Albacore bow planes

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

No problem. Out comes the quad o-ring kit and lets select an o-ring that will seal well to the shaft and just for good measure lets use two of them back to back. That'l fix er. Use a quad ring that measures .208 x .070. Now the upper case that these will seal to has to be drilled out to 11/32". Thats just a little tighter than I wanted but the next size fractional drill size up is 23/64", and that was a little too loose. Now the hard part , perfectly centering the drill bit and drilling the hole without ruining the case. The other problem is that once you drill out the hole, the area that the seal needs to seal to will be almost gone as you can see here. So I applied some epoxy to the inside of the case to build up the area so that after the hole is drilled the reinforced area will have some meat left to do the job.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

I used the shop drill press set at a relatively low speed. You have to be careful as some drill presses made for drilling wood have too high an rpm setting and you run the risk of melting the plastic. Employed also was a drill press vise , clamped down to prevent unwanted movement. The vise helps ensure no movement, and the drill press itself helps provide a perpendicular hole.

Once the hole is drilled clean it up of flash and install your quad rings on the shaft. Make sure you lube it first with silicone grease inside and out, then put it all back together. I used Goop to seal up all the openings in the servo case including where the wires exit and dont forget about the four screw heads.





Hopefully that will do it. Ill let you know how it works. Give me a couple of weeks.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

In taking apart different servos I have found that the output shaft area has several variations. A Futaba S-3001 is sold as a ball bearing servo. Well guess what . No ball bearings in sight. None. What they have done is install a small sleave bearing or what I call a bushing. This presents a problem for sealing up the shaft. Youll need to use a S-3003 or the older S-148. As to whether you can still modify a "ball bearing servo" or not I have not explored. As to other brands of servos you will have to take the top off of them and take a look. Dont be scared, "it aint nothen but a thang" as they say here at the job.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

This weekend I elected to take the opertunity to install a Bec into her. I used to have one but removed it when I suspected that it might be the source of a few problems that I was having. This time it gets a Dimension Engineering Park Bec. Hope this solves the last of the intermitent gremlins.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

This weekend I took the opertunity to operate the Albacore using the bow planes in operation. The bow planes really enhanced operation. The bow planes are hooked up on channel 4 which is the left stick up and down that many people use for throttle. My throttle is the left upper rotary control knob. Using bow planes only I could fine tune periscope depth operation since their surface area is much less than the X-tail. Or I could use the X-tail only and leave the bow planes at nuetral. Or any combination of the two. By deflecting fully the bow planes It will dive at a 30 degree angle I estimate. If you bring on the X-tail function you can go absolutely vertical , and I mean right now! This will be useful at Devils Den in the cave or elsewhere where you have deep clear water. And as I mentioned in earlier posts it makes for better surface handling.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

I still have the problem of slowly porpoising at higher speeds. Reducing the sensativity of the Caswell/MCcleod ADF didnt work but actually made it worse. That tells me that I need a APC thats even more sensative. Im going to try the one from Rogue Subworks next to see if that solves the problem. I will keep you up to speed.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

As I have already posted on "Porpoising Problems" on the General forums , using advise from others I moved the CG toward the stern to solve the problem. I started out with the balance point at 3 and 1/2" forward of the subs midpoint and moved it towards the stern to 2 and 1/2". Problem solved!

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

As far as good control over the ability to hover and scalelike ascension and descension, the key to this boats sucess is that it uses a D&E WTC -3 which has a forward and a rear dry space with a very small ballast tank. In fact I would say that it is less than 1/4 the size of the D&E WTC 3 Mod 2 that runs the Seaview(Rick Teskey brand). It has been my experience that it is easier to control a small amount of water and gas/air than to control a larger volume. Its also easier to dive the sub(while motionless) and slowly introduce gas to achieve nuetral bouancy than to try to do it the other way around. Thats because if you miss your mark you have time to spritz it a little more with the gas because it reacts so much quicker than the vent can. This is the only boat that I have set up in the wild so its the only boat that I can hover.

[greenman407]

Re: Albacore bow planes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyA0YbXc ... ture=email Al Nuci took this video without me knowing it the other day at Blue Spring. It was very manueverable even with the bow planes not being used at that time.