motor in stall

so, the computer fix was amazing! all i lost was a week or so of photos of building the battleship. thankfully i posted the good ones on this blog, so i can at least retrieve the lo-res versions of any good photo that i lost. otherwise i recovered everything i wanted/needed! incredible!

back to the build. i installed the motors. the right motor went in smoothly, lines up near perfect and is set and doesn't need to be moved ever again. the left one... not so good. i installed it twice and will remove it twice. the first time because i had calibrated it to the point where the prop shaft can expand to (essentially the shaft has a little bit of wiggle room inside its housing ~half an inch perhaps~ and it can slide in the housing either in or out. this time i set the motor up in the spot at one extreme end of the shaft wiggle room. not horrible but not desirable either.) this is a photo of the successful right installation


now, the second time i installed it, the motor sits slightly too high and so the dog bone wobbles slightly. (the dog bone is the method with which the motor is connected to the prop shaft [and is the piece that i was missing in all of my prototypes, basically the savior piece of the boat]) the wobble is small and so the current configuration is functional, but again not desirable. plus, i didn't notice the wobble until just a moment ago so i will have to remount this motor mount again tomorrow because its too late tonight.

the rudder was a smoother installation. now, i guess thats not entirely fair to say because its not permanently installed, only temporary, but for the moment its the case. i epoxied in the rudder housing and cut done the rudder shaft to fit in the boat. then i fixed up a tiller arm to fit in the small small area that it has to fit in. i epoxied a number of shims for the rudder servo to sit on and be surrounded by. i haven't decided whether i want to epoxy the servo in or come up with a detachable method for installation - that will come tomorrow. however i tested the current set-up out and it works great!


i drew up the entire pump schematic (AGAIN!) and am going to have to spend another day (or hopefully half day) soldering it all together. it means at least one more trip to an rc shop for some more deans connectors and maybe some servo extensions. [on a side note, i got some servo balloons to hopefully keep the out-of-radio-box servos somewhat dry. its going to look funky though. as for the radio box, its going to be mostly water tight. hopefully.]

big day today! big day tomorrow too!