I remember Mike Dory telling me about this particular model of his, on the Subcommittee forum, over 4 years ago. I had just acquired mine and was asking him about possible substitutes for the stock pressure box. He mentioned that he had a Small World Models WTC in it. He also said at 3.25" it was kind of a tight fit in that hull and that a 3" would fit better.
I never saw any photos of it, so it is nice to finally see what it looks like. Dark grey hull and a white tower.. I think Mike must have had two 32P XXIII models.. I remember seeing another one, several years ago, painted differently with the yellow training stripes, which was photographed along side of a scratch built XXIII by Darrin Hataway.
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32nd Parallel's Type XXIII
This is not a build, but a minor tweak to a wonderful sub. (So please move this if it does not belong here).
A dear friend, Mike Dory, surprised my son and I with a gift.
This sub is special (and I won't go into why) to Sam and I.
The WTC is a modified Small World Models. It is 3.25" OD and 3" ID. It was silicon shut and I needed to get in there.
Cleaned up one end (electronics end) and installed an o-ring. Changed RX to 75MHz (wFly) and emergency blow for ballast tank. Tested for leaks and there were none. There are two servos wired together in the bow for torpedoes - might need to get that to work (my son says definitely need to get that to work).
Time to get wet. I was behind the camera, so this is my son commanding the sub.
Sam at the controls.
Here he is getting the sub to run at periscope depth. Show off.
We did discover that if this sub goes below a foot or two, it will lose signal and blow its tank. That is a good thing that the safety works, but not the depth. The antenna that is on there is longer than the wFly's (which is 33" I think). This antenna is 49" long and very thin (not sure if that matters or not). So I will do some replacing in that. Future changes will be to replace all the silicon sealing with proper 0-rings and some adjustment on rear linkages.
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