Topic: My 12 foot Gato class submarine! (Read 266096 times)

Netleyned · « **Reply #250 on:** December 26, 2011, 02:51:53 pm »

FETs are Field Effect Transistors

Ned

sub john · « **Reply #251 on:** December 26, 2011, 02:59:45 pm »

mike have a look on here as i have entered the sub into a compotion http://forum.sub-driver.com/forumdisplay.php?54-THE-2011-MODEL-SUBMARINE-COMPETITION john

MikeA · « **Reply #252 on:** December 26, 2011, 03:19:51 pm »

cant see the pics, not a member. when do they pick the winner then?

sub john · « **Reply #253 on:** December 26, 2011, 03:29:30 pm »

HI Mike
Not sure don't know weather it ends New Years Day or what. See if you can get registered on site. Did you have a good Christmas day Sub doesn't seem to be getting much interest Mike, only entered it about 2 to 3 weeks ago i thought these YANKS would be in to high tec stuff, but may be it is a shock to say it was done in 1993 lol
John

MikeA · « **Reply #254 on:** December 26, 2011, 03:50:48 pm »

i was looking threw the date of the posts and saw your first post was 12/1/11 i thought that was 12 of january, just realised thats 1st of december. I think you will find that when you first posted example on here say, it gained a lot of interest. People are waiting for the footage of it doing what you say it can, including me. Once you got the footage with the on board camera going down 500 ft and relaying depths and finding its own way back home you will have more of an audience. Ill register with the site. The kids this year got some bedroom furnature from santa and so muggins here spent the hole say building flat pack. started at 9:30 am and finished 9:30 pm lol, got some nice presents though, clothes, smelly, socks. Usual dad stuff.

Subculture · « **Reply #255 on:** December 26, 2011, 08:34:08 pm »

Very few model submariners get involved in the nitty gritty of electronics in their models, especially these days with most control devices available commercially. Most concentrate on the hull and mechancial aspects of designs, and work with the radio etc. at a 'black box' level.

So don't be discouraged if there isn't much response, I expect many are impressed by your work on the Gato, but don't really feel qualified to comment.

sub john · « **Reply #256 on:** December 27, 2011, 02:46:19 pm »

Reply#254
HI Mike, I can see what you are saying about people wonting to see a video of it in action on the water, but even so there has been quite a bit of interest on hear and people on the forum have passed nice comments on it, but the trouble is trying to get some thing this size back on the water is a lot of time and money to do it just the battery's would cost £500 and that is just one item it does get expensive, plus with having to rebuild a lot of the electronics that gets expensive as well. And now we will have to have tow bar fitter to the car

Fine on having to build flat packs for the kids been there done that
JOHN

sub john · « **Reply #257 on:** December 27, 2011, 03:06:30 pm »

Reply#255
Hi Subculture, Yes i can under stand that may be a lot of people don't won't to get in to electronics in model submarines when they can buy what they won't but that takes the fun out of it for me, if i had to just build the hull of a submarine i think i would get board with it quick, but that is just my point of view and don't won't it to sound funny. You said that just being able to buy a black box and plug and play and go the same thing has happened on the radio ham bands people don't build any more just buy but I'm not saying every one does that as that would not be fair to say. I remember making my first radio controlled at about 12 years of age and have played around with RF for more years than i care to remember and i am still learning now. I think i get my buzz out of doing electronics and getting it to work when nobody else can

You said don't get discouraged about the other forum i just thought there would have been more interest than there has been its very hard to put info up when it was started 25 years ago, quite a bit of the info has got lost over the years as i said some where before i did not think i would ever go back to subs
All the best John

MikeA · « **Reply #258 on:** December 27, 2011, 03:10:44 pm »

500 quid!?!?! where do you get your batteries from? I registered with that site and had look threw the pics, I even managed to read the magazine article. From that article i gather you allready had the video feedback running so why have you changed it? I gather that the voice link that told you the depth etc has been changed to a heads up display (or whatever its called)

Couldnt you have just used the original frequency that voice link used to send data back, and the original frequency for the live video. Then mix the two with the laptop bank side to make the heads up display.

Subculture · « **Reply #259 on:** December 27, 2011, 08:10:30 pm »

Well it's a big boat, and IIRC from earlier postings, running at a high voltage, which means lots of batteries needed. Couple of a dozen batteries at £20-ish a pop, and you soon drop £500.

sub john · « **Reply #260 on:** December 28, 2011, 07:01:21 pm »

HI Mike,
Yes when you start talking about 5 battery's at 12V at 24AMPS plus one battery 12V 17AMPS it does start to mount up in cost, plus there is other battery's for running the other gear on the bank side TV transmitter for sub and so on you do need to have a few battery's

Video link that was originally on the sub frequency is to high for transmitting under water need to go a lot lower in frequency, radio link for verbal messages back from sub band width is to narrow to use for fast data plus it is on 49MHZ licence free the same sort of thing they use for walkie talkie radio and i think they use the same thing for baby monitors now in the house

By the time I'm finished there will be that many radio links in this sub it will shut it self down due to radio interference or take it self off to hide.

PS you haven't got a old scrapped GPS unit as i won't to take the antenna out of it to use on the sub i can make one but it will end up twice the size. Satellite down links work on two frequency's it has been chosen because it is the only micro wave frequency what is better at getting through clouds than any other .
John

MikeA · « **Reply #261 on:** December 28, 2011, 07:38:18 pm »

theres a gps antennas on ebay if you can find anything useful:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/GPS-/139835/i.html?_nkw=gps+antenna&_catref=1&_sop=15&_trksid=p3286.c0.m1538
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Garmin-GA-27C-low-profile-GPS-antenna-011-00149-05-Fits-many-other-makes-/110799323502?pt=UK_CE_GPS_Accessories_Software_ET&hash=item19cc27816e

sub john · « **Reply #262 on:** December 31, 2011, 08:02:20 pm »

HI Mike, Thanks for links on GPS units not quite sure what to do with GPS receiving antenna

Been trying to work out how much extra weight i need to put in the sub to trim it because i have put different battery's in they are a lot lighter plus i have put more electronics in it have worked it out that i need 1.4KG in front of sub and 2.9KG in the back, which is a right pain as i don't know where I'm going to put it don't say a word lol, because trying to fit ant thing in the back there is not much room to get any thing in there now i can see me having to take the battery's out of the back and what a job that is. As a load of PCB boards sits on top of the battery's
John

HAPPY NEW YEAR

MikeA · « **Reply #263 on:** December 31, 2011, 08:10:35 pm »

do you think that the plug in type gps anttena would work?

this one has 11 hours to go you might get it under a 5er and its for the garmin gps!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Garmin-GA-27C-low-profile-GPS-antenna-011-00149-05-Fits-many-other-makes-/110799323502?pt=UK_CE_GPS_Accessories_Software_ET&hash=item19cc27816e

maybe if you looked inside it i dont know what you would find be maybe you could swap it for the mock annteas on the conning tower. if thats the right word.

also as far as ballast cant you stick some lead ballast to the inside of the torped bay area? and maybe squeeze some in the back? you could allways flood the ballast tanks a little too if all else fails.

sub john · « **Reply #264 on:** January 01, 2012, 06:30:44 pm »

hi mike thought id post pictures of antennas the one on the left hand side is for 10 ghz notice how small it is next to the 20p pence the one on the right hand side is for 2.4 ghz notice how the frequency goes lower the antenna gets bigger
if you were to do the same antenna for 27MHz it would be 18ft long

TWO pics above are of what they call patch antenna it is for 2.3 GHZ is made on PCB board and as you can see it is thin it is ideal to use for GPS antenna in sub only problem is making it for 1.5 GHZ will get a bit big to get in side of conning tower. under top deck HAPPY NEW YEAR JOHN

MikeA · « **Reply #265 on:** January 01, 2012, 08:44:09 pm »

ahh i see. I remeber something you educating me before on the rediculous lengths of 27mhz antennas and how they are shortedned down by a matter of X percentage to be used for transmitters. I suggested the conning tower if it was the stick type antenna but obviously now i see its flat. does the antenna have to be:

a) flat
b) pointing flat side down towards the sky?

i was thinking possibly if its thin it could be pressed to the side wall of the conning tower or even on the under side of the deck. Obviously the conning tower is a little rounded on the side i would say that a 1.5ghz flat antenna would be 4 inches roughly in diameter.

erm another thing how is the testing going with that servo i sent you?

sub john · « **Reply #266 on:** January 03, 2012, 09:28:27 pm »

HI MIKE
Antenna does have to be laying flat pointing up at the sky to make one out of PCB board is going to be to big to glue to the floor underneath, there is another antenna called a HELIX that won't be as wide as patch antenna but will stand a lot higher i can not think of any where else to put it apart from in the conning tower. I thought i might be able to get it in where all the periscopes are but not enough room

Haven't had time to look at servo amp been trying to sort out the problem with extra weight i need to go in the sub will have a look as soon as i get chance
John

MikeA · « **Reply #267 on:** January 04, 2012, 10:19:41 am »

i was just looking threw though those vids again and it is really tightly packed lol. Like i said the only the thing i can think of for ballast is too stick lead wheel balancers on the inside of the hull. youl need a lot though. dunno bout anntenna.

sub john · « **Reply #268 on:** January 04, 2012, 06:54:34 pm »

HI MIKE
Been making up one of the weights to go in the back of sub the resin will not go off, the idea was to put weights in little container that i made up put resin in to hold all in place and the resin will not go off, tried warming it and still does not won't to know its a pain when you cut all the metal up put it in the unit, have brought it in the house to see if it will go off if it doesn't it will be scrap it and think again. Tried some other resin mixed it with hardener and that went off fine what a pain in the neck trouble is it is just to cold in the garage to do jobs like this think i should have left it till the summer but trying to get it ready to take out in the summer.

Just found GPS antenna down Maplins really small ideal to use but my garmin GPS unit seems to have a strange socket don't think it will fit the one from Maplins got to be a bit carefull as the out put on the Garmin unit gives out Volts to run preamp on GPS antenna couldn't tell me down Maplins if it had got preamp on the antenna or not
JOHN

MikeA · « **Reply #269 on:** January 05, 2012, 04:33:13 am »

itl be the weather an all that stopping the epoxy going off. gps antenna sounds like a plan im sure youl think of way to bodge them togeather

sub john · « **Reply #270 on:** January 05, 2012, 09:26:43 pm »

HI MIKE,
Well that resin would not go off but saying that some of it did, but the other that didn't go off was like thick tar, so today i smashed it apart to get metal out of resin you have never seen such a mess the stuff went ever where. In the end got all the metal cleaned up and me, had to make a new box for it use some new resin and glad to say it has gone off, think you was probably right the cold did effect the resin but still can not under stand why it went off in places but where it went off was around the metal

Went down Maplins tonight took GPS garmin with me to see if GPS antenna would fit the socket and guess what it did but i had to test it to make sure it would not blow my garmin unit up and it works great and it only cost 11 pounds cheap at half the price. Its only about 45mm square it should not be a problem fitting it in the sub problem is Mike when you go to make one because of the ones that you buy have a ceramic dielectric thats why they can make them so small if i was to make one it would be a lot bigger
JOHN

MikeA · « **Reply #271 on:** January 05, 2012, 09:42:14 pm »

well so far so good then eh

have you decided where your putting the weights yet have you found a niche for them.

All i meant was if you have a garmin connector and a antenna of some other brand just cut the wires and solder the garmin connector on. To be honest with you i just spouting rubbish really wouldnt have actually suggested you did it because im sure you wouldve done that yourself if it was feasable and definatly not making your on antenna.

I get the feeling your at a dead end with the live camera footage feedback doodaa

(for lack of better words)

has the camera ever worked?

sub john · « **Reply #272 on:** January 07, 2012, 07:29:54 pm »

HI Mike
Have made the two units now for the weights to go in the sub its worked out quite well, battery's at the back of the sub had got a space between the two battery's so one of the weight's will fit in between there it weighs 6.3 pounds and as it worked out at the front of the sub had got a 19mm gap between the battery's so that fitted there quite well that weighed 3.1 pounds , plus these weight's will stop the battery's moving in there battery bays, sub should be pretty close to ideal weight might need a few gram's still to get it spot on

GPS unit had not got plug to fit garmin unit it was a strange plug that fits it like you said would have cut cable off if need be

You asked about video link it was on 435MHZ yes it worked fine in the sub but once sub submerged it was very limited range have got footage of it on video DVD . Haven't had time to get back on to low frequency video link been busy with to many other things at the moment

Sent you a private PM
JOHN

sub john · « **Reply #273 on:** January 20, 2012, 09:46:05 pm »

HI Mike
Had a problem with the prop shafts on the sub leaking lubricant in shafts, on one end of the prop shaft there is a lip seal on the inside where the drive cog is what the poss drive belt goes to that seal was not the problem that was OK it was on the other end of the prop shaft there is a silicone rubber o ring that sits on the stainless steel shaft that has got a slit grove in it to hold the seal in place this all sits in a cup at the end of the prop shaft so the water can lubricate it and cool it as water is the ideal thing for it but it was pumping out of the seal lubricant out of the shaft after been running for about 3 hours. So ended up making another unit that would fit on the end of the cup where the silicone rubber o ring is so it would have another lip seal on the end of that but guess what it still ended up leaking not sure if it is the lubricant heating up expanding and pumping its way out of shaft, don't like the idea of water being able to come up the prop shafts and get inside of the sub, the new lip seal that i have fitted on the end of the prop shaft have fitted it is the wrong way around so idea is when pressure on out side of sub when sub dives, will push lip seal harder on to prop shaft and help it seal better what a pain in the neck it is don't you just hate problems like this. I have even changed inner stainless steel shafts and it is still doing it do not won't to have to take them out of the sub i could not think of anything worse to have to change on the sub.
JOHN

MikeA · « **Reply #274 on:** January 20, 2012, 10:40:30 pm »

typical sods law youl end up taking them out. Sub bein sat for 20 years im not suprised the rubbers have gone.

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Author Topic: My 12 foot Gato class submarine! (Read 266096 times)

sub john

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sub john

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