Hello all,
Once again the cycle repeats itself, and I can't resist building something. It's been a little while since I pretty much finished development of the Borei class (project 955) and have now got all the tooling completed, first prototype out of the moulds and one already sold. So planning has started for me on my next boat. In the time as Borei approached the end of the development cycle my thoughts were already turning to the next boat that I wanted to build.
I had the Project 661 on the radar earlier than that. I initially though about building a 661 before the 955, but something said 'build a big boat' and something with a pump jet. Well the 661 aint the biggest boat that I have built, it's going to be slightly shorter than Mike (project 685) but slightly wider. It will be the widest boat I have built but the biggest challenge is that it's my first ever twin screw. If you look at the shape of the boat, the front end and overall hull is very straightforward. It has a really bluff bow and a really round straightforward hull length. The back end is where the business is and where I will spend the most of my time. The back end has twin booms that support the twin screws and looks like it was the inspiration for the Oscar class. This will require a lot of eye balling and profiles, bog and sanding.
The Papa class was the worlds fastest submarine, based on publicly available info. In 1970 she got up to 44.7 knots that's over 82 km/h. Fast little sucker. Yep, she wasn't a large sub. Smaller than an Akula. Story is that when she hit top speed grates came flying off and she had a hernia.
Once again I seem to gravitate to subs of which there is little info available. What is interesting about Papa is the fact that there aren't many photo's of her, but online you will find for the Papa, the most detailed internal layout drawings of virtually any nuke around. Pity I don't want to build and internal diorama....
What is with this. This submarine was in service from 1969 and was finally decommissioned around 1980 and scrapped I believe in 2012. Plenty of time for some decent pics, but once again, no matter how much I search, even Russian Google, still the same pics. So GANTU, surprise me!
I have also started looking at fabricating a twin shaft cylinder. I am looking at a direct drive module with two motors side to side and am going through the fun of working out seals and motor mounts. This is going to be a tight boat. However as mentioned she will be wider at about 96mm. She will fit a 90mm dia cylinder. One upside will be that making the rudder connections should be really easy. I wont have to go around any shafts!.
Turned front end and PVC pipe. You are probably saying, "why didn't you just use 100mm PVC.?" Good question I suppose, I didn't want a boat that was too wide and look at little to disproportionate to the mike. The 96mm is created by 3 layer of 90mm PVC pipe inside each other. The inner most one being one continuous piece. The two outer ones are split and wrapped around the rest of the hull. The outer one has the split at the top, This split is wide enough to create a trough in which you can paste down a layer of filler and is about the same width as the flat deck section on Papa.
The rear section is turned and tapered ever so slightly rearward. then cut flat just forward of where the rudder is. Then this part is cut on the Bandsaw and tapered down creating a really rounded rectangular cross section of sorts.
Anyway, more later.
David H
P.S the Hernia business didn't really happen...
Once again the cycle repeats itself, and I can't resist building something. It's been a little while since I pretty much finished development of the Borei class (project 955) and have now got all the tooling completed, first prototype out of the moulds and one already sold. So planning has started for me on my next boat. In the time as Borei approached the end of the development cycle my thoughts were already turning to the next boat that I wanted to build.
I had the Project 661 on the radar earlier than that. I initially though about building a 661 before the 955, but something said 'build a big boat' and something with a pump jet. Well the 661 aint the biggest boat that I have built, it's going to be slightly shorter than Mike (project 685) but slightly wider. It will be the widest boat I have built but the biggest challenge is that it's my first ever twin screw. If you look at the shape of the boat, the front end and overall hull is very straightforward. It has a really bluff bow and a really round straightforward hull length. The back end is where the business is and where I will spend the most of my time. The back end has twin booms that support the twin screws and looks like it was the inspiration for the Oscar class. This will require a lot of eye balling and profiles, bog and sanding.
The Papa class was the worlds fastest submarine, based on publicly available info. In 1970 she got up to 44.7 knots that's over 82 km/h. Fast little sucker. Yep, she wasn't a large sub. Smaller than an Akula. Story is that when she hit top speed grates came flying off and she had a hernia.
Once again I seem to gravitate to subs of which there is little info available. What is interesting about Papa is the fact that there aren't many photo's of her, but online you will find for the Papa, the most detailed internal layout drawings of virtually any nuke around. Pity I don't want to build and internal diorama....
What is with this. This submarine was in service from 1969 and was finally decommissioned around 1980 and scrapped I believe in 2012. Plenty of time for some decent pics, but once again, no matter how much I search, even Russian Google, still the same pics. So GANTU, surprise me!
I have also started looking at fabricating a twin shaft cylinder. I am looking at a direct drive module with two motors side to side and am going through the fun of working out seals and motor mounts. This is going to be a tight boat. However as mentioned she will be wider at about 96mm. She will fit a 90mm dia cylinder. One upside will be that making the rudder connections should be really easy. I wont have to go around any shafts!.
Turned front end and PVC pipe. You are probably saying, "why didn't you just use 100mm PVC.?" Good question I suppose, I didn't want a boat that was too wide and look at little to disproportionate to the mike. The 96mm is created by 3 layer of 90mm PVC pipe inside each other. The inner most one being one continuous piece. The two outer ones are split and wrapped around the rest of the hull. The outer one has the split at the top, This split is wide enough to create a trough in which you can paste down a layer of filler and is about the same width as the flat deck section on Papa.
The rear section is turned and tapered ever so slightly rearward. then cut flat just forward of where the rudder is. Then this part is cut on the Bandsaw and tapered down creating a really rounded rectangular cross section of sorts.
Anyway, more later.
David H
P.S the Hernia business didn't really happen...
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