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RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Prone position tips?
OK wise guys!!! Just to let you know, I do have the girl already. She
weighs 70 lbs and is 11 years old.
I'm going to do a little experimenting. I particularly liked Dean's
observation about the center of a bed being cut out. That leads me to
the idea of a support tray made of two parallel rails instead of a flat
slab. I recall something that looked like that in Deep Flight. Another
idea is to have a sort of hanging sling, a smaller version of what they
use in hang gliders. Though there's not much space obviously, and it
sounds a bit like a Houdini setup. Anyway, I'll test out a few of these
ideas and see which one seems the lesser evil.
The space and weight for a second person is coming mostly from losing
the VBT and from moving the two SCUBA tanks outside. The balance would
come out of lead ballast as necessary. The SCUBA tanks will be in 8"
plastic tubes mounted at the intersections of hull and skids. The
forward half of those tubes will be loaded with either weights or floats
(think cylindrical plugs made either of steel or syntactic foam) to
statically adjust buoyancy. The forward half of the tubes corresponds
roughly to the longitudinal position of the prone crewmember, which
helps simplify things. Essentially, if there's no second guy lying down
there will be about 180 lbs in the tubes outside to make up for his
weight.
The other big change will be in control methods. A big constraint of the
basic K250 design is that the pilot is 100 percent tied to the controls
-- both hands on the movable thrusters and both feet on the pedals. The
pedals in particular would tend to stick up a second crewmember's nose.
I'm planning to get rid of all that and control everything from a switch
box on the end of an umbilical. That way you can drive the sub from
either the coning tower or the front viewport. If diving alone, I might
move from one to another. Still to be decided is whether the side
thruster rotation will be mechanically indexed (like the machines at a
gym) or actuated by a servo like Emile's rudder controls. If I were
building the boat from scratch I'd go with fixed thrusters, but I do
think it's possible to get decent results with indexed or motorized
rotating thrusters.
Thanks,
Alec
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org
[mailto:owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org] On Behalf Of Al Secor
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:37 PM
To: personal submersibles
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Prone position tips?
Let's try this again...
Hi Alec,
I can speak from experience from riding in Dan H.'s KH-350 that laying
on one's belly and craning one's head / neck up to look out the forward
view is extremely uncomfortable! Having the pilot straddle you with his
legs also reduces the space available to roll and change positions.
Some type of padded incline would help but then you will be blocking any
possible view the pilot would have through that port.
Let's just say, it would be wise to keep any passenger well below 200
lbs and less than 6'. On second thought, following Vance's
recommendation would be best!
Al
----- Original Message -----
From: Alec Smyth <Alec.Smyth@compuware.com>
To: personal submersibles <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Sent: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:44:51 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Prone position tips?
Hi all,
Snoopy started a winter rebuild last night and will hopefully emerge
quite changed, configured for two with one person lying down and the
other sitting in the tower. But even with a 30 second test lying down in
the stripped out cabin I can tell the person in the prone position will
need an advanced degree in yoga and series of painkiller shots. Does
anyone have some ergonomic lessons learned for prone crew? It may be as
simple as making a cushion standard equipment, or maybe I could try to
build a sort of folding table-like device in front of the viewport so
that a person could rest their chest on it. Since prone positions are
fairly common, I'm just wondering what folks have found works best (or
at least hurts less).
Thanks,
Alec
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Al Secor
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