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Brian,
You got half of the reason for the name of my sub. If
your married and are now building, you probably already went through the
other half of the reason I named mine Persistence. ;-)
It takes a long time to convince a wife why it's necessary to have a submarine
in the garage. In my case, eighteen years!!!
You do have to enjoy the building process. If you don't,
it's going to be a lot of years of drudgery that most likely won't ever see
water. Stick to the building. Take a break when you need it, but
don't quit. In the end you'll be diving.
All my pods are dry. The thrusters use good, reliable,
but expensive, carbon on ceramic face seals. They're common in centrifugal
pumps. They don't leak a drop. My batteries are
in dry pods also. The K-350 has two pods each containing four lead acid
batteries. The pods have vent tubes, actually extra extra heavy steel
pipes, that vent into the hull but they're capped when diving. Each pod
has two vents. They are only opened when charging.
My battery power is carried from the pods to the hull by brass
rods embedded in epoxy that run through a piece of round steel bar. If you
look at a pic you'll see the round pips connecting from the pod to the hull, one
fore and one aft and about six inches in front of the aft tube, you'll see a
larger diameter round steel chunk. That's where my power comes through.
The external lighting wires are just rubber jacketed cables
but each end is fixed so it's totally water tight and imbedded in epoxy.
Even if water gets in the jacket, each conductor is insulated and water
tight.
I have a fish finder with it's transducer mounted on my
rotatable starboard thruster as a cheep sonar. I can point it up, down,
forward and any where in between. It picks up things but it's no
telescope. It's going to take some practice to interpret what I see on the
screen. A fish finder doesn't scan anything. Either the sub has to
move, the transducer has to be rotated through an arc, or your target has to be
moving to create any kind of picture. It works. It's great for
knowing as your approaching the bottom. I find that anything for military
subs is way to big to fit in a small P-sub, not to mention the power
requirements.
At first I wasn't concerned about a compass. If the sun
is out, I can get the sub pointed where I want to go and
look at the light and shadows in the sub from the light entering the hatch
cover viewport. When I submerge past the forward looking view
ports, I have the shadow to steer by. That's fine, IF the sun is
out and IF the water isn't so murky that I loose the sun as I
submerge. I find I need a compass of some kind. I hope to
get Persistence out in a week or two and try the magnetic one.
Dan H.
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