Hi Rick,
The idea is to mount any one of many commercially available mini-cams on a rotate able ball mount in a watertight housing. This would go on top of an approx 3" dia deck mounted, 4' tall free flooding, hollow steel mast. The periscope mast and snorkel would be joined by a welded support midway up and then guy wired fore and aft to mimic the low frequency antennae.
The periscope is step mounted and thru bolted with only the wiring leading in to your LCD screen and rotation control. You could simplify things a whole bunch with a fixed camera mount if you desire, and if experience being a good teacher with regard to salt water environments, may very well end up being the case anyway.
That is as far as I have gone with it, I will get into more detail as to materials and suppliers when the time comes. For now it's enough to paint the broad strokes for stuff like this and then paint the fine detail later. This is a proven concept, Peter Madsen has it aboard Kraka and I believe Freya as well.
Here are two commercial ambient manufacturers who also use the same concept.
http://exomos.com/exomos_main_content.html
Incidently, the first company is chaired by a frenchman operating out of Dubai in the U.A.E., from what I understand, some of the finest unexploited diving to be found is in that part of the world....too bad it's so dangerous to travel there!
Joe
From: "Rick and Marcia" <empiricus@telus.net>
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Ambient / 1ATM Q?
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 01:59:24 -0800
Joe - could you tell us more about your periscope ball camera? ThanksRick L