Los Angeles Submarine scratch build

[John.RedearthParticipant @john-redearth]

Due to significant personal changes I have decided to change how scratchbuildwithJohn works. I am now in the early throws of battling cancer. Not fun.

Previously, access to all the videos was only possible through membership and many of the videos on U-Tube were restricted.

From now on, all restrictions will be off. All my videos will now be accessible on U-tube, however the website is still the best place to go as the diagrams, codes, and plans will be there. Plus it is easier and more intuitive to navigate.

So, that’s the downer stuff. Let’s get to the LA.

This Sunday I will take the boat to the local club house and drop it into the water for the first time. This will not be to sail it per se, just to ballast it. If all goes will we will have a sail around on the surface.

This week I have been fixing apparent bugs. All these little issues will be addressed in the ‘want worked and what didn’t’ at the beginning of the video series but I am still in testing mode right now. More bugs will spring up.

The first is the laser sensors. If you remember I had some inaccuracies in their use, in that after I turned them on there appeared to be variation for 5 minutes. Not good. Also I noticed differences when the lasers were in the dark or light. Of course they will be in total darkness in the sub, apart from LED’s blinking etc. So I addressed the adafruit team and they sent the following diagram and suggested I reduce the distance between the sensor and the piston. So I have done that significantly and it works far better. My initial testing that led me to setting them back was clearly flawed.

Secondly I re build and designed the output of the main motor utilising the fantastic capacity of the brushless motor to be replaced with an extended version, completely removing the necessity for a second connector, which was producing vibration.

Then I started adding ‘in wall foam’ to the sub hull, limiting it with, yes, glad wrap, and aluminium flashing. Once it had dried it looked hideous but a few slices with my knife fixed it. I added more where necessary and then ensured that there were drainage holes. Then I sealed the ‘holes’ with good old fashioned ‘no-more gaps.’ (I know no-more gaps will not seal, but it will fill holes). Once that was dry I used plasti dip to pain the foam plugs. That does seal.

I may add that I had a comment from a subscriber that if the foam is not properly ‘set’ it can expand again if exposed to heat such as sunlight, thus blowing up the boat. It was quite a scary story so I levt the hull in the sunlight for a day to make sure it was set. It was and did not expand any further. I will do that from now on!

Then I started to do a better job of sealing the servo that sits in the water. (Under the conning tower). I think the method is about as good as it gets. I used dual mix silicone to fill the electronic part of the lower half of the servo. I then drill a very small hole into the top, and using a syringe to add baby oil. Filled it to the top. I am using see through servo’s so I can ensure they are full. I sealed the tiny hole and it works.

So on Sunday I will set the pistons to where I think neutral buoyancy should be, and drop it into the water. I am hoping it will float nicely. Then I will add led to get it to the magic state, and take the boat out and add the led. Retest it and take it out.

Then I will set the pistons to full buoyancy. I will take the WTC apart to do this as I don’t want pressure issues. Then I will drip it in again and adjust the pistons to get the boat to it’s best position.

Out it will come, and I will take it apart and connect the arduino to lock in the positioning of the full flotation settings.

Then comes the big test. I will open the boat up, drop it in the water and withdraw the pistons. Pressure will build up and I will test for leaks.

If there are no leaks, I will take it for a run.

For the whole blog with pics..

Big day

[John.RedearthParticipant @john-redearth]

First and second trim sail

If you have been following me, you will be aware that this boat is different. It has twin pistons that are controlled by an arduino which is in turn provided info from two laser sensors that measure the position of the pistons. The readings from the sensors effectively limit the travel of the pistons to a maximum point (fully surfaced) to a minimum point (sitting on the bottom) to a sweet spot (neutral buoyancy). This latter can be changed from the RC, but the other settings need to be changed in the code.

Prior to the water test I set the maximum and minimum points in accordance with how much room the pistons had to travel. With the WTC separated to nullify internal pressure, I put the pistons in the middle of their proposed travel, and then connected every thing up and pulled the pistons in. They were labouring heavily at fully dived, and labouring at maximum buoyancy. This was not good.

So I made an arbitrary ‘sweet spot’ and set the pistons that that position and turned the power off. I took it to the water and dropped it in and it was amazing at how buoyant it was. This was good as I could add the lead to it and get it to neutral buoyancy , and the added lead would add to stability. I added lead in strips to the outer hull until it was almost there, and took the boat out and beat the lead into small shapes and fitted it into the hull. They repeated the process and got it to neutral buoyancy and it was stable. This was very good for the first try.

I then took the boat out and disconnected tho WTC (to nullify the pressure, particularly when I had not done a pressure test) and set the pistons out to max buoyancy position. I dripped it in the water with the power on, and it sat far too high. I had to withdraw the pistons using the RC to get the boat down to sit at its proper level. (Marked on the hull)

Out of the water again and strip down. To my amazement I only needed half the amount of ballast as I had provided in the ballast tanks. Also the bow ballast did not need as much as the stern, even though I had designed them for the opposite. This also bodes very well for handling the pressure!!

So out again and I connected up the computer and adjusted the arduino settings for the new reduced pistons stops, which are now tuned to the lead ballast and the dictates of this particular hull.

I then dropped it in at fully buoyant and gave it a run. The bow thrusters did not work but I found the rudder was not entirely useless. Often with speed the prop twisted the hull a bit, but that quickly became an issue of how well I sailed it, and the boat looked beautiful. I will tweak the prop for more thrust at home, but in general it was a very successful first trip.

So home for some work. The bow thrusters had a mechanical issue which I fixed. (Often scratch built items need a bit of ‘tweaking.&rsquo I changed the ‘piston stops’ to sit in the middle of the piston travel, tweaked the prop to increase it’s ‘bite’ and added catches so that I could better secure the lead for starboard/port adjustment.

Back to the pond. This time I reset the lead using the initial process of estimating neutral buoyancy, and resetting the lead, then set off for its second run. The bow thruster is a killer. Really whips the boat around. I also tested the compass and yes it holds a course if needed. Then I submerged the boat using RC and reset the neutral setting. Once it was happily ‘hanging’ in the water I set the boat to automatic and sailed for the first time at neutral buoyancy. Completely successful noting that the NP setting also turns on the self levelling device and the sail hydro which holds the depth.

After a short time I unset the auto and clicked surface and up it came. Then I took it out for a leak check. Not a drop. I must note there that when I came to disassemble the boat, after I took off the bolts that hold it together, I had trouble separating the WTC apart. I thought it was a couple of connectors that may be binding, but realised that the pistons were set to surface mode and that there was negative pressure in the hull. Closing the pistons popped the WTC apart. Have to remember that one. I put it back in and dodging yachts that seemed to believed they owned every inch of the lack, came it several submerged runs.

It is interesting that it is such a different boat to sail as it has little buoyancy and the controls must be used with great sensitivity. It is easy to heal it over, or to over-power it. Also I had not recalibrated my RC. IE the arm that controls the hydro is fixed (ie it stays in position when moved) and the throttle is set to spring back to neutral once let go. I had to pull my RC apart and change the mechanical controls to make it do the opposite. Also the prop really kicks it over to port or startboard unless used with sensitivity so the above is a necessity.

There was no water anywhere in the boat but the bow thruster leaked. Adjustment two required.

Bloody beautiful.

blog with pics

Edited By John.Redearth on 03/09/2017 14:43:50

[John.RedearthParticipant @john-redearth]

Dear all

I have skipped a couple of states here but I have some very nice pics of the progress of the project here, and all the other bogs. As you will note at the end, blogs are not my strong point right now.

This has still been a full on week and I am immersed (no pun) in the build of the LA submarine. As you can see the plates are going onto the Hull and it makes a dramatic difference. This is really tedious work has not only do I have two cut each plate individually I then have to glue it on with Apoxy. What I know however is that it's going to look extraordinary. Looking at the pictures of the Los Angeles it's clear to see that most of them have these sound deadening plates. Once I finished glueing them on I'm going to spray the whole boat with a layer of grey etch. All of that work is suddenly going to become much less obvious but that's where the magic comes in. In real life it's not that obvious!

Once I've done that I'm going to mark the halfway mark around the Hull and then paint the section red. It's important to remember that if your Hull is going to be red and black you paint to read first. The reason for that is that you can butt black not red but she can't do it in reverse without the black bleeding through. It is just an issue about making sure you put the colours on in the right order first.

Once that's done am going to do some touching up with some light grey on the sale and around the hatch is. Then comes the fun part where I make the white deck owls on the computer. Guess what is really fun about this stage is that every step transforms the boat yet again.

I have new videos on the site concerning wiring and circuit diagrams. See it under LA 14.

Anyway I also have another task ahead. Many of you will have seen my Corvette in operation. It features on my you Tube page and I have some great video of it surging toward what looks like my U-boat as seen from the periscope.

Anyway that boat is built using simple techniques. It has within the Hull bank of NiCad batteries. I use NiCad batteries because I can charge them in the Hull. Clearly a pre-requisite of using Lipo batteries is that they need to be removable for charging otherwise you could have a disaster on your hands. So I started playing with that idea and in the process one of my controller servos died.

As per the picture you can see that I have a bank of servos on the starboard side which control microswitches which in turn powers the motor that turns the turret, and the motor that squirts the water. It works sublimely well as it is. Anyway one of my services died.

So rather than by another servo I have decided to implant and Arduino into the boat which I will program to fire up relays. Secondly, while I am at it, I will add a compass is a little boat. Because I'm going to save so much space it will then enable me to slip the Lipo in an out of the boat. I will need to also wire up a voltage regulator to make sure that I don't blow up my bow turret water pump!

So this will be an interesting project to remove some traditional methods of controlling the boat and replacing them with an Arduino, and a couple of relays. I've already written the code for the Arduino and I will video the process and put the code and the circuit diagrams on the website. Start that process will before I have finished the LA.

To finish those of you who have expressed your best wishes toward me considering my current physical battle I would like to say that I have started a blog about it all that it is invite only. If you would like to have some information about what's been happening with me semi-request and I'll send you the link. All of safer now is that I'm feeling very well, and in fact said to my doctor that I feel like I'm in the phoney war stage. The doctor looked at me and said there's nothing phoney about this!

If you find some odd words in this I have to admit to it being part of my problem. Spelling is a nightmare and I am using dragon dictate, which in turn doesn't always print what I say!!

John

[John.RedearthParticipant @john-redearth]

Hi all

I have not been posting much due to a few challenges, but I am proud to announce that the LA is finished, including all the videos. They are all on my web page for you to see. (Please note that ScratchbuildwithJohn is completely free). The first few videos (LA 2-3b) are in fact the latest, summarising what worked and what didn’t, quirks in sailing in and of course ‘how it works.’ I have also loaded the circuit diagrams and the arduino code, which does all the magic. I am particularly pleased with the depth keeping system.

I have some new projects ahead one of which relates to subs in that I will be providing some info on using Orange 433 units. There is already lots of good stuff out there, but even using that I spend days of frustration. I will share everything I have learned and use other resources which I think are excellent.

For more on new projects check my latest blog.

Also, I now have a Patreon page. I have described why this page exists ‘on the page,’ but in short I have been diagnosed with Cancer. It is a brain tumour. The good thing is that I am doing very well, and I am the fair haired boy at the hospital. But we know this will not go away and the significant issue is I can’t work. Unfortunately I always thought of myself as indestructible and now I can’t provide for my family. I can play however. So visit my Patrion page to find out more about all this.

Also, the idea of crowd funding is about a little bit of support from lots of people. So could I ask you to share my Patreon page with your friends and contacts. It’s only partly about models.

Cheers John

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