How to save/grow/maintain/popularize our hobby!!!!

[tifosi12]

A toy is plaything built by a third party for the amusement of another, often a child but not exclusively so. The owner often lacks the skills or patience to make it themselves.

A model is something constructed by a skilled person. It may be completely constructed from scratch or assembled from a kit of parts, but it will require a level of understanding beyond a simple toy.

if someone purchases a model ready built, then I suppose really that is a toy. An complex, costly and delicate one, but it’s not demonstrative of the owners skill in construction, that belongs to the builder.

Good point. So basically all the great custom builds by Bob are toys. :)

While I appreciate folks like Dave who can build incredible R/C subs, just focusing on self built models is way too narrow a view. The hobby is called "R/C submarines", not "only self built R/C submarines".

Oh, btw: I also have a Neptune. Since that too was built by the manufacturer, it's just a toy. Fine by me.

[Subculture]

The Neptune was sold as a kit in the UK, although it was available later on as RTR at greater cost. The early models got a reputation for bad electronics. They rectified most if not all of the issues later on I believe. I think they look too fisher price from the factory, but they can be dressed up to look like something more scale like.

[type7]

This is the same doom and gloom that you guys have been saying for years. But guess what? I finally have models and hulls of subs that I have wanted for 40 some years. There are plastic kits and 3d models of a great array of subs that are affordable and easy to make. The radios, electronics, batteries and motors are cheaper, smaller and more reliable than ever. Wtcs are not difficult or expensive to make if a person really wants to apply themselves to it. You have Merriman's sub-drivers as examples to guide you on how to do it efficiently.
The facebook sites have lots of younger people posting. Far more than we had 20 years ago. This is really a golden age of the hobby!
Go to the Carmel regatta, you can be surrounded by curious young kids with their moms and dads. Want to keep the hobby alive? Let lots of people see you out there running the subs and having fun.
This hobby will always be dominated by older men because we have the interest, spare time, acquired knowledge, and money to spend on it. Does not mean there won't be people following us when we can't do it anymore.

[redboat219]

Does this qualify as a remote control submarine?

I think this is more appealing to the current generation that an antique U boat or a nuc boat that reminds them of a giant d**do. They want instant gratification. "I want to see where I'm going, see whats down there."" How deep can i go? " Take underwater selfies.

I bet most don't know who Otto Kretschmer, Gunther Prien, Lawson Ramage or Chris Wreford-Brown are.

[Subculture]

This is the same doom and gloom that you guys have been saying for years.

I think it's a reasonable discussion. As the saying goes, "things work right up until the point they don't".

[Subculture]

Thought some might be interested to read this.

We don’t know what we need to know

By Dennis Holmes – Worthing & District SME

Editor’s note; With permission from the author and Worthing & District SME
I have just finished watching Tipping Point on the television and it has inspired me to put a few words down about how different people and different generations view the world into which they have been delivered.
Tipping point, if you haven’t seen it, is a simple game where, when questions of different complexity are given, if answered correctly, the contestant can put a disc into the top of the machine with the aim of pushing £50 discs out at the bottom level.
This is the same as the moving penny arcade game as I am sure most of you played at the seaside in your younger years.
On this particular occasion, there was a young person, (gender doesn’t matter), probably in their early twenties and the question went thus. “Give the name of a British wartime leader whose initials were W.C." The first one of the four contestants to press the button has the opportunity to answer the question. This young individual (I might say they looked bright, sounded intelligent, sensible and nicely dressed), gave the answer William Churchill. So, 50% right, but still entirely the wrong answer.
I know this is a long introduction to my thoughts but it does sum up some of the experiences I had as a secondary school teacher of Design Technology, just before I retired.
As older folk, it is extraordinarily easy for us to forget that knowledge, information, technique, skills and other attributes of life are not automatically bred into the new young person, the next generation, but have to be taught carefully and with sensitivity so that the student, on acquisition of this knowledge, has a broader, but more importantly, a useful perspective of the knowledge acquired.
With the removal of skills from the National Curriculum, note, I didn’t say any particular subject, students are now primarily concerned with factual knowledge. This will allow a student to achieve their GCSE and everyone will be happy. The student has the qualification and the school ticks the box marked success.
A major problem is, if the smallest bit in that chain of knowledge style of teaching is missing, the greater mastery of the subject appears very fragile and indeed very odd to witness.
This brings me to examples I have personally experienced.
Now, before I start, I must explain that all the individuals that were involved here were nice folk, of different ages, trying to do the best job they could. No messing about was involved and were thinking and being engaged and constructive.
The first occasion I wish to recall for you is the time when I had three sixteen olds who had asked me, at lunch time, to show them a little woodwork, and perhaps I could show them how to cut a small joint. This used to be a normal classroom activity at one time but now is in the past. In this school the tools were still all there so I said “see you at lunchtime" and we met after morning lessons
I began by showing them all the tools involved, explained everything to be done, then in front of them cut and chiselled out a simple halving joint. The three students were on a table to my right. I had some pre-cut wood, so, two pieces each, "go on, take your time and see how you get on!" After a short time, I looked up and was pleased to see that one student was very carefully lining up their Tennon Saw in preparation to cut on a correctly marked out piece of wood.

Then, with the two others watching on and a concentrated look on his face he lifted the Tennon Saw directly above his head and with as much force as he could muster brought the saw down three or four times onto the piece of wood in a chopping action before I could get my senses together to scream across the room "What do you think yer doing”. They stopped immediately. I had six wideopen eyes and three open mouths. It was in that split second that I realised that they were not mucking about. I felt the need to apologise for shouting and they were all right about it, however, it soon become apparent that they simply didn’t know what a saw was! Amazing, but true, in the sixteen years each that these students were alive, not one of them had any knowledge of the operation of a saw. The only "Tool" operation, method or technique known for this sort of tool, they thought, was a chopping motion. At the end, I held up a Tennon Saw directly in front of their eyes showing the little hooky teeth which when pushed forward with a pushy forward motion, cuts the wood.

They didn’t know this, had never used a junior hack saw, had never come across this sort of thing – ever. It’s not their fault!
If we don’t as a nation teach skills in schools or in their own families, how on earth can we expect young people to learn? However, this really is only the tip of the iceberg. It is not only the young that are susceptible to this lack of a fuller knowledge.

A friend asked me to do repairs on their house and amongst other items to sort out was the simple task of putting a hook on the back of a bedroom door, which my friend apparently was unable to do. On enquiry as to what the problem was, it became apparent that my friend had been trying to use an electric drill that their brother had kindly given to them as a birthday present on moving into this nice new house.

This was the tool of choice, present from brother, will solve all problems, nice and expensive; will do the business – no problem. This was the thinking involved. I will now explain exactly what was happening.
Job, - fix hook, - tool, - ah! New electric drill - Push button on drill - Drill works, Vrummm, nice wizzy sound - Touch drill chuck when whizzing on hook when in contact with door - Hook falls on floor.

This story is a serious observation of how, when the basic ABC of a practical life in the modern world is not taught. The student of life can only run with knowledge acquired up to that point

This has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence but to do with fundamental knowledge omitted by schools from the portfolio of life skills. The other angle to all this, which is interesting to think about, is that the brother hadn’t supplied any drill bits. This was the thinking. The electric drill is the best tool, the electric drill will do the job, I will buy the posh one, my family deserve the best, they will like this for their nice new house.
All are excellent sentiments we can all agree but these are based on the modern concept that the tool/equipment will resolve the problem. It is not expected any concession is given to the skills of a person behind the tool having to contribute to the successful conclusion of the project.

Whilst students are required simply to acquire knowledge in a vertical form and to acquire more and more information to obtain higher and higher qualifications, we will have people with holes in their knowledge that will be increasingly a problem the older they get or more senior they become in later life.
I have taught students of thirteen years of age who didn’t know what a pair of scissors were and as a department we were all instructed to wear goggles to use them. Sixteen-year-olds that absolutely had no idea or even concept of what a screwdriver was. I have stopped students of fourteen years of age using ring spanners and marking gauges as hammers, and witnessed a whole school department that had every single chisel intentionally blunted/rounded off by order of senior management as it was considered dangerous to have all these sharp dangerous things in a school.

The final example I will recall for you is when I was briefly out of the room for a moment at the start of a lesson and on returning the noise was amazing and I choked in horror as to what was to be seen. One of the teaching assistants had “started the lesson”. None of the current work had been retrieved from their boxes and "starting work" had entailed every student just grabbing any tool in sight and bashing it as hard as they could on a work bench.

Now just think about this, all these students were NOT mucking about. After talking to them I discovered that they thought making things needed tools and workshops and so that creating noise and hitting stuff was what was required. As they were young and had no experience of either, they genuinely thought they were doing a grand job. The worst thing about all this was that the teaching assistant naturally thought the same!!!!

This does show how long this malaise has been in the system. While we go down the route of total reliance on the machine/tool to do the task, the interface of input from the individual on the outcome diminishes. Skill, if only the knowledge that skill is required at a point when a tool should be used is always going to be a vital ingredient to modern life. The absence of this leads to partial knowledge and incomplete function.
Well, I'm just glad that William Churchill won the Second World War for us.

Dennis Holmes Worthing & District SME

[tifosi12]

The Neptune was sold as a kit in the UK, although it was available later on as RTR at greater cost. The early models got a reputation for bad electronics. They rectified most if not all of the issues later on I believe. I think they look too fisher price from the factory, but they can be dressed up to look like something more scale like.

I bought my Neptune second hand (of course since they're no longer manufactured). At this point it is a DOA so eventually I have to disassemble it and figure out what's not working (most likely a dead battery).

Yes, the looks at the top isn't great, but I have some ideas on how to make that look more scale to something real.

[tifosi12]

Does this qualify as a remote control submarine?

I think this is more appealing to the current generation that an antique U boat or a nuc boat that reminds them of a giant d**do. They want instant gratification. "I want to see where I'm going, see whats down there."" How deep can i go? " Take underwater selfies.

Actually I'm very interested in an underwater drone. I wouldn't really put them into the category of R/C submarines: Yes, they are remotely controlled but tethered, so not quite the same. I'm thinking about getting one for taking UW pictures of wrecks way down as in 90 feet deep. Nothing a R/C sub could do to begin with, different purpose. I used to scuba dive but got too old for that, so maybe piloting a UW drone to a wreck site might just be the ticket.

I bet most don't know who Otto Kretschmer, Gunther Prien, Lawson Ramage or Chris Wreford-Brown are.

I know Kretschmer and Prien. Dunno the other two. :)

[Schmitty1944]

RC submarines are a niche hobby. They always have been. I don't think we need to make a conscious effort to expose kids or others. Just do what you do and some people will see you and be interested, others won't. I like that it's a small segment of people that tend to be very smart, pretty nerdy (myself included) and just generally different that RC subs appeal to.

I have an old VHS tape from a sub meet I went to in 1995 on July 1st at Cultus lake in Vancouver B.C. Canada. As a beautiful 10ft 32nd scale Balao cruises past the dock at periscope depth almost simultaneously, a women says "that's so cool" while another lady says "that's really boring".

Jason