reminds me of the pond outside my middle school we had a tree fall into it and over spring break our science teacher made a time lapse of it sinking into approximately 9-10 feet of mud. They also have pulled car parts and other things out of that pond I am pretty sure Jimmy Hoffa is in there somewhere. But I do agree searching in muddy water can be a pain but I will take that over having to dive 8-10 feet to find a boat in muddy water.
All of the normal batting area at Oakboro is shallow, the deeper areas can easily be avoided with basic prudence (i.e. don't drive your DD under the fountain or do a reverse deck seal test in the direction of the middle of the pond/fountain).
I HAVE seen a LOT of battlers sink about a foot from shore. The "perfect storm" is when you get ram sunk. I do not want to show the video, but a S. Carolina got clobbered by a Vanguard in Bradford. (teammates).
Well it took a while to put together, but my article on floats is finished. take a look: https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/so-you-want-a-float.446747/#post-536389
My BC order came in and work is progressing again. Here's an update. Wanted to show the process I used to get my deck pieces sized using tape. Just food for thought for those using painters tape to get their deck sizes. Made the boat a surfboard to sit on once props come in and shafts are in. Even made a fancy little 3DP nameplate that I painted and screwed down to the board. Rest of the wood got a second coat of epoxy today, it was warm enough to get everything done and dry relatively quickly. Hull has backers to support the subdeck and the stringer installed. Shafts came in, and after some rat tail filing and some sleeves to hold the shafts center, it's good to go. Working on a motor mount in F360 currently, just need props. Superstructure's printed and just about ready to go, had to reevaluate some design elements and redraw them to look right. Reprinting, some brass rods, some primer, and hand painting the camouflage got to this. I just wish my dark gray wasn't so dark, it almost looks black. Really happy with this overall. Gonna be slow for a bit on this build, the upcoming battle and next month are gonna keep me busy.
Haven't progressed as much as I'd like to on this project. Made a big decision to halt this project until I get Prinz back into a working state, should take two or three weeks. I'll update my other build to reflect it once big changes are made. As for Spee, what I do have done so far is superstructure printed, the subdeck is ready to be installed, and general interior layout and channeling is ready to go in once I get the motors finalized. I have all the electronics for the boat in a box and ready to go. Rudder's printed, but I don't want to put it nor the servo mounting in until props are aligned. Until then, I've been designing reduction drives to test in this boat and apply to larger, sidemount-ier boats in the future. View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cl72liVio1a_sEgze0rwFeqg1wTwfUqf/view?usp=sharing
Build's going more steady now that school's done until the fall. Here's an update on Spee. Have the shafts mounted. Epoxied them in with the motor mounts. I'm testing a completely overkill brushless drive with belts on a roughly 2:1 reduction, and with the exception of a motor with bad bearings that I need to switch out, the drive system is smooth and nearly silent. The shafts on the exterior I tried to contour to the hull, the epoxy I worked with would sand so I filed it to shape. The shaft tubes are each supported by a V strut. As for the rudder, I conjured up an asymmetric mount after getting inspiration from other builds here and printed some prototypes in ABS. Good part is the design I put in the boat works perfectly for the application I need it in, changing servos will be a breeze. Bad part was sticking it down in the first place. Ended up using epoxy to stick the thing down after sanding the plastic a bit to match the hull contour. It doesn't look pretty, but it's rock solid and as level as I could get it. Going to take this week to design a rudder and set rough waterchanneling guides for the weekend.
Rudder's in. I have two different designs printed that I plan to test in water. Coverage looks pretty good. Waterchanneling is mostly complete. First I added wooden guides to dam sections that needed channeling. I glued internal mounts for electrical components and then poured resin. I need to add more to the rear of the ship to push water more towards the center, I tested it by filling with water slowly and found that it tends to pool under and behind the back turret. Drive train works. I'm very happy with the results. View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15QXqML_cElW7rw4H-yUNWa096TKrtNen/view?usp=sharing Next weekend will try to get one of the subdeck pieces in.
Subdeck's in, used West System to seal the wood into the fiberglass hull. The fiberglass rim was sanded down to match the lip of the wood. The step at the aft end was a pain to get right, I used too thick a piece of ply in-between, so I took it to a disc sander to get it low enough to fit properly. Works alright, going to epoxy it again on an afternoon off to get the step completely watertight. Electronics are getting waterproofed and wiring is going in next weekend.
All the electronics were put into the ship last weekend. It's really hard to see but I sandwiched a secondary power distribution board underneath the test switches on the stand I built. Each brushless motor has a dedicated power lead and there's a separate voltage-selectable and current-limiting BEC built into the board with a wire that runs to the receiver and plugs into the BAT channel. Runs on 10Ah's worth of 2S LiPo. Duct-taped the sides with easy-to-spot bright orange tape (in case I needed to go swimming) and added a tire weight box's worth of ballast that ended up making the ship a hair under 13 lbs. I took her to the water to test electrical and handling. The boat accelerated very well, belt drive was a success. The turning was better than I expected, could make around a hula hoop-sized circle. Stopping was not easy, the reverse was lackluster, just felt sluggish with everything in regards to reverse motion. I believe that, since I'm using smaller, mildly directional 4-blade props, it cavitates pretty bad when switching directions. I'm going to test again with flatter 3-blade props with a bit more pitch and see if there's a better forward to reverse time with more oomph in reverse motion. Also, I bent one shaft a hair when working on the boat at some point and created a very noisy starboard shaft that I need to either straighten back out or replace. Planning to mount the solenoids, install the cannons, and route the CO2 system next.
