Frank, Hawkes’ sub uses some different principles than a typical PSUB. He is diving positively buoyant and has the capability to make some speed. The shape of the body being long and flat, gives him some hydrodynamic forces with the speed and the wings so that he can do hydrobatics (more exciting angles & dangles). At $1.5M to S2.5M each, I would expect to be able to do something exciting. In the end, I expect that the expensive toys will languish in their hangers quite a bit as they are just tools and the excitement will pale quickly. Those images of operating with dolphins or manta rays are rare and far between. They can afford the expensive scanning sonars that will help make higher speeds safer. I have visited The Baths also, beautiful place! Made some dives also on the wreck of the Rhone, the British mail ship off of Salt Island where they filmed some of the movie The Deep. R/Jay Resepectfully, Jay K. Jeffries Andros Is., Bahamas Save the whales, collect the whole set. From: owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org [mailto:owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org] On Behalf Of ShellyDalg@aol.com Hi Jay. That's kinda what I thought. Because our boats are so slow I'm thinking the dive planes aren't that useful. I put motors on my dive planes ( or dive planes on my motors ) because of the slow speeds and anticipated lack of force. The rear thrusters are the same. They rotate and have prop rings with "rudder plates" to give a push in the direction I want even if the travel speed is very slow. The "vectored" thrust concept. Dean's rear dive planes are pretty big so I would guess they will still help change dive angle even when going slow. Like the big rudder he has. He mentioned it worked well even when moving slow. I remember seeing a short video of the Hawkes two man sub making a banked turn. That sub has two fairly large dive plane "wings" and he likes to say his subs "fly" under water. Rear dive planes can be added to my sub later pretty easily and I would build them on a test model before I committed to adding them. My old test model with the little side wings was interesting. It made the sub model rise and fall but the sub stayed fairly level. I tried setting the wings one-up one-down but it didn't tilt the sub like I thought it might. Of course that was just a model and I'm pretty sure on the real sub the forces applied will develop different characteristics. The test models I used were tied to a string and placed in flowing water so the action from the attached motors providing thrust will be quite a bit different. Having the model tied to the string doesn't really duplicate the forces the real sub will experience. It'll be interesting to see just how maneuverable it ends up being. Towing is something a little more like the test model tied to a string. It's probably a good idea to try towing a sub at different speeds to determine how it handles. It could be pretty scary to be dragging a sub around and have it dive out of sight. Where'd it go ! Where'd it go ! That reminds me....... I had an experience like that once. We rented a bare boat in BVI once. Tied it to a mooring ball and rode the dinghy to shore and played there all day. It was an island with really big rocks, caves, and trails. we had lunch, drinks, and walked all over the place. It was called "The Baths" because of the nice caves at the water's edge. Anyway, when we came back the boat was gone! Well, needless to say, we were freakin' out. We took the dinghy out and found it about 1/4 mile down the beach just getting ready to smash up on the rocks. Someone had dropped the anchor there so saved the boat. The Mooring ball was still attached but it's anchor rope had rotted through. I learned why the only mooring spot not guaranteed safe was the one at the island we had tied up to. It was the only place in BVI where the moorings were maintained by government employees. All the rest were owned and operated by a private company so were guaranteed to hold your boat. I still remember coming down to the beach and saying to my buddy.....Where'd it go ! Frank D. |