Hi TowboatJoe,
Thanks for the comments.
Towers at the corners - well maybe some sort of indication of the corners, at the leading edge corners, something flexible. The MS1 has fixed towers which are used to indicate trim.
For the coupling, maybe tow lines and the facility to switch to "pusher" mode for positioning under the recovery item.
Displacement shouldn't be too much of a problem - back of a fag-packet calculations suggest that for a lenth of 1.5m and a beam of 0.5mm you get a capacity of 7.5Kg for each 1cm of displacement - if you design for a 10cm variation in displacement, this gives a capacity of approx 75Kg which should be more than adequate for such a toy.
Misalignment of the load will increase the risk of roll, but with a wide beam and alow centre of gravity, this effect could be minimised. Alignment "grabs could also be designed in to centre the barge on the load (I'm thinking that this barge would not be scale so pretty much anyfink will go)
Agreed - round bottoms would be a problem - but I see this as a toy/proof-of-concept sort of idea.
KitS,
THe volumes would be a problem - but they can be trimmed for. The biggest problem I see is maintaining trim as the barge sinks and rises. I guess you would need a set of sealed bouyancy tanks which keep the hull neutrally bouyant so it cannot be sunk by careless flooding of the sinking tanks, and have them at bow and stern.
Maybe it would be worth doing a feasibility study, just as a fun project
Tim the Wombat