Re: Intrepid

[Dick Morrisson <rmorrisson@unidial.com>]

Gary,
Did you send a second e-mail with an attachment only?  A "Happy99" file?
I heard of a virus that attaches itself in a similar fashion and just want to be
sure before opening the file.
Dick Morrisson

protek@shreve.net wrote:

> Vance,
>
>     Yes, I can donate some more information on the Intrepid.  It was built
> by Harold LeTourneau from Longview, Texas.  Harold is a relative of R. G.
> LeTourneau who in the 1930's became very wealthy with his inventions
> including an electric driven road grader.  He took some of his fortune and
> founded LeTourneau College in Longview, an engineering school.  The whole
> family seems to be engineers.  Not all have engineering degrees but they
> all seem to have a considerable knowledge of the art.  Harold has his own
> engineering firm.  I have visited and it is impressive.
>     Harold contacted me when the local TV station ran an article on my sub.
>  He helped me launch my sub for the first test.  He laughed at the thought
> that as few personal subs that there are we have two of them 50 miles
> apart.  Longview is about an hour drive from Shreveport.
>     The Intrepid is a two-person sub with a lot of windows.  The hull
> thickness is 0.25 inches and has saddle bag type ballast soft tanks on each
> side.  Batteries are carried in pods on each side.  They are 6 volt golf
> cart batteries with no Hydrocaps at present.  The windows are 0.5 inch
> Lexan and have a fairly large unsupported diameter.  The ascent-decent is
> done with a central tank with a 12-volt gear pump that pumps water in and
> out.  It has dive planes but Harold said that they are useless because of
> the slow forward velocity.  Thrust is vectored via hydraulic cylinder that
> is in-turn driven by a motor gear-system inside the hull.  Thus all
> steering is done electrically.  The hatch seal is a single O-ring groove.
> I think the O-ring is 3/16 inch in diameter.  He has a small viewport on
> the hatch.  I like this feature!  He has made over 100 dives and has taken
> the boat down to 100 feet.  He has external lighting that he designed using
> test tubes filled with halogen bulbs; strange but it works well for him.
> He uses an external flux-gate compass.
>     He does good work.  In general there are some things that I would have
> done differently, but there were some things I wish I had done like Harold
> did when I designed my boat.  Harold has, to my knowledge, not taken his
> boat out in about 2 years.  If you have any other questions I may have some
> more answers on the Intrepid but just can not think of anything else
> important right now.
>
> Gary Boucher
>
> At 04:34 AM 5/3/99 EDT, you wrote:
> >This to Gary Boucher,
> >       Any chance of some more info on your friend's sub?  Intrepid, I mean.
> > It looks sort of familiar in the conning tower area, like a Nekton, of
> >course.  But, and like the man said, but me no buts, that guard rail and
> >those side tanks don't look familiar.  Do you know what the genesis of this
> >thing was.  How big?  Deep?  Passengers?  Come on Gary, cough it up.  Please.
> >Vance
> >
> >