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yeah, we're certifiable!
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Who is John Galt? -
No Von,
Those flakzwillingen are scratchbuild scale 1:35, only borrowed the guns from Tamiya.
Manfred.I went undergroundComment
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No wonder they have great detail. I noticed the take down pins where the guns seperate from the carrage. I was hoping I woudnt have to put them in my 1:72, because I couldnt find them in the set. And they would be hard for me to work that small, these days. They are very nicely done by the way.Comment
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Let me ask another question. A little more on the history of the Sub-Driver. I notice on some older Sub-drivers you had a cone tapered end. Why did you move away from that style?If you can cut, drill, saw, hit things and swear a lot, you're well on the way to building a working model sub.Comment
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Though we had been building static display pieces commercially for many years, we did not get into the hobby r/c submarine vehicle trade till the early 90's. Our first product was a GRP 1/96 scale model of the SKIPJACK. The raw masters were done by Steve Reichmuth which I detailed and reduced to tooling, from which GRP, cast resin, and cast metal parts were produced.
Complementing our hull kit was a purpose designed cylindrical, removable, and easily accessed water tight cylinder/container (WTC). I believe D&E Miniatures was the first in the world to market such a system. However, unknown to me -- long before our introduction of the product to the general public -- guys like Nick Burge had developed their own non-commercial, removable, cylindrical systems independently.
The invention of the WTC is not mine. There is Mr. Burge's work. And there is this mystery acrylic WTC pictured in a very early issue of Model Ships (a UK magazine, long out of print) that appeared in the mid-60's.
Though modified by a customer extensively (and returned for service) this is the only shot of the original type 3" diameter, SKIPJACK WTC. The term Sub-driver (SD) now used to describe our systems was adopted to differentiate the D&E Miniatures line from the Caswell line of cylinders. The WTC-3 featured a Lexan cylinder with a wall thickness of 1/8" inch. Beefy! It was built as small as possible and able to house the rather large devices (compared to today's devices) of the time. And this first commercial WTC was at the bottom of my learning curve -- many features were of poor design and manufacture. But, it was the best I could do at the time, and experience and advances in the state-of-the-art have permitted me to enhance the utility and reliability of the system. Today's SD's are completely different animals to the initial WTC's.
What drove the incorporation of a tapered cast resin 'motor-cup' was the tight taper at the stern of the SKIPJACK model kit for which the WTC was designed. here you see the motor-cup master sitting within the mother-mold element of the eventual hybrid tool that was created to mass-produce this item. At one time I had three sets of tools working to produce parts -- the WTC's were selling like hot-cakes for a few years.
At the time I got into the game -- and the SKIPJACK was not my first r/c submarine, I had previously scratch-built and made operational a 1/96 AKULA model from left over tooling from a defense contractor job -- r/c gear was still pretty 'big' compared to the devices we have today. Not only that, but there was not yet outfits like SubTech from which we could buy angle-keepers -- a vital piece of gear for the r/c submarine. What saved my bacon was the extensive study I had put in; I learned from the likes of Skip Asay, Mike Dorey, Dave Weeks and other innovators in the field. From Mr. Asay I learned how to modify a helicopter rate gyro into an angle-keeper; from Dorey I developed an appreciation for the trimming process; and from Weeks I saw how one could make, from common hand-tools, ballast water moving pumps, vents, and a Mercury switch bang-bang type angle-keeper.
As I was wrapping up development of the WTC-3, Skip Asay had gone commercial with his big (by today's standard) pendulum type angle keeper, a line of pushrod and propeller shaft seals, and a user friendly fail-safe device. These devices -- with the assurance that my customers now had access to the devices that would fit my cylinder -- informed me as I worked out the final WTC's geometry.
With the success of our initial WTC-3, we continued development of larger, more capable WTC's. Above you see just some of the masters worked up to produce the specialized bulkheads for our line of WTC's.
I once took a little FM transmitter kit and adapted it for use as a passive sonar device. The assembled transmitter and battery supply was made to fit within the dry-side of the WTC-3's forward bulkhead. The pick-up microphone was waterproofed within a rubber, and placed high up into the sail. While operating my SKIPJACK underwater I wore a set of radio-head-phones tuned to the sonar sub-systems transmitter. Self noise was a big problem: the motor roar was deafening, as was the bubble-gurgle sound when I vented or blew the tank, and servo travel blanked out any other sound in the water.
However, I learned to set the model down on the bottom, five feet or deeper, take my paws off the transmitter, sit down, shut my eyes, and listen to the sounds from the environment. The overhead traffic of model speed boats, destroyers, battleships, and pleasure craft was clear as day. Over time I learned to place sound to a specific craft. Doppler told me if it was coming or going; amplitude told me if the driver was accelerating or chopping the throttle; and his servo noise told me if he was maneuvering radically. I could even hear the hum of a fast going sail-boats running board.
No bearing or range dope. But, man, it was fun. My ears tuned in with the grounded model sitting in the muck under all the surface action: listening to all the fat, juicy targets tearing about overhead.
MWho is John Galt?Comment
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Do you still have files on your intial attempt to RC the 1/144 Kilo? Didn't you try to put in an auxilliary ballast tank in the stern?
BTW, What ever happened to your adjustable ballast tank design?Last edited by redboat219; 01-11-2015, 10:20 AM.Make it simple, make strong, make it work!Comment
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When Trumpeter came out with their wonderful little 1/144 KILO plastic model kit, it simply screamed out for a proper fittings kit and SD to permit its conversion from static to r/c use. I did that ... eventually.
But, not without a major misstep along the path
This is what I eventually came up with, a 2" diameter SD complete with ballast sub-system. Too small to fit SAS components, The KILO SD is our only ballast tank equipped SD making use of the LPB, with gas as the back-up means of pushing water out of the ballast tank.
A colossal mistake was made when I attempted, initially, to make a 2.5" diameter cylinder work within the tight confines of the little KILO plastic model kit.
As this SD was configured with the ballast tank so far forward, it necessitated the provision of a second ballast tank built into the after, lower hull.
Bad Ju-Ju!
Splitting the blow and vent plumbing was an invitation to failure -- I just could not get the prototype to work properly. Even if I could, the complexity of the customer-built after ballast tank would have severely limited sales of our product. Dead End! (cue the 'Final Countdown' music).
And this is the product today.
The 'variable volume' ballast tank was another bad idea. Built only into our early versions of the 3.5 WTC. Few liked it, and the arrangement dropped from our line of SD's. Win some, you loose some.
MLast edited by He Who Shall Not Be Named; 01-11-2015, 01:46 PM.Who is John Galt?Comment
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Our story starts ... as stories often do ... at the beginning.
My first r/c submarine was an offshoot of the usual industrial display building Ellie and I had been doing for a number of years -- most of our customers defense contractors who used model to enhance their sales presentations at trade-shows and corporate office rooms.
Librascope, a division of the Singer company, was a big client of ours and for a number of years engaged our services. One job was a 1/96 scale model of the then very secret, and little known AKULA class (a NATO designation) attack submarine. The model had to be light of weight as it would be suspended from the convention center ceiling. That drove me to design it as a hollow-shell, CRP hull with cast resin appendages, and some vacuformed detail features. Not appreciated at the time, but this light-weight requirement resulted in materials and fabrication choices that dove-tailed very well with the requirements demanded if one wished to build a model r/c model submarine.
And here is the first AKULA I popped out of the tooling produced for the Librascope job. Here you see it, at the Washington Hilton annual Defense Industry trade-show, hanging from the convention floor ceiling. Two of my clients left and right. Keep in mind that I had very little source material to go with -- the best I had were some grainy photos published in the Jane's Annual and some other publications. So, a lot is wrong with this and the follow-on r/c version: no hogner-stem (hour-glass shape of the hull just forward of the propeller), wrong location and shape of the bow planes, wrong mast array, no condenser scoops, etc. But, a fair representation of the submarine.
I learned later that a NIS representative was asking some rather pointed questions about the sourcing of the model of the Librascope sales guys during the five-day run of the show. I took that as a complement.
The eventual r/c AKULA, my first r/c model submarine, patrolling the depths; making the swimming-pool safe for Communism.
All the limber holes (most of them in the wrong position) and big flood-drain holes made this a quick diver-surfacer. Three major WTC systems were installed during its life ... and still lives, it's now in the custody of my friend, Ray Taylor. More on that WTC work in a follow-up installment.
The master of the 1/96 AKULA hull started out as four big hunks of seasoned Sugar Pine. The two halves -- one forward section, and one after section, each half split longitudinally and held together with screws -- were then turned to shape on the lathe. Each half was then split and the four pieces laid down on mold-boards to become the upper and lower hull masters.
This was in the days before we embraced the use of the dense pattern making mediums such as RenShape.
Temporarily off its mold-board, the upper stern quarter is being worked with tools to achieve the prominent flat deck of the AKULA. The sail was worked as a separate piece, then clued atop the hull master and radiused in with Bondo. The upper and lower hull halves were then finished with West-System epoxy, and automotive acrylic lacquer primer -- wonderful stuff! GRP hard-shell tools were laid-up over the masters -- these becoming the tools from which thin-walled GRP parts would be laminated. Thus achieving the strong, light-weight model parts demanded by the customer.
A bit old-school, but vacuforming has it's place. A poor quality image, but all I have on this job. Here I'm forming .030" thick polystyrene sheet into the tear-drop shaped towed wire reel fairing seen atop the early AKULA rudders. A very distinctive feature, but one that later presented trimming problems on my r/c model ... an issue raised recently by someone building up an AKULA model of their own: this high-volume item displaces a lot of water if not vented to flood and drain as the model changes from surfaced to submerged trim.
The Librascope job not long done, I got the r/c submarine bug after being handed the transmitter by my good buddy, Gene Berger.
As we played with his beautiful OLYMPIC model at a local pond one casual summer afternoon -- left his big 'Great White Fleet' battleship dead in the water, in the middle of the lake, put down its transmitter, went to his van and broke out his 1/32 Type-9 r/c submarine, and plopped it into the water and got it underway. He then tossed me its transmitter, and walked away to drive his OLYMPIC.
The SOB didn't even tell me what stick-switch did what!?!!!!!....
I pleaded for some instruction at least. In answer Gene, smiling, turned his back on me. Not a frig'n word! Wow! Now what? Took a few minutes, but I started to work out what stick-switch did what to the boat. Within ten minutes I dove the boat (accidentally), but quickly learned the sticks and had the boat running at periscope depth, and answering all commands with authority. Neat!
I WAS HOOKED! And it's all Gene's fault!
Ellie's working our second AKULA model, this one to be our first r/c submarine. She's cutting in the radial engraved lines that when connected with longitudinal engraved lines, will form the desired 'tile' pattern on the hull. At the time I had no declarative proof that the AKULA's had anechoic rubber coatings, I just made that assumption. And, as it turned out they did -- but only decades later. The initial boats -- like our LA's, to which the AKULA's were Russia's answer -- presented steel to the water, not rubber. Oh, well.
Tool-making 101 on display here, kiddies!
The one thing I observed, in all my readings up to that time, was that the hull was either hardened, either in part or nearly in its entirety, to resist hydrostatic force. The partially hardened hull, where a removable free-flooding upper hull covers a lower hull that is partitioned with two or more transverse bulkhead and a lid (usually a clear plastic), the spaces within rendered (hopefully) watertight. Easy to make, but access it difficult.
The European's tend to favor the nearly completely dry-hull type, access through a bayonet secured radial break around the hull. Difficult to fabricate, but gives great access to the internals.
I came up with the WTC concept on my own (not knowing that Dennis DeBoer, of DeBoer Hulls had done the same thing years earlier). I manufactured, for what became the initial system, three GRP watertight boxes to house the propulsion, and control elements of the 1/96 AKULA r/c submarine. Here you see them being manufactured.
Each WTC was hydrostatically tested in a pressure pot.
So, what you are seeing is the genesis of our current line of SD's: a means of making watertight the container(s) that serve to keep those things that need to operate in a dry environment, dry. And to be easily removed and their interiors accessed for repair, adjustment, or replacement of the devices within.
Great minds think alike. Years before I 'invented' my WTC (water tight container), Dennis DeBoer was already offering a like system for his r/c model kits. This set purpose designed for his 1/48 SKIPJACK r/c submarine kit.
MWho is John Galt?Comment
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BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!
BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!
How long did all that crap take to write? Someone take that keyboard away from him! Get back to work you bum!Stop messing about - just get a Sub-driver!Comment
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I'm no multi-tasker. Multi-tasking means you do a lot of things at the same time poorly. I choose to do one-thing-at-a-time well.
Mike's right. It does take time to write this stuff up (not to mention all the work taken to collate the pictures -- which is all but done now). Just legacy building. Permit me that one conceit, please.
I'm catching up on the orders, Boss. I promise! And the Type-9 fittings kits and SD are ready for the catalog just as soon as I fix Word on this stupid machine so I can do the ad copy.
MWho is John Galt?Comment
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Dave ,we really do appreciate the history. We always wondered where you got your start. More Please.......when you get the chance.IT TAKES GREAT INTELLIGENCE TO FAKE SUCH STUPIDITY!Comment
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If you were to do a top 10 of your favorite subs to run, what would they be?
Conversely, what are the top 10 of the worse subs to run?If you can cut, drill, saw, hit things and swear a lot, you're well on the way to building a working model sub.Comment
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