1/96 Copeland LA 688i

[petn7]

Oh geez...

It's seriously gone? What

Oh geez...

It's seriously gone? What happened?

[Rogue Sub]

My god man! Has the

My god man! Has the investigation commity determined the root cause. May god have mercy on their souls.

[eckloss]

my friends and i decided

my friends and i decided to take the kids fishing that morning at the local park lake. ive run boats here before without issue. i thought, ok, great, ill take the LA out for a few laps. everything was great, she was running a bit better now that i stabilized her with more weight and more foam. left turn, right turn...good. a quick little nose dive here and there...good. empty the ballast and run at submerged trim...good.

full dive one...good. full dive two, good. full dive three.....um...where the fuck is my boat?

ill tell you where it is...sitting somewhere at the bottom of a 20 ft deep lake, thats where. however, the area where it vanished is in the 7-10 foot range. no idea what went wrong. all i can assume is she had a run in with some fishing line that didnt agree with her, got tangled with dive planes down and went right to the bottom. deep enough that not even the blowing of the propel tank after the subsafe kicked in was enough to bring her up.

my buddy and i spent 3 hours diving for the thing, but to no avail. we had no masks or lights. not much we could do. see below...




i went back home and grabbed a 14' tree trimming pole, arranged a large hook on the end, went back up and started dragging the bottom where i last saw her.

then a man walked by with his wife, and like so many before him inquired as to what the hell i was doing. i explained, and he pulled out his id card. city police. oh shit, now im in trouble.

actually, not so much. hes a city diver. to make this already long story short, after a few minutes of price negotiation, he ran home, charged up his gear, and returned to the lake at 8][/url]



this poor guy....hes 53, and by the time he came back up was sick as a dog. i mean really sick. we clocked him at 2 hours, 10 mins under the water. he searched a wide area. and got the tar scared out of him when the fireworks started about a thousand feet away from us.

he wasnt able to find it. but hes returning for more dive time in a few days.

my brother-in-law (ssbn628, 1981-85) and i searched the next morning with a marine video camera and portable monitor he grabbed from his VFD. we boated out to the the area, but still couldnt find anything.

[tmsmalley]

sub lost

Keep looking! With those danged black hulls, you can swim right over them and not see it if a little silt gets on top. In full daylight (noon gets the best light penetration) have the diver place an anchor on the bottom where you think she went down and tie a long line to it.

Have him swim in concentric circles, slowly letting out his anchor line all the while you are working the radio. If there is any charge left in the batt -keep working the motor/servos - maybe he can hear it. Worse comes to worst, maybe he can feel it.



At a SubRegatta in Rhode Island, Skip lost his Albacore and had felt around with a pole for some time to no avail. I had brought my scuba gear and volunteered to look for it. He felt he had a pretty good idea where it was, but when I went down at that spot I couldn't see a danged thing. I finally had to start feeling blindly in the weeds and muck - and finally found her tangled in the weeds about 20 feet from where it was supposed to be.

Good luck!

[eckloss]

that was exactly his idea...

that was exactly his idea... to drop anchor and swim circles next week. as you can see from the photos, the water is green as hell, and difficult to see in. as soon as i saw that color i should never have dropped the boat in the water!

as for hearing anything, its difficult. there are large pumps that run a huge fountain in the middle. he said that was pretty much drowning out anything else, b/c we did try to get any kind out sounds from the boat that we could, assuming there was any power left at that point at all.

i was able to get ahold of the people that are contracted out to maintain the fountain system in the lake. they dive it once a week to service the pumps and clean out the intakes and such. theyve been made aware of everything and will be keeping an eye out.

[petn7]

Wow, talk about an all

Wow, talk about an all out search. I wish you luck!

Anyone have any experience with those brickhouse child locator devices? I figured they could be used on our subs, except the range might be greatly reduced. However, 15 feet is all that's really needed, considering most ponds and small lakes.

http://www.brickhouse-childsafety.com/locator.html

[eckloss]

this has all really make

this has all really make me rethink methods of locating a lost boat.

- actually making the floating buoy a real floating buoy, pin-released by another servo with another failsafe

- some form of beeper or noisemaker with independent battery source to be able to hear the damn thing underwater if the main batts are dead

- failsafe activate super-bright flashing white led lights

- a co2 backup, failsafe activated, leading to a separate bladder high in the hull

...or all of the above. paranoia, cha cha cha...

[petn7]

I've always thought all these

I've always thought all these "emergency" ideas were not worth the time.

Most of these accidents occur in freakish ways, ya know? I bet if one could figure out how 55 lost subs got lost, you would get 55 explanations: equipment failure (receiver failure, failsafe failure, bow servo failure, etc.), fishing line, submerged shopping carts/baskets, stuck in the mud, stuck in weeds, stuck in a net, stuck in plastic trash, stuck in an old tire, caught under a submerged log, buoy release mechanism failure, buoy wire gets tangled, major leak in WTC, leaky bladder, leaky gas tank, empty gas tank, failed air pump, failed water pump, air hose came loose, water hose came loose, blah blah blah.

I think figuring out how to find the sub when lost (ie, the radio beacon) would be the most "all encompassing" emergency idea. Can't use sound, as there might be background noise and when the power runs out...oh well. Can't use light, as the light could be covered by weeds, mud, tires, etc. not to mention the battery running out eventually. We're dealing with model submarines, not teeny tiny screws, so we know we don't have to worry about the submarine disappearing from the known universe*

*In case you didn't know there are these Gremlins that exist on floors of homes and workshops all over Earth. When you drop something tiny, like a screw, nut, or whatever, these Gremlins suddenly appear, grab the object, then disappear to their home "dimension" which sadly, is not one of length, width, height, or time.

[redboat219]

Any updates on your search

Any updates on your search and retrieval op?

How about using something like this to locate your sub
http://store.humminbird.com/humminbird- ... 550-1.html