnt that look familiar!

[greenman407]

Just to prove to you

Just to prove to you that I havent been sitting on my you know what, here are some recent pictures



As you can see I changed my mind and decided to go ahead with the instalation of the scoops. After they were CAed into place I filled the joints with sandable putty to form large filets just as I did on the cadillac fins. Here is how they turned out.





Turned out pretty well I think.

[greenman407]

While I am at it

While I am at it here are some other shots as well.

























As you can see I have been busy.

[greenman407]

During my last testing session

During my last testing session I noted that my seaview would not dive without forward motion. This caused me to do a lot of head scratching. It finally dawned on me what the problem was. The air exhausted from the ballast tank was building up under the superstructure and was not allowing it to dive. For a while I thought that the venerable WTC was on the blink but not so. To solve this I did the same thing to the Seaview that I did to my Albacore.

I carefully measured from the hull opening to the middle of the vent on the ballast tank. Then I installed the top of the hull and transfered this measurement to it. I selected a piece of 1/4" brass tube, cut it to length, then installed it in a drilled hole carefully placed on the mark. Works like a dream. Just be sure to get it right exactly over the vent and leave no space between it so that all the bubbles go up into the tube, up and out.