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Except for a couple of times during the event Thursday and Friday. I had neither planes or pitch control, but when I had them, holy smokes what a difference it made. Since I had neither, I both were in neutral, which didn't take any effort with the pitch as it just defaulted that way. This was the first time that we got to see what our efforts did as running at the pool previously was almost as bad as not running at all...and we now had a 4-blade, 5-bladed prop to boot. As a former COW/ DOOW, I wanted to see what this thing did, so I ran the snot out of it, both forward and reverse, surface and submerged. This was all straight-running with absolutely no rudder.
This was my testing:
Surface: Running forward it would run great until you gave it a flank bell, then there was fluid shift and it would run a nose-dive, and a prop-wash would start...so back down. A backing bell, had no problems at all and steerage was pretty good. After a surface trim loss after running flank, I'd start the LP blower and get back up to surface trim. Funny, this is what a real sub does surface-transiting every hour :)
Submerged: The submerged trim it turned out was slightly heavy, and this turned out to be advantageous. There were air pockets behind the 'gator eyes' and I could get rid of them, but doing a submerged backing bell which made the sub take a 45-deg dive rearward. Now with all air purged it was ready to go. I would only run rearward submerged to do this as it served no other benefit. Going forward from a dive, this was with no ability to shift planes or pitch, the sub would dive, but not fully. When you cleared the air, then the sub would dive when it had about a 1/3 bell or less. Any more thrust, and the sub would porpoise to the surface. So with a slow bell on, the sub would submerge, and you could maintain depth with speed, or surface, or just slow down and you'd sink. At a certain speed, you maintained depth perfectly. Not rocket science. It would act this way all the way to the bottom, and I could run it at depth this way, as long as I could see it (during the bright of day).
So to me, taking the simple 'planes, angle, speed' approach, it worked pretty well. I lost my rudder control three times, as the magnet on one side was repeated pulling the other out of the housing...even using JB Weld. Merriman was shocked, so suggested wiring it in place, which I did and that was that. One thing about the rudder control, we were surprised by how much response we had to the throw we had. It's not going to turn in a pool, but it sure beat Dave's Seawolf in the turning contest.
When I finally got pitch and plane control late Thursday, it was shocking how much each affected the performance of the sub. I didn't have to worry about clearing residual air...nothing. That sucker would dive like nobody's business using the pitch control only. Using the planes only, the sub would change depth noticeably. Not great, but it did. The servos were apparently a big problem. Dave thought it was something else and it just became apparent on Saturday, what the problem was.
After the fixes are to be made, won't be able to find out the theory to practice puzzle till next year. Thanks for the feedback Bob.
This was my testing:
Surface: Running forward it would run great until you gave it a flank bell, then there was fluid shift and it would run a nose-dive, and a prop-wash would start...so back down. A backing bell, had no problems at all and steerage was pretty good. After a surface trim loss after running flank, I'd start the LP blower and get back up to surface trim. Funny, this is what a real sub does surface-transiting every hour :)
Submerged: The submerged trim it turned out was slightly heavy, and this turned out to be advantageous. There were air pockets behind the 'gator eyes' and I could get rid of them, but doing a submerged backing bell which made the sub take a 45-deg dive rearward. Now with all air purged it was ready to go. I would only run rearward submerged to do this as it served no other benefit. Going forward from a dive, this was with no ability to shift planes or pitch, the sub would dive, but not fully. When you cleared the air, then the sub would dive when it had about a 1/3 bell or less. Any more thrust, and the sub would porpoise to the surface. So with a slow bell on, the sub would submerge, and you could maintain depth with speed, or surface, or just slow down and you'd sink. At a certain speed, you maintained depth perfectly. Not rocket science. It would act this way all the way to the bottom, and I could run it at depth this way, as long as I could see it (during the bright of day).
So to me, taking the simple 'planes, angle, speed' approach, it worked pretty well. I lost my rudder control three times, as the magnet on one side was repeated pulling the other out of the housing...even using JB Weld. Merriman was shocked, so suggested wiring it in place, which I did and that was that. One thing about the rudder control, we were surprised by how much response we had to the throw we had. It's not going to turn in a pool, but it sure beat Dave's Seawolf in the turning contest.
When I finally got pitch and plane control late Thursday, it was shocking how much each affected the performance of the sub. I didn't have to worry about clearing residual air...nothing. That sucker would dive like nobody's business using the pitch control only. Using the planes only, the sub would change depth noticeably. Not great, but it did. The servos were apparently a big problem. Dave thought it was something else and it just became apparent on Saturday, what the problem was.
After the fixes are to be made, won't be able to find out the theory to practice puzzle till next year. Thanks for the feedback Bob.
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