first parts in!

Hooray! i guess they delivered the first parts on thursday after daniel and i left because they were on the porch. these were the motor mount + rudder kit set of parts. I mounted the motor so now i can bring the motor up to virtually any throttle level i want (whereas before the missaligned motor shaft / screw shaft limited the throttle level to one or two notches [remember the physics talk from before?] ). thats a huge huge relief. worked most of the afternoon making that work because the adjustable mount goes 5 degrees too short for the adjustment that i needed (because of my inexperiance in laying out the drive shaft - i just didn't have any idea what angle to put it at, so i just guessed. and was wrong). eventually i solved the hiccup with a strategically placed shim and zip ties. motor is secured on the subskate!


then i went to work on the rudder. this is a REAL rudder! no epoxied junk. that was really nice because it lent nicely to keeping the rudder plum with the boat. it took maybe an hour to install the rudder nicely and then i realized the screw was in the way of the zip tie. brilliant (read frantic) thinking saved the day. i just added another block to offset where the ties went and then also rerouted the critical zip tie. so the rudder is on!



i started work mounting the rudder servo and was making slow but evident progress when i realized a roadblock. since the rudder is real-deal, its made out of actual steel. the problem is i need to drill into the steel rudder to atach the tiller arm (which, along with the push rod, is the mechanism that relays the rudder servo's motion). i've got the tools to do so, its just a bigger deal than drilling into something like balsa. it was 7 o'clock and i'm hungry and so i decided that was a good place to break before i lost focus and screwed something up.

once i secure the tiller arm onto the rudder, mount the rudder servo on the subskate, I'll have updated all the hardware that lays outside the radiobox. radiobox parts hopefully will come in tomorrow and then i'll spend tomorrow finishing everything inside the r-box and be ready for another test day on tuesday! wooooo doggie! getting exciting again!