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Who is John Galt? -
I am surprised by some of your comments on the Gato. I love the handling and performance of mine. I have not switched it over to a SAS system and still use the SNORT.
There is such a thrill just to see a sub running, You brought a fun group of boats.
If you can cut, drill, saw, hit things and swear a lot, you're well on the way to building a working model sub. -
Choppy water and a series of stupid goofs on my part contributed to most of the ugly performance. First, right out of the gate -- that early morning when I put the models into the water for initial trim dives -- I tried to run the boat submerged, but it kept porpoising. As it turned out -- having replaced a bum servo the week before the event -- I put the angle-keeper in upside down. So, as you can imagine, as the submerged model took an angle, the angle-keeper drove the stern planes in the wrong direction, exacerbating the problem. I'm surprised it ran as well as it did. Anyway, back at the table I found the problem, remounted the angle-keeper and subsequent runs were satisfactory.
Before taking it out of the water I noted that the model was 'heavy' in the water, but took no immediate action. Bad move! Fixing the angle-keeper I plopped the model back in the drink.
Then, the damned thing would not surface using the SAS side of the ballast sub-system. (As I was soon to determine, the water at City Lake is quite a bit les dense than the water in my 'test tank' back home, so all the models were negatively buoyant in submerged trim, especially the GATO). Very dangerous. But what saved the day was that all models I operate in such open water are equipped with a propel gas back-up -- that's how I got the boat back to the surface and to the bench when the SAS blow refused to work, submerged or surfaced.
WTF!
Another punch to my fragile ego: I got the two external SAS hoses on backwards -- that screw up occurred as I closed up the motor bulkhead after addressing the angle-keeper issue. The suction was hooked up to the ballast tank blow hole, and the discharge was hooked up to the split induction lines that lead to the snorkel valve and SD dry spaces (thank goodness for the SAS safety float-valve!). I worked out that ****-up on the bench too.
After that exercise in stupidities the GATO operated just fine, but it was a chore to keep just the scope heads out of the choppy water.
DavidLast edited by He Who Shall Not Be Named; 12-01-2017, 01:10 PM.Who is John Galt?Comment
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This sounds familiar, too much blah, blah on the shore and less attention at the state of the boats.
You where lucky, in the past i took a bath in my adam's costume to save my type VII, to the delight of the present folks on the shore.
Manfred.I went undergroundComment
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