The attached link www.psubs.org/projects/redus/ is to a short video of the first open water dive for my boat. The video is not great as we were short handed but it does show the first baby steps in getting the boat operational. An approaching thunderstorm forced us to move the dive up one day and limited us to just one hour in the water so we did not get done as much testing as we had hoped. This was the first time to try and launch and retrieve the boat from the trailer. While we were able to successfully launch and retrieve the boat, it took us way to long (45 minutes to launch and 30 minutes to retrieve). If it had been a busy day, we would have had a bunch of angry boaters. By reworking the procedure I believe we can expedite the process quite a bit. The trailer has a 20 ft telescoping tongue extender much like the one built by Dan Hryhorcoff. As part of the test, I discovered a trapped air pocket over the aft MBT that is keeping me from getting negatively buoyant. The Aft MBT is flooded according to my level sensor. You can see this in the video when I am flooding the MBTs. This is an easy fix that I will correct before the next dive. The rooster tail from the jet drive was caused by the stern of the boat being light. Finally there is a short sequence in which my son is catching a ride as I drive the boat back to the boat ramp. Surface maneuvering work fine. Before the next dive I will adjust the articulated jet drive to try and get a wider range for the yaw movement. This will give me a tighter turning circle. All in all, I was happy with my first open water outing. Having your own psub is a lot of fun. I canʼt wait to go back out. I will try and post updates as I work through qualifying the boat.
Cliff