win some you lose some

i rechecked the numbers and am embarrased to say i should have seen this coming. i ran the numbers for all boats except the one i ended up getting. in my analysis of which boat to get, i off handedly said, "why would i get the semi kit, i'll skip that one". then, when i actually went and got a hull, i got the one i didn't run the numbers for. really, it shouldn't have matter because i should have run the numbers twice more after i bought the boat and before i installed the components. well, anyways, i didn't, and that was a mistake. check it out. the tank holds 1700 ml (.5 gallon) of water, or almost 4 pounds. the boat can support a total of 12 lbs. the hull is maybe 2 or 3 pounds, motors and batteries maybe 4 or 5, with maybe a pound or two of extra stuff, that adds up to too heavy.

the brilliant fix for the weight problem is to flip the level switch so that the tank stays almost empty instead of almost full. the trigger will go about an half an inch from the bottom. thats maybe 1/5 full. so something like 350 ml or 1 ish lb.

however, looking at the tank,

theres a bridge sort of thing in the middle and the issue is going to be the water comes in from the back and will fill the back end and no the front end. when the water level goes above the bridge its going to start filling the front section. this means instead of having a shallow water level its going to actually be about half full. which means maybe two pounds. the solution to this is the fill the back area with lighter non-water stuff. should be pretty easy to do... o wait, how am i gonna manuaver with no access point . its going to be building a ship in a bottle. so thats gonna be hard.

to make things worse, the relay lead broke. so i gotta go take all the soldering off that guy and get a new one. it turns out the sinking did more damage than i thought.

more sorta good news, i found a problem with the esc and i fixed it. its not worth getting into. problem, and got fixed.
kinda got start over in a sense tomorrow. but i'll push through

two for one

wow, that was the first day i worked and didn't blog. pretty good streak for me

k, so, major turret progress today (mostly) and a little bit from yesterday. i built the housing for the turret and installed it all around the the elevation servo and azimuth servo as well. its going to be pretty sick. the bottom and backing are plastic so they're see-through but then i'm going to paint the top steel grey. you'll be able to sort of see into the turret if you're at the right angle, should be kinda cool.

i started to fit the barrels on the servo, when i realized it wouldn't fit. so i changed the attachment mechanism to a nifty block thats screwed onto the servo horn and then drilled through for the barrel to sit in. sneaky design that i have to pat my back for.


anyways, once that was fixed, i set about building the plate that would hold the dummy barrels (cause the water gun will only shoot out of one of the turret's barrels, the others are just for show). i figured out that ALso wouldn't fit, so i came up with a slightly more ridiculous fix and pushed on. you can see the fix a little bit in this picture. its a block of wood between the two barrels with a hose clamp attached to each. not the best way to support the second tube, but it works

the next thing that wouldn't fit was the servo bracket, so i dissasembled the whole system again. (each time i did this, both directions took maybe 4 or 5 minutes. and i did it maybe 4 times. the time adds up!) this time i had to file down the aluminum bracket which was a butt! but eventually it fit. and that was good :)

heres the whole assembly (minus the barrels) hidden away inside the turret housing that i spent the day building


for tomorrow, i need to cut slots from which the two barrels will poke out of the housing. gonna use a dremmel for that. next i'll make holes for the wiring and water-tubing to come through. then, its onto the motor. thats going to be a big big project. so i may stall and go find something else to be doing while i cower away from the mountain.

coming together nicely!