Fairwater Planes Actuation

[wlambing]

So, what's the trick to get the FW planes pushrod in a 1:72 Skipjack to engage when mating the hull halves????

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

So, what's the trick to get the FW planes pushrod in a 1:72 Skipjack to engage when mating the hull halves????

Magnets, you dope!

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Or...................................

[wlambing]

All very ice but doesn't address the question. That is, what must be done to get the magnet equipped servo pushrod and the long planes hull pushrod to mate up and have the FW planes at zero degrees? I have nice, floppy, uppy-downy planes and a long pushrod held in place with split heat shrink tube segments in the upper hull. Length adjustment is needed, as well as alignment for mating the two hull halves with working FW planes so that the two pushrods click together and off I go as a happy camper.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

All very ice but doesn't address the question. That is, what must be done to get the magnet equipped servo pushrod and the long planes hull pushrod to mate up and have the FW planes at zero degrees? I have nice, floppy, uppy-downy planes and a long pushrod held in place with split heat shrink tube segments in the upper hull. Length adjustment is needed, as well as alignment for mating the two hull halves with working FW planes so that the two pushrods click together and off I go as a happy camper.

You equip the magnets to a Dumas #111 threaded coupler -- the thread permits fine adjustment of overall pushrod length so you can center the fairwater planes to the servo neutral position -- a one-time adjustment.



You make up the servo pushrod-to-external-pushrod like this:

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

All very ice but doesn't address the question. That is, what must be done to get the magnet equipped servo pushrod and the long planes hull pushrod to mate up and have the FW planes at zero degrees? I have nice, floppy, uppy-downy planes and a long pushrod held in place with split heat shrink tube segments in the upper hull. Length adjustment is needed, as well as alignment for mating the two hull halves with working FW planes so that the two pushrods click together and off I go as a happy camper.

As I believe you're working on the 1/72 Revell GATO as well, here are some shots of how those pushrods are arranged at the SubDriver after end:

[Ken_NJ]

Bill, on my Moebius SJ, the geared portion started to bend on me. So I made modifications to the levered gear. I also added 'bearings' to the sail to cut down on any friction. I also added a balled connection to the pushrod and eliminated any weakness in the magnetic connection. The pushrod I am using was the flexible model airplane type. I also marked the gear with a tick mark so when I assemble the sail it gets the right orientation of the gears. Since my sail halves are not permanently together, they are held together with 080 machine screws I can get in to service all the crap I have in the sail, I can get the geared connection right every time. Once the sail halves are together, I have to tighten the hex screws to get the FW planes at the right angle, and not strip the plastic holding the screws, which is the pain in the ass part. I won't describe any more, you can see in pictures. After all of these mods, it works great, solved all of the problems I was having.
















That is more than what you originally asked but I figure I would show you what I 'fixed'. David's method is OF COURSE the way to go, but I took things a step further to fix the trouble I was having.

[RCSubGuy]

Or...

Actuating fairwater planes

[wlambing]

Thanks to all! From HWMNBN and stuff's plethora of pictures, I have gotten ideas needed to hook things up at the FW planes servo connector, wayyyyyy back aft. And yes, thanks for the Gato pictures,too!!!!

[DrSchmidt]

Or...

Actuating fairwater planes

That'd be my approach. That's how we did it for T-tails for RC sailplanes

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Thanks to all! From HWMNBN and stuff's plethora of pictures, I have gotten ideas needed to hook things up at the FW planes servo connector, wayyyyyy back aft. And yes, thanks for the Gato pictures,too!!!!

It'll cost you DEARLY!!!

[mike27283]

Ken - I see quite a lot of wiring, brass rod, a circuit card mounted on the upper half of the hull… Just curious what all that is for and how it works. Thank you! Mike

[redboat219]

Thanks to all! From HWMNBN and stuff's plethora of pictures, I have gotten ideas needed to hook things up at the FW planes servo connector, wayyyyyy back aft.

Please post pic.

[Ken_NJ]

Ken - I see quite a lot of wiring, brass rod, a circuit card mounted on the upper half of the hull… Just curious what all that is for and how it works. Thank you! Mike

I have port and starboard navigation lights that manually pop out with LED's. The two black things near the front are CL2N3's which limit the LED current to 20ma for the P&S LED's. They replace resistors. There is the auxiliary LED at the aft end of the sail. You can barely see the submarine beacon LED which blinks 3 times then a pause. That is controlled by a min Arduino type board (Bluno Beetle) located in the hull. That beacon LED manually telescopes up and locks in position. The brass Z shaped thing allows me to pop out the P&S nav lights. The large white thing in the center is a float switch which turns off the LED's when the boat submerges. The white vertical piece of styrene is a mount for a periscope. The periscope has a magnet in it that engages with a waterproof reed switch. When I insert the scope with magnet it activates all of the lights. All of this requires a lot of wires which get in the way. Should have used finer wire.

[goshawk823]

Wow. Five pounds of ***t in a two pound sack. That’s some awesome engineering. Any weight issues on a large sail like that with all the innards?