Orcatron and Newtcomms are about $10K per unit, and you'd need a pair the best I can figure. Like you said, kind of spendy. Add the scanning sonar at $6K and spares, you've probably got more than many psubs cost and it will all fit in a suitcase. And not a very big suitcase, at that. Maybe we should have taken up cheaper hobby, like collecting Tiffany originals or elder cognacs, or Ferraris, come to that.
Jay,
You are on Andros, you cant find an acoustic tracking system there :) ?
The most "inexpensive" acoustic nav system in the world is gonna be the Desert Star stuff.
The simple pingers/pinger receivers are about $300 USD - $500 USD
The lowest cost full 3-d tracking system would be the short-baseline system. Those start at around $6K.
Still kinda spendy.
Any other new acoustic nav system from say Linkquest, ORE, Applied Physics, etc. will be in the $15K to $20K range. That is at the lower price spectrum. The sky is the limit from there.
Every once in a while some company comes out with an acoustic nav product for the recreational diver market. The price range there is usually below $3K or so. But those products generally disappear pretty quick. It's a very small market where testing R&D is pretty expensive.
One suggestion:
1) Contact lease agencies in some oil patch region like GOM or North Sea. They may have older used equipment like ORE Trackpoint II's you could get 'cheaply'. Also some universities probably have stuff sitting on shelfs.
Building one is a reasonable effort, sometimes Univ. Students build them for the AUV competitions. You might be able to build a working one for less than $3K if your time was free and you only had to buy beer for your test boat crew...cheap beer, like Schlitz or something.
Although if I was getting acoustic gear for a sub, the first thing I would get would be voice comms. Like an OTS or the newtcomm...
-a
Jay K. Jeffries wrote:
> Andy,
> That's the ticket! Use to frequent that place years ago when we were
> installing moorings on the wrecks up there. Thanks.
> > Another question: Is there any economical (within the typical PSUB cheap
> budget) for a short-leg acoustic pinger navigation system?
> R/Jay
> > > Resepectfully,
> Jay K. Jeffries
> Andros Is., Bahamas
> > Save the whales, collect the whole set.
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> From:
owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> [
mailto:owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org] On Behalf Of andy goldstein
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 7:32 PM
> To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Drop Weights
> > You could try
> > Trawlworks...
> > RI ftw!
> >
http://www.trawlworks.com/
> > Desert star has used there smaller floats instead of syntactic for several
> shallow apps. They also used hollow steel spheres that I think we got at
> mcmaster. I have no idea what sizes they come in.
> > -a
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-- Andy Goldstein
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