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[cos918]

hi there Ian , which day will you be at Wickstead as I would love to see your boat.

John

[boatmadman]

John,

At the moment it looks like Saturday.

Ian

[cos918]

hope fully will see you there

John

[dan]

the videos of it working look great! have you transported any ships on it yet 

[boatmadman]

The boat as it stands hasnt got the capacity for a lift, I made a mistake in the design of it. The pumped ballast is only enough to overcome the bouyancy provided by the bow and stern sections.

In hindsight the free flood ballast tanks should have been pumped ballast, this would have given the capacity for a lift.

I have a cunning plan evolving in what is left of my brain cell - watch this space - but dont hold your breath. 

Ian

[macey666]

Ian

I would be interested to know what you think about making one of these to a larger scale.  Perhaps a model coming out at around 2m long?  Do you think this would give a better chance of being able to do the kind of lift it is designed to do?

Regards

Macey 

[boatmadman]

Macey,
A 2m long version would be easier to fit the hardware into, but it would be significantly heavier in the water.

I would recommend for something this big to have no free flood ballast and rely entirely on pumped ballast. This would make it lighter to move to and from the pond than if you did it my way.

Also, this should allow you to lift something as intended. The water you would have to pump in to get the boat to waterline would represent the weight it should lift.

This is where I went wrong with mine.

If you can do it, I would suggest multiple pumped ballast tanks, say 2 or 3 down the centreline, and 2 or 3 down each side, this means a total of 6 or 8 tanks all needing individual pump controls to fill and empty. This can be done either with a pump for each tank, like mine, or, use solenoid valves to control where you pump to. Trouble is, I couldnt find any solenoids suitable! You may be luckier.

The reason I suggest multiple tanks is it will give you greater stability control over the model, especially when submerged. You will recall from my thread how sensitive mine is!

Ian

[sean Half-pint works]

Hi Ian, I know there has been no activity on this thread for a while, but I do have a question.

Have you tried putting a load on her yet?

Sean

[boatmadman]

Hi Sean,

I actually sold the model a while ago, so the answer is, no, I didnt get a load on the deck. As I said in the thread, the hull would need extensive modifying to make all the ballast pumped in order to have the lifting capacity for an external load. On top of that, there would be significant stability issues to overcome, it was extremely sensitive when submerged as it stood.

Ian

[canalpilot]

I had ideas of building a model of the semi submersable Mighty Servant 1 when i saw pictures of her lifting a destroyer in Jebel Ali for transpoting back to the UK. I then thought, how do I get plans.  I wrote to the owners in the hope of getting a reply. Reply!!!, they were brilliant, not only did they send me a full set of plans but included company magazines and other literature. My plan is to build a model without the submersing part which I could sail at my club with a load on it.
I think all 3 of the Mighty Servants are now gone, the Blue Marlin class being their successors.

[Umi_Ryuzuki]

The Mighty Servant 1 was refit with sponsons and a wider deck.
The Mighty Servant 3 which sank off of Angola, was recovered and Refit with an additional deck added to the base of the superstructure.

Dockwise/Boskalis is still running heavy lift ships much older the the Servant series.
Mighty Servant 2 is the only one of the three that was written off as a loss.

https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/offshore-vessels/heavy-transport-vessels.html

 

Hope to see a build up of your model.