Albacore bow planes

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Ok , after a recent visit to Devils Den with Crystal clear water I could see what the problem was. Its The blankity blank radio!!! Its an intermitent problem where some of the channels blank out and return when they dern well please. Well I have something for that. Once the polk radio is installed we will have a go at it again. I could look into the clear water and could clearly see the bow planes work and then not work.So until thats sorted out I really cant say too much about the effectivness of the front bow planes. One thing I have noticed on the positive side(as far as the bow planes go) is that The Subtek Albacore hull has the tendancy to dive on its own ,or at least it tries to, above a certain speed. Well just trying to move out for manuevers causes the bow to go under and the stern to come up with the propellor spinning freely in the air. To overcome this you have to move about on the surface at a relatively slow speed or else you will have an embarasing moment. Fortunately the only ones laughing are the ducks. Well if you deflect the bow planes up you have none of this problem, instead you have full control of surface attitude. That alone is worth the price of admission! Stay tuned

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

AGHASTTTTT!!!!!! The blankity blank water proff servo thats not really waterproff that I modified to be more waterproff is still not waterproff!!! It wouldnt work saturday. Oh well I guess I should have read and applied the advice of nzkilo who posted a link on page one of this thread. Now I will read it and try again. As far as the Polk radio and reciever all went well. I have talked to some who have said that they have had a lot of trouble with their recievers and have replaced them with Sombra labs recievers. Well I to plan on purchasing one also but I hope that the two that I have will continue to work well.







Sometimes when you submerge all the way to the bottom you come up with a trophy, in this case some algae and fungus mass of something. It froze up my prop in a vise like grip.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Some of you are probably wondering what is that red and white tube that you have sticking out the top of your sail. Thats a chicken tube.............................................. ............. Whats a chicken tube you say??? I am a chicken and when I cant see in darker water I put this on to make me feel better. It has saved me more than once. Also notice this video.

http://www.vimeo.com/10523913

This sub is a former Subtek Albacore that I saw fit to modify with a Dave Meriman 3" Wtc. It has transformed this sub into a speed demon as well as tremendously increased reliability and capability. AS you can see proper setup of a gas cylinder can produce almost scale like operation again and again. I can even make the action even slower if I choose. I can also hover and you can too.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Here are a few more shots from saturdays adventures.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Oh yeah and while Im at it the only way that you can make dives like the one in the video and retain the ability to hover is to set up your sub in the wild. That means to set it up in a un-conservative manner. The general rule of thumb is to set it up so that when your ballast tank is comepletely flooded your sail is just barely sticking out of the water. That will give you maximum reserve bouancy. But if you want to free dive and hover you have to add more weight to get it to go down more readily. The downside to that is that in deeper water you may not be able to get your sub to rise and you may be stuck on the bottom. I have had it happen to me. So I have come up with this.



No big deal. Its just some foam blocks added outside the ballast tank section held on with a rubber band. I started out big and slowly whittled them down until the sail just sticks out of the water at full flood stage. The rubber bands also allow you to adjust them fore and aft to adjust your trim. This is a temporary setup as I intend to make it where they are removed and applied with a screw. Now when I go to Devils Den I dont have to be worried about not being able to surface. Cheerio

[scott t]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Nice manuvering with the ballast. How are you accomplishing the slow rise and descent?

Scott

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Hello Scott, You need to have a radio that you can asign your ballast tank channel to a knob (preferably one that has detents) that has a mark on it. Start out with it on the center mark on your radio.Now slowly rotate it clockwise. That should be to blow ballast.As you rotate it one click at a time , take note at what point you can just barely hear gas going in. At that point put a mark on your radio next to the mark on the knob so that you can go back to it each time. It might help of you put your wtc or subdriver in a sink or bathtub so that you can better see the water being expelled. Now do the same thing for the venting of the tank. Once you get use to slowly bringing it up and down you can start practicing the hover. As was mentioned in the my post you have to set your sub up to be able to submerge on its own without forward motion. Then take her down slowly and carefully observe. Slowly give it some gas and then return to nuetral and observe. Its decent should have slowed. If not give it a little more. If you go too far it will start to rise. Then you will need to vent a little. You get the idea. Once you become familiar with your boat and put in a little practice you will be able to repeat the results with no problem.
Sorry about the fuzzy picture but this is just one of the radios available with knobs that can be used

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

I went to the link that was posted on the first page of this posting. It is to the society of robots and there is an article on water proffing your servos and there is even a video on how to do it. In short it shows you a number of ways, but the prefered method is to take rtv silicone and fill up the inside of the servo in the area of the motor and printed circuit board. In the gearbox area he recomends filling it with mineral oil. Myself I think that the mineral oil would be too thin so I am going to try it with left over rc car shock oil as it is thicker. Then cover the seams outside with rtv and put some o-rings under the servo horn. I will let you know how it goes.

[scott t]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Thanks for detailing how you are able to descend and raise your sub with a gas system.
I will pay attention when picking a radio for the control action you described.

Scott

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Last night I reviewed my inventory of servos, old and new. I took apart a few of them to note the differences and to select the one I am going to waterproff. When doing some research on it I stumbled across this.

http://www.emsjomar.com/pdf/linearandglitchbuster8.pdf

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

The article showed how you can change your servos output from the usual rotating servo horn to a straight push pull setup. Very interesting. If I hadnt already mounted my servos and bent my pushrods for instalation in my Oscar I might have gone for it just to introduce some variety. Maybe next time.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

I took apart a couple of servos(standard size) to see what I was up against.
To get to the point shown in the first picture you have to take out the four screws on the bottom and pull off the top cover.
Underneath the gear on the right is the potentiometer, underneath the gear on the left is the motor output. I suggest that you take a picture of it as you disassemble it so that you have a guide to re-assemble it. Next pull off the four gears one at a time. Then romove the two screws that are under the gear on the left. These go directly into the motor. To get it to come apart further you have to push down firmly(but not too firmly) on the stub sticking up (output shaft of the potentiometer) that engages the gear on the right. In so doing you can pop the board out.

Of note the potentiometer has three legs attaching it electrically and mechanically to the printed circuit board. Notice that they are straight. It is therefore an easy thing to pop it out and pop it back in. This is a Traxxas # . I took apart a Futaba S-148 and it is identical. Beware the newer Futaba standard servos S-3003 and ball bearing equiped S-3001. Their three legs are L shaped making them weaker and more difficult to pop back into place after you fill up all this area with silicone. My plan is to apply the silicone first and let it dry. If it still functions then I will go on to the next step.

[Guest]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Mark, Interesting tid bit of info, plus great descriptive pics to boot. Thanks for sharing, Al,

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

Thanks Al, Just a side note. When you go to pop the potentiometer loose from the upper housing be sure that the printed circuit board is free to move. If you restrict its movement such as having the circuit board side of the servo sitting on the table you will damage the pot as it will have no where to go. I will post better pictures next time.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

The more I think about it the more I am certain of it. There is no way that water could be getting inside the servo any other way except through the output shaft. I sealed up everything else too well. So if I can tackle sealing up the output shaft there will be no need to fill up the bottom half with silicone and the top half with oil. Here in lies the problem with the output shaft.

As you can see here it is almost impossible to seal up a shaft that is splined. However if you will notice underneath the splined area there is a area thats smooth. That the target! Lets seal it up there and our problems should be over.