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

spirits up again

so, the caulk actually works fairly well. i think it might be the answer. however, i decided to go work on something else this evening. i decided to finish the soldering today. so i rigged up the relay and slapped on the deans and bullet connectors. and thats about it. i finished the soldering. well, except if i want to put in the extra fuse. and maybe the switch i forgot to put in. but tomorrow i put it together. saturday i put the decks on. and then sunday i fix things. should be ready to go monday. !!!!

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!

saturday blog (on sunday)

i missed blogging yesterday so i'm doing it this morning.

got some free manual labor from daniel yesterday. he fitted the new radio box to have the cords come out and remain somewhat waterproof. pretty sweet! oh, and he also made a temporary boat stand. it'll do for now, but i'll go make a super nice one after i'm all done.

as for what i did yesterday. i finished installing the motors. but not really. that damn second motor is too high again so i have to redo it AGAIN! i'm so frustrated with the sucker. i also started outfitting the top deck. well, not really, i made a practice deck to be working on and made measurements and cuts into that so that i wouldn't ruin the actual deck. its mostly done so i have to go take the plunge and work on the real deck today. and then maybe i'll solder some today too. we'll see. i got up crazy early so i'll have plenty of time!

solder machine!

this morning i soldered all that i think i had left to solder. that included the motors, pumps, battle switch, esc, parallel leads, etc. and actually, now that i think bout it, i still have to put in the fuse and fill switch. damn. so i'm almost done with the soldering. but i am done with the connections to the drive system components and so i can test the system tonight when i get back from Jobtrain.