Bronco Type XXIII by Ken

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Yea I have some German in my blood. And I'm particular, a perfectionist, stubborn and many other traits within.

Thanks Manfred. I think I've improved some from those days we connected on RCG with the Marlin.

I'm a bit Scott, a bit German... charming. One of my neighbors is French -- why this urge to bliz through their yard and jig upon their lawn?

[Ken_NJ]

Cutting away the box

Positioned the disk template where to begin cutting away the internal support structure.






And began cutting with the Dremel abrasive disc



Used the Dremel drum sander to clean up and get it down to the drawn line. Trial fit the SD in position.



The central support cleaned up.



Got this 8250 for Christmas. Before I used it thought about returning it but didn't. I love using it over the corded ones. Highly recommended to have in the shop.



Box cut away with abrasive wheel.



Trial fit of the SD. I left some of the box as support for the hull to maintain some rigidity.



The edges have been cleaned up with a file and the edges of an Exacto blade.

[Ken_NJ]

Sub driver foundations Part 1

I fashioned templates from scrap card stock of the interior. I used the aft section of the hull, placed it on the card stock and drew a general outline (no picture of this). This gave me an interior outline to work with. It was easier to draw half the hull, fine tune the shape and make a second half and tape them together. There will be three foundations, one forward, one glued to the center support and one aft. The forward and middle one are identical.







Rough cut from 0.1" Plastruct styrene.






Will explain the piece at the top later.



I decided that second section before the mid section was not needed so I cut that down leaving a little there as hull rigidity, I probably does nothing.






Since the SD does not reach the forward section, I cut some of that away as well.



The final result.

[Ken_NJ]

Sub Driver Foundations Part 2

Now that the SD foundations are cut to shape, they need to be fastened to the hull. Since the four hull sections are bolted together, each of the three foundations will need to be glued to certain parts of the hull sections. Two of them will be glued to the port forward section and one will be glued to the port aft section.

With the hull sections bolted together they were all glued in place with the usual solvent. Here the forward foundation is attached to the port forward hull section. Note that the hull section on the port side had a cutout for the rib that I left in place. For the starboard hull section which will be bolted on, I added a reinforcement where the rib is since that portion of the foundation is thin and would be weak. The top piece is a pivotable section which will be a hold down for the sub driver.




Here the hold down is pivoted upwards. The hold down is three layers of styrene. There is enough friction on the starboard side that no pin would be needed to lock it down. Besides, once the deck is in place, the deck will not let the hold down move.

Ya think I over engineered this??? LOL



From the backside.



The pivot point.



With the SD in place.



And locked down. Again the deck will lock down.



The aft foundation with lock down lever. One lock down lever forward and one aft since this is a 22 inch long SD.












Nice to see an internal cross section view.









Here is the mid section. No hold down lever needed here.




Before I glued them in I scanned the foundations. In a few posts I'll posts those scans. If anyone wants to build the XXIII, they can used those scans to make the SD foundations for themselves.

[Ken_NJ]

Very soon I'll be able to make the drive shaft, rudder and dive plane connections. And I will have plenty of access to do this. No trying to squeeze things into tight spots.

[Ken_NJ]

Fixing Hull Warp

Once the deck was cut away from the starboard aft section, it developed a warp or bulge, whatever you want to call it. Pretty obvious.



With this warp, the deck would not properly match the hull. When I add the tabs to the deck and hull to align them, I didn't think they would be enough to help on this warp.



Port side is straight.



On the aft SD foundation starboard side, I added a chunk of styrene to the foundation and added a slotted chunk to the hull. A hole was drilled and tapped for a 2-56 machine screw.



Now I can draw in the bulged hull and tighten up the machine screw to straighten the hull warp.



Better.

[Ken_NJ]

Sub Driver Lock

With the SD sitting in the foundations, the pivot levers hold the SD from floating away from the hull. There is nothing to prevent the SD from rotating or moving forward and aft. In some of David's SD's he has the shock absorber with a pin that sits in a hole in the bottom of the SD. My solution is the following, and I did this 14ish years ago on my Marlin. Actually, the chunk I am using here was left over from when I did this on the Marlin.

A few layers of styrene were adhered together and one side was formed to fit the circumference of the cylinder. Slots were cut and filed on two sides. Then an area in the center foundation was cut and filed away.



This chunk of styrene fits into the opening.



To get the curve the same as the cylinder, it was rough filed to shaped then sandpaper was put on the 2-1/2 inch cylinder and the chunk was shaped on the sandpaper to the same curvature as the cylinder. No pic of this.

Here I am using an end cap checking for fit.







Fits nicely in place. At this point CA was placed on the edge which contacts the cylinder and it was put in place, Then the cylinder was carefully positioned so the vent was at top dead center and pressure was applied. Once the CA set, the cylinder was removed.



Now when the cylinder is put in the boat, this locator correctly positions and locks the SD fore and aft and with the vent at top dead center. It prevents the cylinder from moving fore and aft and rotating.

[Ken_NJ]

This model has been around a while and there are probably few that would be building one today. Besides that, here are the profiles of the three sub driver foundations. If they are useful to someone, great, if not they will sit here.

You will need to modify them to your liking. The small slots on the sides in the forward and middle one only are good if you do the same as what I did. You will also have to cut the height down shorter since you may not do the SD lever hold down as I did. AT least you have the interior profile.

If you right click on each profile and select save as, it will save it to your computer as a jpg file.

[Ken_NJ]

I'm starting work on the guts of the sub driver. I have four receivers on 75Mhz. None of them will fit. I tried taking the Hitec ones out of the case, they still do not fit. I looked online if there were any smaller ones I can get hold of, nothing. I have dual and single conversion crystals. So I guess I'm going to 2.4 Ghz. I can order longer 2.4 antenna's from Amazon but don't know if they will be long enough. I have instructions that David had made up long ago on making a longer antennae but I have to find that.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

I'm starting work on the guts of the sub driver. I have four receivers on 75Mhz. None of them will fit. I tried taking the Hitec ones out of the case, they still do not fit. I looked online if there were any smaller ones I can get hold of, nothing. I have dual and single conversion crystals. So I guess I'm going to 2.4 Ghz. I can order longer 2.4 antenna's from Amazon but don't know if they will be long enough. I have instructions that David had made up long ago on making a longer antennae but I have to find that.

I have some 72 and 75mHz receivers that will fit. Give me a jingle if you want one. You have the worst case of complexity-warship I've ever seen. You frighten me!

[Ken_NJ]

You have the worst case of complexity-warship I've ever seen. You frighten me!

Did I beat out Manfred?

It may be more complex than usual, but to me it is very functional.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Did I beat out Manfred?

It may be more complex than usual, but to me it is very functional.

Damned! Forgot about that guy -- Manfred's a total complexity addict if ever there was one. But, rest assured, Ken; to that nut-job you come in a very close Second. You two share Rube Goldberg genes, no doubt!

I've seen both your and his work up close. Good stuff!

European's are scary-good at this game. Whenever I get too cocky, I click onto the Sonar site for a reality check.

[MFR1964]

Nice work Ken, to me it's not complex at all, just good thinking ahead, my goal was, opening up the boat easy to retrieve the SD without using tools, i can do that within a few seconds, putting her together the same time.
You've combined both ways of David and me, believe me, splitting the boat will give you a great advantage for work on the inside.
Those guys from SONAR i've met a few times during meetings, they are really good, i still learn new things.

Manfred.

[Ken_NJ]

I don't consider it complexity. I call it thinking outside the box, or Think Different as Steve Jobs coined for Apple. Manfred does great stuff. David does great stuff. I'm following what you guys do and did, and turn it around to my liking and come up with new ideas. Ideas that I have not seen before and probably ideas that nobody else will do but myself, or Manfred, or David. Isn't that a reason for David's 'Todays Work' thread? Or posting build thread on forums? And since the fittings kits are days of the past, I had to come up with something new, like I did with utilizing the dive planes and rudder that came from the kit, and make them workable.
Compliments humbly accepted guys.

I searched for SONAR models or SONAR submarines. Is that a web site or a forum? Have a link? All that comes up is information about sonar.

Question for David
There are two white wires coming from the micro switch mounted on the vent servo and two white wires coming from the ballast pump. The ballast pump is rated for 5 volts.
Please tell me that I have this right. I suspect one of the ballast pump wires connects to BEC output ground. The other ballast wire connects to one of the wires on the micro switch. The other micro switch wire connects to BEC output 5v. Then when the command is issued to blow ballast, the servo activates the micro switch which in turn activates the ballast motor blowing the ballast tank.
If this is the case, no need for a 2IS or the nifty splitter thing I made up.

[MFR1964]

https://www.sonar-ev.de/de/

Try this link Ken.

Manfred.