|
Welcome to the
|
Electric Eel |
About:
| Contributor: | David Buchner |
| Last update: | 19 Apr 1999 |
| Scope: | It was part of a display I saw at Macalester College (St.Paul, MN) somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago. What I remember (or think I remember - any of this could be dead wrong), from the brief description posted next to it, it was built by an East German engineer, secretly, in his spare time, in his basement. I don't actually remember if he was able to get out with it, or if he was caught, or had problems and needed to be rescued by Danes or something, or what. I didn't know much of what to look at, at the time, but it was the first sub I'd seen and I was really excited about it then. Now I see these pictures after seeing some of the work of the guys on the psubs list, and it looks pretty homely. But still, pretty elaborate for what it was. |
| The flat sided design of this submersible limits this type of design to extremely shallow depths. Flat sides have a poor resistance to water pressure. |
| Another look at the snorkel, more of the many windows (I count seven altogether), the steering motors, and the bang-up fiberglassing job. |
|
| From the front left. You can see the port-side steering motor, and just make out the main, bigger motor in the back (crude enhancement by me). The flat hatch is open, and you can see the snorkel. I remember it had like a red rubber ball in it, which would maybe float up, plug the opening, and prevent water from getting in when the sub went deeper than the snorkel. (would this work?) |
|
| View from the back, with a person for scale. You can see the main prop (red), the red beacon light on top of the open hatch, and a big boxy protrusion on the bottom which I figure must have been batteries. |
|
| Possibly reduntant and unnecessary. |
|
| A shot of the control panel through the open hatch, proving the inventor was German. What you can't see, which is in a picture I didn't scan, is a metal grille with a fan behind it, right smack in the middle of the dash, below that big black squarish thing which didn't come out. The squarish thing is a rotary switch labeled "0, 1, 2" - I'm guessing selector for separate battery banks. The other stuff - stack of white LED's next to the voltmeter, the knob labeled "MO 1"... who knows? |
|
| I tried to get a shot of the interior structure, back in the "tail" - where I guess the lucky fellow would have had his legs. Looks like some kind of metal framework, and padding of the same kind of stuff they'd have had in the Scooby van. |
|
| Back to The Top | Back to Picture Gallery | Back to the Home Page |