long day of driving

So, i discovered the advantage of phones today. well, i found this out by not using one. I called daniel up and we drove to 5 or 6 places all over the santa clara, san jose, cambell, cupertino area going to R/C shops and finding nothing at all on boats. everyone had plane stuff. no boat stuff. that is until we came upon D&J hobby shop. they had a guy there who knew all sorts of great things about how to set up the propulsion of the battleship. he explained motors and screws and shafts and nuts and all that to us so that i feel slightly knowledgable on the subject. he also said it should be left until the end. it just means i know i can hold off on the propulsion until the last step so long as I leave A) space and B) a waterproof compartment for the parts.

so after maybe 2 hours of driving failures, we finally had a success. that was good. then we went to home depot and for the most part failed there too. we got a couple things for the gun (which turned out to be pretty good when we got back and looked at them, but disappointing at the time) but not too much. we happened to be right right right next to apple headquarters so we stopped in and went to their corporate store and got a tshirt (only official seller of apple gear. nowhere online, only at the store, believe i've looked. all there is is 3rd impostors.) then we went and ate, and then got started working on the gun.

the second super soaker came in today and i made sure as hell not to break it. we ran the various tests i had meant to run on the first one (which is unsalvageable i've now determined after the glued back together piece promptly broke again). these include learning the gun does need a nozzle to have the range we want. so it can't just be tubing. the barrel we got from home depot should work almost perfectly with the soaker's nozzle after i bandsawed it short. all we have to do is lathe the end of it so that it fits into the barrel snugly. this is really encouraging because it essentially means the shooting part of the gun is done. except for the holding tank (which i have to either find and make work or mold myself (which might be fun) ) and the feed pump (which may end up being an unnecessary luxury) the firing portion of the gun is all figured out!

tomorrow we'll prolly go work to finish (or finish the prototype) the gun firing system. that means figure out the holding tank, work out the barrel connections and such, interface with the RC controller, and whatever else comes up. May start work on the secret project because thats the next toughest or I may start work on the rotation/elevation control of the turret and just work to finish the gun all together. we'll see how it goes.

later both imaginary and (1 confirmed real) guys!