German type XVIIb

[MFR1964]

The aluminum deck is done, took about 15 dremel sandingdrums to get there, the reward was fitting both the scope and schnorkel to see if my drawing was right,



Taped the deck down with ducktape on the desired height, time to fit the moving stuff, it proved i have enough room above the ballasttank to get away with the lower part of my schnorkel.



Placed the upperpart of the sub, compared to the drawings inside the book i have, the dimensions look right.



Retracted all the stuff, scope disappears as intended, schnorkel head is flush with the tower, the METOX antenna has to stick out this way to detect those pesty allied planes while driving ont the surface.



The deck is now rigged like this, and the first points are glued down this evening with 2K glue, this will take some time to get this done, have to do the process on the outside as on the inside, plan is to make both floats while the deck is drying between the glue sessions.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

All components are made on the lathe, a exploded view to show how much is involved.



Basic components builded up, ready to be placed inside the air actuated tubes.



The snort is functional, made a new tube because the copper inlet gave some issue's with retracting the mast, replaced it by making three slits inside the new tube.



Scope and schnorkel extended to max height.



Retracted in to the housing, have to wait before i can make the fit at the deck, still have to do some sanding and grinding to get the right fit of the deck, hope to finish that issue this week.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Scope is not yet ready, but made good progress,



Most of all loose parts.



Building the parts together.



It will fit like this, only missing the toppart which will contain the upper O ring, have to make that on the lathe.



Problem with the height of the scope.



Solution, whack a hole into the ballasttank, add a tube and fire up the torch, problem solved.

Still a lot of work to do on the lathe, but i'm getting there, between all the work i'm still tinkering on the aluminum deck for a good fit.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Next hurdle is done, the aluminum deck which will hold my lexan hatches,



This was done in the past, first i outlined the contours and starting to play with the jewellers-saw.



Made a plan for the three hatches.



I ended up with this in the past, three lexan hatches, stored it away on the attic some years ago.



Took the deck from the attic, and noted down the final positions of my screws which will hold down the hatches.



Positioned the drill press in the middle of the cave and started with drilling all the holes into the deck, this picture shows the last step, drilling the holes inside the lexan hatches, secured those with some duck=tape.



When finished you end up with this, a complete aluminum deck with all the hatches, thickness of the deck is 3 mm, you have to make things sturdy with a dryhull submarine,



The hull was not alined anymore with the topdeck due to storage all those years on the attic, with the use of ducktape and a heatgun i got the shape back.
Now i have to adjust the aluminum deck to get me a good fit inside the hull, this will be done in several steps, i know from the past it's less frustrating to do it this way.



Made the final drawing of both the scope and the schnorkel, displayed here is all the hardware to get me a working set, so it;s back to the lathe to do some serious work.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

No problem, documenting your build gives others the change to see what kind of things are involved to make it work, and now some more work from the Cave, floorboards are made and more,



Front floorboard, it covers the receiverbatteries, and will give me a sound base to fasten the compressor.



Rear floorboard, which covers the 12V pack and my compressor battery pack, also made the bracket for holding my levelkeeper old school style.



The complete standard wiring for controlling the compressor, that blue switch can be set at manual,neutral or at automatic, that part at the right of the picture is a pressured air controlled switch, which switches on at 1,5 atm, and will shut the compressor down at 6 atm, there is some more electronics involved to operate it save underwater, but that will be added later on.



Crammed all the stuff in the front compartment, i now know that i have to play around to get everything at it's place in a nice controlled matter.



Also filled up the rear, pretty much the same story as with the front, that black box in the middle is a old school leveler pendulum style, left top corner, the air valves, right top corrner the servo which will control my scope and schnorkelmast by using a air selector switch, lower right the controlswitch of my compressor.



First i had to strip down the internals by removing everything, divided the batterypacks, and started the first stage, getting your boat level.



Each pack will be glued down level, preventing that the boat will be off balance due to the shifting weigth of the packs





All the packs are glued in, from left to right, receiverpack, main powerpack divided in two packs and the compressorpack.





Glued down the ballasttank and used some RTV to get me a watertight connection underneath at the outlet of the tank.
Those nuts that you can see between the packs are part of the waterdetection system, it will be combined with the main floatvalve on top of the deck.


Manfred.

[george]

Thank You very much for your reply with pictures and for posting your builds.Very educational.

[MFR1964]

George,

The design of the tail is indeed a bit different as we normally use, no shaft from diveplane to diveplane,



The diveplanes have each a seperate hinge on the outside.



Once placed you get this, seperate planes means seperate steering.



They move by sliding action of the steering-rod.



The total build-up of both the rudder and divingplanes, the steeringrods for the diveplanes are connected to each other to give the same action on the diveplanes.

As for flex under pressure, i don't know, all my subs have traditional diveplanes, made everything as sturdy as possible, we will see what happens.

Scale of my torpedo's is 1:35.

Manfred.

[george]

Bob,
Yes, she stands tall, scale is 1:30, lenght i have to measure.
I know that picture, have it inside the archives.



Looks pretty much like mine, this picture is taken some years ago when i was working on her.

David,

Agreed, into the snake-pitt with those suckers!!!

As for the tail, i tackled that issue allready, i've got me a fully functional tail with pushrods.





These pictures where taking during the cladding with aluminum foil, done this to get rivets on the plates, only have to fabricate the covers for hiding the rods to the divingplanes and rudder.

Manfred.

Hello Mr. Manfred

I had a question about what I see BUT don`t understand in Post 4 pictures of your rear planes.
It looks to me as there is no continuous shaft from one end of the plane to the other for pivoting stability. How does yours then connect and be able to not flex under pressure while in use?

Thanks for posting ALL your work and what scale are those torpedos?

[MFR1964]

Yet again a busy week,



Fitted the standard battery packs underneath the ballasttank, there is enough room to play around.



This was tricky, since i will use a open cell ballasttank i had to make a hole in the hull at the keel, used a special drill to get me the right hole at the right spot.



Soldered this extension on the bottom of the ballasttank, leaving me the room underneath the tank which i need for the batteries.



Will use three O rings and RTV to seal the tank, that ring on the outlet will prefent those O rings from moving after inserted into the part at the keel.



Playing around with the modified battery packs, for now i've got me 1 pack 12 V 5 Ah, and 1 pack 4,8 V pack 5 Ah, position will be teminated later on when i glue the packs down, i've ordered the batteries for the compressor pack.



Connected up all present packs to the loading point with display of the battery status, to the left the receiverpack, to the right the 12V pack.



Since i have now power onboard i started to play with hooking up the servo's with extensions cords, now i know how the batteries will fit in i can start with making the floorboards to cover them,
those floorboards will be used to place down all the other stuff like compressor, valves and electronics needed to get this boat alive.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Last week done some serious work to get me a working launchsystem,





First step was to connect the pushrods from both tubes, shown here the most closed and opened position.



Connecting the doors by fastening the pull wires to the slidingrods.



Position of the door in the most opened position.



Next hurdle was, building the fire solution center for controlling the launchtubes, from left to right, multi switch decoder for controlling the relais of both tubes, 2 failsafe prints, one for opening the doors, the other for closing the door, the most right print is the fire control switch.



Left switch is the left launchtube, middle switch the right launchtube, in this position both tubes are closed, by selecting the switch forward you activate the choosen tube, last step will be, push down on the switch near the antenna, this will activate the fire control switch, made this switch to counteract flutter which can fire your torps accidentely.



Inserted both torps, doors are closed.



After activating the left switch and pushing on the fire switch on the transmitter the door will open and fire the torpedo, the launch happens by running the torpedo under it's own power out of the tube, pretty much the same way as with the type XXIII.

Now this is done i can turn my attention to rebuilding the batteries to my need, modifing the ballasttank, and start work on the 12V power backbone, to be continued.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Spring made, rods shortened added theconnectors and some Rube Goldberg stuff,



The spring is made from some 0,03 copper strip.



Both steering rods are shortened, tapped some M3 thread on the M4 rods, had to turn those down to make M3 thread possible.



Spring is placed, those wings will give enough tension against the doors to keep them closed, those plates with copper eyes are part of my Rube Goldberg contraption, started nitting the strings.



This is how it works, the string is attached to the door, the other plate is placed on the hull to pull the door into that direction, the second plate is placed at the hull in front of the pull rod which will open the door by linear movement.
For demonstration i simply pull on the string by hand to open the door, have to build/modify the pull rod on top of the torpedotube.



Door closed.



Door open, plenty of room to get the torpedo out.



Talking about torpedo's, this is my stash, those grey one's are from the type XXIII, the smaller one's are intended for the reartube of the type VII, the larger one's are for the four fronttubes of the type VII.
When building this boat in the past i went for the longer launchtubes so i can use the longer torpedo's from my type VII.


Dryfitting one of the torps to see if there is enough clearence to go past the opened door.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Login problem is solved, back to business,



Made this lower part on the lathe, added a tube with some cutted slits.



Drilled through the shaft of the wing and placed this rod.



The rod inside the shaft connects to the turned part, now i'm able to lift the deck, and each time i place the deck back this connection will be made automatic, position of the wing will be straight on the deck.


To prefent the shaft from falling out when turning the upperdeck upside down, i made a collar which secures the shaft on it's place.



Next step was making the connection to the rod which is connected to the servo, had some spare graupner parts from my declassified VII, they proved to be usefull, this will be the above surface position, i can tweek the position by turning that threaded rod and secure the position by fastening the nuts.



By pushing the servo rod, the wing will turn into the position during diving, not sure if i want to make this a automatic action or keep it manual, i expect the germans played with the positon of the wing compared with the speed, it seems logical to me that you can adjust the position during diving, have to think about that.



First step in getting working torpedo doors, had to place the boat into a rather risky position.



Used my chair to keep the boat in it's position, secured the tail with a large amount of ducktape, used 2K epoxy glue, it takes about 1 hour to get solid, 24 hours to harden completely.

For now i have to make the spring which will close the doors and shorten the servo rods controlling the tubes/doors, also adding a connector to the rods using my graupner connectors, loads of work, stay tuned.

Manfred.

[MFR1964]

Started to work on the contraption to get the wing functional and some checkups on the upperdeck,



First i had to make a tube which can hold the shaft of the wing.



Once dry i could insert the shaft into the tube.



This should be the position during driving on the surface.



The position during underwater, i wonder if the germans played with the angle of deflection of this wing regarding to the underwater speed, for now i didn't find any documentation about that.



This is going to be the base of getting a turning wing, there will be a fitting inserted that can receive the shaft of the wing, and still possible to get the deck off without problems, have to play on the lathe to get this insert.







Did a checkup on the hatches present in the upperdeck to see if they all still are in working order.


Manfred.

[MFR1964]

You wanted STEAM PUNK David, this is the bling bling result, did some small things today, replaced the front servo's and made me a special connector,



Servo's are placed back, both outer servo's are for controlling the torpedotubes/doors, the linear servo will be used for that strange stabilising wing on the deck.



With using the linear servo i created a problem, normally you got the easy access servo horn, i made this connector for easy disconnecting.



By unscrewing this screw you can take it apart for maintenance.



Once unscrewd you can pull the connector apart without troubles, giving you easy access for replacing the servo or maintenance.



This is the strange wing i was talking about, i seems the germans had stabilising problems at certain speeds, instead of rebuilding the boat to have forward divingplanes they opted this solution with positive results, my goal is to get this working as intended.

Manfred.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Looks like something that should sit between the legs of a motor-cycle driver.

David