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[tweety777]

Hello all,
Considering the extreme difficulty steering the ship on a desired course I started trying to cannibalise old servo's to get some proper control over the steering with which I can steer the course I want her to sail. Unfortunately I damaged the servo electronics so I ended up buying new servo's. Today I managed to make them work with new gears and a plate to mount them on. In the video below I'm testing the new servo's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2qK5vOKexQ
Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,


In my previous post I showed a video of the new servo control at work, here is a photo of the setup. At this moment I'm considering moving to continuous rotation servo's with AS5600 sensors for feedback for moving the thrusters because these are so much smaller then the steering motors which I've now replaced. I'm also considering this option for controlling the cranes, most of all the main crane because that might well require too much power to turn for the small reduction gear motors I currently have connected for that purpose.

The time has now come to start working on the new hull, here I'm drawing out the frames so I can get my saw to work. I decided to make the mold in 4 parts and place wooden plates in between the 4 parts beforehand as if I've cut the hull in 4 pieces so I don't need to wait for 3 days until the epoxy on the first part has properly cured and then risk slightly misaligning the wood for the second mold. I will now have 2 perfectly straight and 100% fitting connection lines between the molds. The flip side of this decision is the especially the front most part of the bow risks not being as nicely round at the centreline, which I will compensate for by adding 2 full layers of 200gr fibreglass, 5cm wide along the merge between the 2 molds so I have room to make it perfect afterwards without risking making it a weakness. I might well do the same in the critical areas in the stern as well.

On this plank I will construct the hull, I started drawing lines where the frames will go, taking into account the 4cm thick styrofoam which will fill the gaps between the frames.

All the frames have now been cut out and I've glued blocks of wood onto the lines to provide some guidance for placing the frames. Here I've already made 2 mistakes which I will point out below the corresponding pictures.

The wooden plank I will use to shape the styrofoam and after that to check the shape.

Here I corrected the first mistake at the point where the mistakes where the most critical. I raised the hull by 60 1:1 cm's, so 8mm on my scale so having the wooden framing extend ahead of the bow with much more then 8mm would cause considerable problems in shaping the bulwark properly. The same mistake also extended to the stern though there the bulwark remains a full deck lower so it doesn't cause any issues there other then the slight inconvenience of having this odd shape in 1 mold so it will not align is well as I'd like it to be.

The second mistake I corrected while it was still quite easy. It's the wooden blocks behind the rear most frame which is the very stern of the ship. Leaving these wooden blocks in place would have made releasing the mold very difficult indeed.

I started filling up between the frames with styrofoam, though I did get a bit further then shown here by now.

Considering the softness of the foam I will apply a layer of GRP before making the molds to ensure a good quality mold.
Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,


I put my mind on the transmitter for a bit, it needs to be ready in half a year to control the final version of this model. The wiring between the Pi and the first set of electronics had become quite a mess so I took it out and replaced it with new, proper wiring.

The power here was attached using a whole lot of single connectors which I have now replaced by 2 large connectors to make sure all connections remain fixed.

Since it became very clear that the only proper means of steering this ship is through heading control over the azimuths I started removing the joysticks and now not needed electronics and try to see how the new components will fit, both physically and in terms of wiring.

I put 2 USB sockets in the side of the transmitter, the top 1 (left in the photo) can be used for connecting a keyboard while the other one is the charging port to which I may add a charging LED in the future. This week I decided to drop the 27A powerbank in favour of a 26 gram weighing 9V battery with 28A of power while costing far less then the powerbank used to cost. I will include some miscellaneous stuff to mount the battery properly right underneath the charging port. The PCB atop the Pi handling the power and cooling for the Pi can easily handle the 9V, converting it to 5V for the Pi and other devices through 2 secondary 5V connectors so I will also power the remaining parts through these port.

The power sensor (measuring voltage and amperage) has been connected to keep track of battery status along with the new on/ off switch.

All in all the wiring got quite a bit tidier then it was.

Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,


I got my first birthday gift in the shape of an Airfix giftset 1:72 Westland Sea King. This will be put on the helodeck when the flying helo is not around. Since this ship is not build to sail with her own helicopter I will make the model in a ready to start configuration, with instruments and interior lid up, but engines turned off to save fuel.

The nice thing about hanging around with photographers is that tends to be 1 available when one decides to go for a sea trial to check the latest adjustments in the steering.

The sea trial was a great success! Up to the point where the gears fell off of the servo's (because why bother screwing them on the servo...), the battery went pretty much flat in about an hour and eventually even pulling an entire water plant into the propeller. Sailing went great with really good manoeuvrability and proper control over the course which used to be a great issue. The bow thrusters turned out to be useful even at some speed and the proved powerful enough to move the large superstructure even in the wind conditions today.








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8--mzrQIf4


With the sea trial a good success I mastered the courage to make the 2 remaining joysticks fit properly in the add on for the transmitter.

I found the courage to continue with the transmitter also because I sent the files for the new throttles, along with the new thrusters, to a friend who will print these parts in resin. I upgraded the throttles will designing the new version by adding backlighting so I can see in the dark what I'm doing. While typing this I realise this might also be a good idea to do with the rudder indicators and perhaps I can even mount some LED's such that they provide some lighting on the joysticks.

This is an impressive row of controls. The middle stick will control the retractable bow thruster.

The base plate for the throttles will be too big to fit through the existing holes while also leaving room for the push button. I will add a plate on the inside as well to make sure the throttle is properly aligned.

The potentiometer will be push against the back wall of the throttle quadrant en fixed in place by a small plate.

This is the test version printed with my FDM printer. This is a poor type of printer for making proper angle markings like I designed here. The silver cylinder is a slip ring to fully eliminate restrictions on the amount of rotations I can make. The LED which will provide the backlighting is also visible here.

Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,

Today I sailed all day with my modelling club, ran a full battery flat because I hardly took a break from sailing because I was enjoying myself so much.








The drone itself is hard to see, it's rotorwash is clear though. Would I've had the helodeck ready it would've basically been landing on the deck here.







https://youtu.be/EHB85an_Nhc
https://youtu.be/0ucsQX1cdxg
https://youtu.be/wIpAAF3Hfp4
https://youtu.be/F7uZRC7CF6c

Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,


The new throttle levers have arrived. I do need to modify the lever so it will fit on the shaft of the potmeter which turned out not to work quite so well due to printing difficulties.

This is a big step towards completing the transmitter, though there is still a lot of programming to do.

There will be a new, deeper version of the extension because this is quite impractical and there is not much room for mounting the potmeter for raising and lowering the retractable bow thruster. In the new version the electronics will be mounted vertical to leave as much room as possible.


The new thrusters have arrived as well. The smaller set is for a club member who is building a firefighting vessel.

The new thrusters will most likely be much more quiet then the Graupner units I've had for pretty much 17 years now. The propeller is a lot better as well.



Considering the possibility of night sailing with the modelling club I decided to add some lighting so I can see the model in the dark. All lights are placed and connected temporarily and can easily be removed and the lights which are fixed in place are fixed on place which are yet to be replaced.

Greetings Josse

[tweety777]

Hello all,


Filling the hull is now fully on it's way.





After having optimised the design I printed the new bowthrusters so I can now start assembling them. I do need to shorten the drive shafts before I can fully assemble the bowthrusters.

After an attempt with a 9V battery which is indicated to have 28000mAh, but in reality turns out to be a much more reasonable 280 mAh which is far to little for my power hungry transmitter I now upgraded to a proper battery being a 14,8V 10000mAh which should be enough for running the transmitter the entire day. There will be a battery status display which is yet to be delivered. The new battery is now fully attached (apart from the status display) and has proven to be more then capable of powering the entire transmitter and the problems with the screen have vanished because it now gets enough power.

The new addition has been designed and printed. The entire transmitter has become quite a large unit, zo most likely I'll be putting it on a camping table for ease of transport wherever possible and have the neck strap as back-up for where the camping table can't stand, in my neighbourhood the waters have fairly steep patches of grass making the closest place for the camping table the middle of the road.

The colours on the buttons is the wrong way around here (it's been corrected by now) but the general idea will be clear. 1 of the major reasons for making the new addition was to create room for the potentiometer, which has now been placed.

Most of the electronics are now put in place, all that remains to be done is connect the potentiometer and the LED's for the backlighting.

The bigger addition does leave a lot of room for upgrades should the need arise.

Greetings Josse

[Martin (Admin)]

Is this a new Hull Josse ?

[tweety777]

Hi Martin,

This indeed is a new hull. I ran into to many problems with fitting electronics and wiring properly, bilge keels breaking off, forward bulwark being to low and the list goes on and on. Add to that list my intent to have this project as a prototype for all to come, where all to come will be made with a GRP hull, and it became quite clear that building a new hull would be the easy solution for all the problems.

Hello all,

Behind the scenes I'm working on assembling the thrusters and bowthrusters, this is not yet going fully according to plan, quite possibly due to the shafts being just shy of the needed 4mm that a proper propshaft would be. In any case, moving the drive shaft by hand doesn't yet result in a constantly rotating propeller.


Since the superstructure will not be replaced but rather be moved to the new hull when the time comes I can continue the work on the superstructure so I started adding the platforms.

In this photo it would appear the upper deck is not 100% flat, I'll be checking that.

Starts to look more and more like a ship now.


The indicators for the throttles have been glued in place, now I only need to add the cut-outs for the locking system on the throttles so I can start to mount them permanently.

Considering the I2C cable from the Pi often comes loose I permanently placed the multiplexer PCB and put a drop of hot glue on the pesky connector for good measure. Using hot glue makes it easy enough to remove the connector if need be but make sure it won't happen without human interference.

Quite an important step is being able to connect the main part of the transmitter to the addition so after having corrected the holes I now glued the connectors (each with a strong magnet besides it) in place. Originally I had used a a mold to determine the position of the holes but I placed that to the wrong reference point.

Greetings Josse