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Hi Ian.
My sub will be strapped into and between a modified
catamaran's booms that connect the two hobie cat style hulls.
I intend to have a horseshoe shaped cradle made in
the middle of the booms that will enable the sub to be
able
to be lowered into the water and retreived by large
straps tightened and loosened with a ratchet handle apparatus.
At the top of the horseshoe cradle will be bumpers
made from firehose to cushion any wave impacts from the cat hulls transmitted
thru the booms against the wetsub.
The wetsub will actually be out of the water and
suspended under the cradle made into the middle of the hobie cat hull
booms.
The catamaran can either motor under its own power
with one person staying topside with it, or can be towed by another
boat.
I do not plan to ever rest the sub's
pod onto another boat's deck nor have anything banging against
the pvc battery pod outside of just
floating it off of and resting it back onto the
trailer and lowering the straps on the catamaran's horizonal booms to lower the
sub into the water and reverse same to retrieve it.
The trailer supports will contact both hobie cat
hulls and the battery pod, but I do not
think floating it off the trailer or floating it
back on the trailer will be a problem.
I do see where if someone were setting their pod
directly onto the pitching deck of a boat or lifting it from the boat where
it was suspended in midair
with a davit of some kind that the pod might be damaged in choppy seas if the sub swung
into the boat or ship and the pod crashed into something extremely
hard.
But as I said above, I will not be using a system
like that to launch it. I'm currently on the hunt for an old hobie cat sailboat
neglected in the weeds of someones
yard to modify into what I described above.
Something between 20 to 24 feet long would be nice. I intend to
construct a small enclosed deck behind the underslung sub for
the
motor operator and some dive gear as well. This is
a relatively cheap and safe means to get my sub to the dive location where I
will not exceed 100 feet.
I have given this a lot of thought and since you
can seldom count on other people's boats as being compatible with hauling your
sub on their deck, after much thought
about transport systems this is what I am
doing.
Kindest Regards, Bill Akins.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 2:24
AM
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Battery pod.
(question for Dan H.)
Hi Akins,
hopefully your sub would not have deal
with something as hard as a
hammer hit during submerged operations, and I'm
sure it's a lot
easier to exit a wet sub if needed compared to a 1ATM
sub. But
during the launch and recovery phases of the submarines
operation
it will be a lot easier to generate the types of forces need to
crack the PVC. Might be something worth considering during
the
trailering process design. Or maybe you could use either
GRP
farings to protect them or cover the cylinders in a layer of
GRP.
Ian.
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:05:20 -0500
"Akins" <lakins1@tampabay.rr.com>
wrote:
> Dear Ian.
>
> The 12 inch diameter pvc pipe I
am using for my battery pod is approx 3/8th's of an inch thick. It is very
strong, somewhat heavy and made
> much stronger once the permanent end
cap and female threaded fitting are glued in place giving it support on both
ends.
> Also being a pipe it is curved and will withstand more external
stress than a flat surface. Perhaps if you hit it with a
> sledgehammer
with a long swing and all your might it might crack but although I have never
tried that, (12 inch pipe is expensive!) I'm thinking you would
> have
to hit it multiple times to crack or bust it, this is thick and strong
material. My wetsub itself is fiberglass and nowhere near
> as thick or
as strong as this pvc is, so my battery pod will actually be stronger than the
body of my wetsub itself.
> Hopefully being a wetsub and having
excellent visibility I will not crash into anything with sufficient force to
crack the pod.
> I think it would probably take more force than my 74 lb
thrust minnkota motor could put out to bust my pvc pipe even if I purposely
ran it into something.
> In the unlikely event that it develops a leak
or were to somehow become compromised and fill with water my battery pod will
be able to be jettisoned in case of
> an emergency so I think it is an
appropiate battery pod material for a two man 12 foot long wetsub especially
since I will never take my wetsub below 100 feet.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ian Roxborough
> To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:26
PM
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Battery pod. (question for
Dan H.)
>
>
>
> What happens to PVC
when you hit it hard with hammer?
>
> If it's the
same stuff I'm thinking of, it will crack.
>
>
Ian.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
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