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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Frank's new nose cone

Frank,

The falling debris was a 26' speedboat! That was the Nektons. Remember, their viewports project without side protection, and that's what got hit. Broke a conning tower port in two, knocking one piece loose entirely, I think. Your protection plan is pretty massive. Bet the Nekton accident would be mighty difficult to duplicate, wouldn't it?

Years ago (in the 60s) Asherah bashed into a rock in the Aegean and broke/cracked a truncated cone style viewport. They replaced it (after cleaning out their britches, I suspect) and welded on pipe frame guards around the lower ports to protect them from a repeat of same. Then thru the 70s, we made about a jillion dives, mostly in Perry and Hyco gear, and I don't recall a single incident where we broke a port, or even cracked one. As I said somewhere before, all those subs were first cousins to Abrams tanks, so were hard to break by design.

I'm betting your little sub will be just fine. There'll be things you might wish you had done differently, or improvements to be made, but care and attention to detail will take you a long way. Then you slide her in the water with your heart in your mouth and...well, have a ball.

Vance


-----Original Message-----
From: ShellyDalg@aol.com
To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Sent: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:31 pm
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Frank's new nose cone

Hi Vance. I envy your experience, and really enjoy your sharing those experiences with us. Having never piloted a sub, I'm afraid my sea trials will be very extensive. Kind of " learn as you go " and that will mean not only learning how to drive this thing, but also try to discover it's flaws and limitations. Scary but fun.
On the "bumpers " subject, I remember hearing about the accident where some falling debris took out a window, and one guy died as a result. I don't think it's possible to anticipate EVERY scenario, but with guys like you helping, at least we have a fighting chance at building a boat we can use. Frank D.