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**He Who Shall Not Be Named** · 08-12-2023, 08:06 AM

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

David

**Davjacva** · 08-19-2023, 05:16 PM

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** · 08-19-2023, 05:27 PM

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** · 08-23-2023, 01:14 PM

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 :)

Attached Files

**Davjacva** · 08-23-2023, 02:44 PM

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.

Attached Files

**Davjacva** · 09-16-2023, 10:02 PM

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.

Attached Files

**Davjacva** · 09-17-2023, 10:19 PM

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.

Attached Files

**SubSteve** · 09-18-2023, 09:54 AM

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!