There are a few loose ends to tie up, the first is the oil separator. As time had been short I tried the oil separator that came with the steam plant, it is a nice looking red oil drum. All I had to do was to rework the exhaust pipe so the pipe entered the oil separator with the separator in position next tot he engine. I hoped it would be large enough and from running on the bench, I found that if I emptied it after the initial start up, not too much water was collected in it.
Regarding the make up water, there has been a lot said about water in other posts, and it is important. I do not use the de ionised water, I do use water taken from my de humidifier, so thats water taken out of the air which I believe to be soft so no issues with scaling or furring up the boiler. I am lucky, the lakes I sail at are clean, so could also use the lake water. What this project is showing me is that I will take water from the lake for the Black Swan Build, if for no other reasons, the loss of over a kilo of water and the space taken up by the tanks.
Earlier in the discussion we spoke about the bypass valve. Well with two days to go before e the challenge and with the steam plant once again out of the boat and on the bench, I set about trying to set the bypass valve up. I really could not understand why it was being so difficult, I had set two others up really easily. Any way I fiddled about with it all morning til I got it as good as possible. After lunch I decided to do a long test run of the steam plant on the bench. I filled everything up and oiled everything, then fired up the boiler, its roar was missing, it seemed to be taking longer to heat the boiler, then it was struggling to make enough steam. I stopped the test and checked everything and found dirt in the gas jet, so had to clear that.
With the boiler working again as it should the test proceeded, all was going well, then I noticed that the servo for the water bypass had not moved, I slid the sight glass sensor up to where there was definitely no water in the sight glass and waited, still nothing happened. I then reset the boiler controls and still the servo didn't move. After spending all morning setting up the servo it had now died, it could have been worse, it could have happened during the challenge. It was whilst I was changing the servo that I spotted that the servo arm was shorter than the by pass valve arm so it was not moving the bypass a full 90 degrees - which was why the valve had been so tricky to set. With a new servo installed with a longer servo arm, the set up took next to no time, the bypass definitely closed ensuring all the water entered the boiler, and when open, it was open wide enough to ensure no water entered the boiler.
I have spoken about the warning LEDs, Blue for the gas and Red for the warnings about water levels, these need to be positioned so that they can be seen whilst the model is operating. I fixed them to the towing bollards just aft of the cabin. I also installed a battery level indicator for the receiver and positioned that discretely. Another issue with an all metal hull and decking is the position of the receiver, 2.4 radios do not work through metal, so the receivers antennae had to be outside of the hull.