Ray Mason Nautilus Build

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Stunning, Jake. You've taken us all back to school. Wow!

David

[Davjacva]

Finished the Nautilus a few days ago. Not sure what happened to these photos, but had to load them manually and not sure how they're going to show up. I'd retake them but the model's away getting some work done to the internals.

[Davjacva]

This morning bright and early went to Merriman's shop to start getting the internals back in order in preps for a re-dunking to verify trim and then to get it to a local pool Dave has access too. Virginia Beach has over 3000 miles of canals in it (no kidding), lakes, and whatnot, but most of them you'd not want to put a model in and they're pretty rank. Case in point, there's a video of Dave running a Seaview in one of these canals, that's pretty rank. The city closed off the park lakes from running which really sucks as there are some nice ones so we are at the mercy of local pool access. Anyway, we got the rear interfaces in order to hook up to the WTC, then dunk-tested the WTC to check for proper operation, pressure, vacuum, and leak checks, then spent a few hours doing electrical gymnastic hurdles that seem to always come up. Much closer and should be getting some serious photos and video soon. Here's some photos of today's flail-ex.

[Davjacva]

Thanks to Dave we got access to a pool. Great pool, but this one is heavily chlorinated, so you only get about 20' of radio reception, surface or submerged. When you're running at a flank bell, the wash interferes, so you get reception back when the wash subsides. Sounds worse than it is, and really had a great run. The Nautilus ran superbly. We didn't have the dive planes functional, as the operating rod coming out of the WTC was deflecting, so Dave didn't want to run it, as it would create a leak (and did). I had left the sub with Dave last Saturday and he re-trimmed it and it was dialed in very nicely, running both submerged and surface very well. Runs like an old MOPAR, all speed, hell on turns, but there's enough rudder to navigate large areas...not tight pools, so we did a lot of 3-point turns. Dave is going to get the dive planes going and then I get it back next week for some cosmetic work, then it'll be ready for COHUTTA!!! Yeah, Dave has that 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' look on his face, but I did bring him coffee :)

[Davjacva]

Somehow looking through all this, I missed the final painting photos that I took outside (except the tape is still on the windows). Here they are.

[Davjacva]

For Dave Merriman and me, this weekend was the 'proof of the pudding' of the work of the last year doing the Nautilus. We had bench-tested, and went to a pool that was highly chlorinated that only partially proved the systems, walking away with more questions than answers, but we had no idea what was really going to happen until this weekend. Overall, it worked superbly, and we were both happy with the performance. There are some items to work on, but it performed very well. Got some great video hugging the bottom of the deep end at times. As a result of running out of time, I stuck a glow stick inside the wheelhouse for lighting, and was pretty bright when it finally got dark. Low tech, but it worked.

[Davjacva]

These are 'proof is in the pudding' photos. Finally have a location to run the Nautilus without any interference. It ran very well and some of the concepts actually worked. As a late response with no lighting, I stuck a chem-light in and ran it for night shots. I was at the mercy of limited video equipment and in-spite of running and taking a lot of photos and video, didn't get a lot, but was thankful I got some. I tried Go-Pro for the first time, and it didn't work well for what I was doing, so I defaulted to an I-phone which took okay photos and video. Driving and taking photos and video really sucks, so Casey helped out, but my phone didn't cooperate and nothing came out. Then Fred had the drone taking video and it didn't come out. Finally Merriman took some superb underwater video and I'll get that this week. See the event page for event photos, this is just Nautilus photos.

[SubSteve]

Wow, this has been a Master Class in sub theory and painting! It was a pleasure to meet you at SubFest and my privilege to run the Nautilus Wednesday under Admiral Merriman's watchful eye. Gorgeous boat!

[Das Boot]

Where did you go Saturday night? One minute you’re there for dinner, the next you’re gone. You do the night run?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Where did you go Saturday night? One minute you’re there for dinner, the next you’re gone. You do the night run?

Had to pack up and get to bed -- Fred's flight was the next day at 4 AM and I had to drive him to the airport. From there, I went home.

David

[Das Boot]

Had to pack up and get to bed -- Fred's flight was the next day at 4 AM and I had to drive him to the airport. From there, I went home.

David

I was speaking of your brother from Virginia Beach.

[Davjacva]

Wow, this has been a Master Class in sub theory and painting! It was a pleasure to meet you at SubFest and my privilege to run the Nautilus Wednesday under Admiral Merriman's watchful eye. Gorgeous boat!

Steve, it was totally great to meet and spend time with you too. I was really overwhelmed with the level of craftsmanship vs what I was expecting at a typical sub event. Since I've been around Dave for over 20 years this says a lot about the everyone there. I was not bored one damn minute, and my only regret was not coming for Wednesday when the schedule changed. I will not make that mistake next time :) There were times that I was ready to run, but was busy watching something else (usually on the workbenches) that was more interesting. Being ready to run BTW, was like driving in the Lemans or Daytona 500 at times, as the 5th blade was lost before I got there and I ran it before Dave or I even knew, or heard from Bob about it being missing. I would have figure it would have vibrated to death...but it didn't, but it undoubtedly provided reduced output thrust (20%?). The dive planes went out towards the end of Thursday, and the pitch on the propeller was in/out for two days and finally went out fully Friday (Saturday I got out finally when it was raining with no planes or pitch, but finally had rudder which broke three times on Saturday (magnet kept coming out)). I did get to see what performance they gave independently as the planes were a theory Dave proposed for the build and we went forward with it. The sub did respond to the planes for depth control. The pitch over-rode the rakers up-pitch that made the submarine always thrust upward, and when it worked it was awesome. I listed these two in the 'after-action' report and Dave looked at them and believes they just aren't powerful enough and gave up the ghost. So figuring out the hydro-dynamics of the sub both going forward and reverse, while both surface and submerged, it was clear what the rakers were doing. If I had a problem going down, I could go in reverse and it would pitch at a 45-deg towards the bottom, then i could go forward and as long as my headway wasn't too much I'd keep depth. I asked Bob about the raker-deal as he's built and operated multiples of each one on the market, and he said just the opposite. That the sub was supposed to act that way, but his always acted in reverse and would dive vice rise. Anyway, it's all a science project right?

[RCSubGuy]

A lot of it depends on the nominal angle you put on the pitch in "neutral". If they're aligned to the longitudinal axis of the boat, you'll get diving action under speed. If you angle them up slightly (which yours were by quite a bit), you can override that tendency. Like Dave's Seaview, a tiny bit of upward pitch will override the tendency to dive and keep you at neutral pitch under power.

[Das Boot]

Hey dip****, answer my question.

[Davjacva]

Hey dip****, answer my question.

Ha ha ha. Casey, you PM'd me from the forum and I answered you from the forum. Here's what I sent:

I was actually talking to Steve for a long time. It was getting dark and didn't want to drive in the dark like the night before, so I split. It looked like you all had a big pow-wow going on and I didn't want to interrupt. Figured it was for the night run. With Merriman gone with my stuff I had nothing but air to breathe. I had come over after dinner to help Merriman pack, but he and Fred F. were driving out. Had a blast buddy, I will definitely be coming again. Phenomenally great people, and I didn't have a boring conversation one. I had two other buddies coming to the event, but they cancelled due to conflicts. Are you going to New London? I hate New London, but I'll suck it up.
BTW, my e-mail is davjacva@gmail.com.
Jake