I epoxied the subdeck in last night, and found that I didn't put nearly enough epoxy in and had a bunch of cracks left to fill. To do that, I taped up the inside and used a syringe to pump the epoxy in the cracks and used the overflow to help with waterproofing the rest of the subdeck. @ Ron Hunt, is this the area you were talking about? At the caprail above and bellow the step?
Ron: That's awesome. But yes, as a fellow step-deck ship battler, it seems that area takes an inordinate amount of beating. I suspect it's because the Sidemounts are right there. Definately make it beefy, be a bad day to have a large chunk shot off as water will find its way down there quickly. Good progress so far!
P.S. That pic is awesome!!! If I'm not mistaken, only seven people made it out of the HMS Invincible before she went down.
One side of my main decks have been waterproofed and are now dry. But I noticed that they are pretty light in color. When I compare both the subdeck to the the main deck, they don't seem to match. The subdeck is darker than the deck. Although the subdeck is not quite dry yet. I used West System's epoxy to waterproof them. Is it normal to have shiny whitish decks? Also, am I suppose to sand them down a little to get rid of the bumps? Or do I just leave them as is?
I sand the bumps out more or less. As long as its not on a surface that needs to mate with another, its not a big deal. Just how much you care about the look of it.
The missing section is where I was talking about reinforcement. I typically had that piece of the deck shot away about once a year. Picture is from the Wilmington, NC battle in 2003. I have since replaced that area with a piece of foam floormat. Ron Hunt
Try buying a cheapo plastic cutting board and cut your deck section from that. That stuff is 100% shot-proof.
It is not the wood that failed from bb impacts, it is the epoxy joint. I tried several times to brace the area and even rebuilt the decks a couple of times but it kept failing. Cutting board would force you to use something other than epoxy to glue it in place, like either a mechanical fastner (screw or rivet) or goop. Goop has pretty good impact resistance. On my latest build I have been using a combination of rivets and goop. Ron Hunt
As you can see, I'm using gears for the rudders. The problem I've run into is, how do I set the servo arm up to where it turns the servo gear all the way left and right without having a second servo arm? I can get it to move almost all the way one direction, but try to go the other way and it returns to it's original spot. I thought about just mounting the servo gear on the servo, but I don't have any wood to make a rudder box. Any suggestions?
1) ditch the flexible linkage 2) move the servo out of the box and dont worry about making it a watertight box, just prep the servo to get wet. If memory serves right there are several threads about waterproofing servos here.
I'm sure you're probably aware, but just to repeat it here, those traxxas 'waterproof' servos.. aren't. They're water resistant, and a good start, but don't trust them to be waterproof.
Well Josh, I'm not quite sure I understand what's going on. Is your connector rod flexing? Is it not giving enough throw? Is it bottoming out against the water-resistant box? one thing to consider would be to have your rudder servo closer to your rudders. That would eliminate a lot of the connector-rod flex that may be causing your problem, and getting out of the WTB would prevent WTB-related issues like bottoming or throw limits. Another possibility would be to use two connector rods, for a push-pull link to your rudders. One connector pushes and the other pulls when going left, and the former pulls while the later pushes when going right.
In my experience, the Traxxas waterproof servos (and any other o-ring-sealed servos) can survive at quite a depth, so long as their o-ring seals are properly maintained. If the o-rings aren't properly positioned and compressed, however, you're screwed. If you ever open up your servos for maintenance, or to check for water, you have to make sure you get the o-rings correctly re-installed when you close them back up. Also, I have seen a number of the o-ring-sealed sail-winch servos I bought from Strike Models that came from the factory with improperly installed seals. I'll bet the same holds true for the Traxxas servos. An improperly installed o-ring is still splash-resistant, but fails when even slightly submerged. Now that I know to check for this, they are lasting a lot longer.
Kotori, have you let Stephen know about the seals on the sail-winch servos? I'll also let him know, and we might be able to mention something to the manufacturer as well.
I'm not sure where the Traxxas ones are most prone to leaking is, all i know is ive had 2 new, never taken taken apart 2056s fail after 4ft sinks where they were under for between 5 and 20 minutes. When I did finally take one of them apart a while later it had a considerable amount of liquid still in it and the motor was frozen solid. The board and pot still work. They are not rated for submergence, so the failures shouldn't have surprised me, but it is something to keep in mind - bring a spare or two to events!
