DJB,
I think you
are absolutely right, a home built sub needs to be as light as
possible, if you can make the pressure hull as small as you can stand that
is one way of minimizing the weight. Also if you can leave it in the water
rather than taking it in and out that can elevate a lot of wasted time. I
like Doug's approach., seem more practical.
I don't know if the group has ever kicked this one around at all, I'm sure
it has been, but sort of in the same vein as the group designed sub
but a large style sub . You know those tall ships where collage
kids man the riggings from one port to another and learn about what it was
like way back when, suppose some interested folks designed and
built a WW2 sub replica like the Pampanito for instance. And then it
becomes a floating ( or sinking) school ( income !) and travels from
Wasington State all the way around, through the Panama Canal, to the East
coast and back and forth. So it is always moving so you really wouldn't
have to pay for a birth. Also you would have skeleton experianced crew
with the students doing all the work. It would be quite the event as
it pulled into port!
Brian
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 8:16
AM
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Weeds
growing up around Dreams (was submersible speedboat)
I had a long letter written for this topic but I decided to stick to
the main reasons. I think that most subs end up as flower pots
because of the design. Designing a sub has to be one of the most
difficult things a person can do. There is no perfect design and the
purpose for each design does not fit well with other purposes. Like
helicopters, trucks, and boats. The requirements change as the job
evolves. And the personal sub actually needs a support vessel.
Lets face it, dropping it in the water of the back of a trailer will work a
few times. But you'll get tired of checking out the dock pilings in a
short time. The real stuff is out there off the cost by a few miles and
down there past the second or third atmosphere. The sub I'm
building has a flange in the middle so that a 16 inch center section can be
removed for 1 person operations and then be put back when 2 person operations
are ! required. I feel that many miss the importance of the out of water
wight. Lighter is much , much better. When it comes time to pull
the thing out of the water and you only have a 2 or 3 ton crane,
things can get very complicated. The motion of the vessel and the sub
can get out of hand very quickly, not to mention that wave motions can instill
up to 5 G's of force during this operation. It's 4 times harder to
keep a 2000 pound sub under control as a 4000 pound sub. This is as many
things in physics a Quanitive thing. ( Quanitive spelling wrong, oh well
) Plus the personal on deck need to be good at what they
do. Sure you can get a few guys for a Saturday after noon and if
your lucky no one will have a finger or a hand removed. But once that
sub starts to come out of the water every one needs to know what they are
doing. Now we can look at communication while its in the water.
Another expense that ! should not be over looked. So for a nice day out
on the water we'll need a support vessel, say 50 foot. A crew, 20 bucks
an hour for 4 people, it goes on and on. After you get back to the dock
you just dropped 4 or 5 hundred dollars in the water. My point is that
to just start a design for a submarine and build it for fun turns out to be
much more expensive than most understand. And if any one is going to
build a sub you should find a niche that that can make money. The same
thing happens with home built helicopters, and air planes. They seem
like a good idea at the start but once you fly it around for a while, (if
you don't die in the proses) the good idea begins to be a money pit and it
stops being fun. And then once the fun is gone that person that built the
thing finds out that no one wants to buy it. Particularly in the toy
helicopter scenario. The poor guy sees this cool toy at the county fair
and pays 40 bucks ! for a ride. The guy beside him tells him he's one of
the best natural pilots he's ever seen and that he should build one. But
by time he's done with construction he'll have 40 thousand dollars in the toy
and then he finds out he could have bought an old certified Hughes 300 for
about the same money. All in all, I think Dug has the best and in my
eyes the only sound reason for building a submarine. He's sharing
the experience with his son. And maybe after all is done, the only
reason any of us build these submarines is so that we can stand back and
say. Wow, is that ever cool, it's done. But,,Maybe if I
change this and I think I'll move this over here, and I think that should be
bigger and I don't need that and maybe if I take this and turn it around, then
it will be......or is it the treasure we know we'll find next
season? Keep it light...
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