gun check

man, i'm on a roll!!!!

gun system check:
i soldered together this 3 way parallel deans with a fuse and ... shoot! i forgot to put in the on/off switch. o well, i'll stick it in there later. dang. anyways, i soldered this whole guy after all the excitement from the drive testing.


because i had worked out how the system all fit together, i knew what to do.

then it was just a matter of alligatoring the components to their appropriate connection point, and turning the sucker on.

or so i thought. it wasn't that simple. i spent a good half an hour trying to figure out why nothing was working. well, thats not fair, the battle switch was switching, but the pump connected to it wasn't turning on. this turned out to be key though. eventually it dawned on me, the only thing that was running, was being powered by the RC reciever. that meant, the battery wasn't getting to the components. but i had the watts up in and it read that voltage was running. after a minute, i realized, you know what, maybe there needs to be a fuse in the fuse holder. ha, just you know, maybe.

once i popped in a fuse, the pumps sang!

drive system lessons p.2

well, those helped, but its still only at 'sorta works' not quite at 'works' yet.

so the grease solved the problem i had before that water got in the rudder tube. it also smoothed up the prop shaft in the assembly tube, meaning both screws turn better. it means the props move the boat slightly better. but only slightly. plus, it turns out the rudder doesn't rock. nope. in fact it kinda sucks. i have to offset it some to compensate for some inequality between the two motors/screws. for some reason, the boat naturally turns right, meaning the left motor is either stronger or the allignment is somehow off causing the turning. because of this, i set up the rudder a bit to the left (the tail of the rudder is on the side that the boat will turn).

on a plus note, i was able to go in a circle to the right (really easily) and to the left (rather slowly).

for tomorrow, i guess i need to figure out why its tending to the right and figure out why the screws are so ineffective at propelling the boat.

drive system lessons

WOOooooooooo!!!!! it kinda sorta works!!!! wahoooo!!

so. heres what happened. 1st: the scientific method kicks butt. i had a hypothesis, and a control, and the experimental proved my hypothesis. the sound completely went away when i put the boat in the water!!!


lessons:

wear swimsuit for all future tests
you really do need the grease for the prop shaft and the rudder
weight is good
the rudder kicks butt... but only when the boat is moving, otherwise its useless

let me go fix all that, then try again

system check 1

i spent all afternoon on the damn rudder servo, outfitting cross beams to mount to. ARG so agravating. well anyways, i finally got it all lined up, and installed. its not level, which is a problem, but only a minor problem. it'll put extra strain on the servo and require more torque to turn the rudder. however, since i'm way way under the torque the servo can give me, i'm fine. the rudder servo turns the rudder nicely. if i hadn't told you the level issue, from the outside, you'd say it works perfectly! :) the fact it works is good, cause i don't know how i'd fix the issue if i had to.

i've hooked the whole drive system up on drydock and been cruelly reminded how ill-alligned the motors are. worse still, BOTH motors are out of alignment. they're making a chilling door-creaking type sound. it comes from the drive-dog rubbing against the stuffing tube. however, i think the sound will go away in the water. heres why. from my prototypes, i ran into a million different problems with the connection between the drive shaft and the prop shaft. first the surgical tubing got twisted, then the shaft pushed itself out of the subskate. but the cause of a number of the issues was that the allignment was functional out of water but under strain (when the props were actually creating force), something changed. often times, the root of the problem was that the shaft was pushed forward from the screw's force. ahah! this is actually just what i want at the moment. gravity brings the drive dog to rest upon the stuffing tube, creating the soul-piercing noise. but with the force of the screws pushing the prop shaft forward, the drive dogs won't rest on the stuffing tube anymore. it will be pushed forward - into the dog bone, into the motor, into the motor mounts, and finally into the boat! (hopefully) so I THINK the issue i'm having on drydock will go away in the water. only one way to find out!


Drive system check #1
6 pm
August 11, 2009
Lake Tahoe

launch lesson 2

hey loyal followers (ha!)

good news and bad from yesterday's launch. it didn't sink. which is great news. but it also didn't exactly work either. the force of the prop dislodged the housing it was in and made the universal joint come off at slow speeds. the fix is to add a stopper to hold the prop housing in place. did that today. i'll reschedule pool time for tomorrow maybe.