i finished the radio box, installed all the components (including a monitoring device "watt's up" to view the voltage, current, wattage, and amp-hours left) and installed some water shields for the electronics outside the radiobox.
while the water shields are not even remotely sufficient to keep the rudder servo and motor completely dry, it will prevent most of the splashing from getting to the electronics. if the boat starts going under, its all over, but i don't forsee that happening (fingers crossed).
heres a picture of the radio box with all the stuff inside it. like i said, its not fully waterproof - water is a tricky sob! however, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. everything fits, connects well, and shaffer's idea of putting the connectors in the wall worked moderately well. because of how the wires are soldered, the connections don't go through the holes i made for them perfectly. they function, just not ideally. its mostly the same with the servo cable connector: i had a terrible time making a rectangular hole with a circular drill bit. I had to overshoot the mark and it means there's gaps around the connector. o well, i never saw this radio box being the permanent r-box.
I installed the turret servos in the brackets that came in yesterday and it looks like its going to work perfectly. the turret is going to be top heavy for sure, but i've been planning on streamlining the assembly for the final version (right now the pieces are 3 brass tubes (all cantilevered off the servo adding even more torque), 1 copper connecter, a wood piece, and the screws+nuts). in fact, when I plugged them in, the elevation servo was jumpy in a way that i haven't seen before. that being said, i've done the math, and the servo is rated strong enough to handle the assembly as it is right now. i'm not comfortable pushing it to the limit its at right now, but it'll do for now. here are some pictures of the turret's range of motion
for fun, at the end of the day (actually i worked at night today, but whatever), i put the two projects together. check it out. looks sorta like a battleship!!!!
(p.s. daniel i sent you a fb message, hopefully you check fb sometime before lunch tomorrow because thats when i'm calling ben. i can schedule the pool test whenever so if you have time after work, let me know asap so i can make the appointment then instead of earlier.
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