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Hello Frank, How is my favorite UFO builder doing today? ;)' Are there alien insurance agencies in your area? Karl had been operating C-BUG at his current Roaton location for some time before he went back to the states to build Idabel. He designed Idabel for the location it is now, with very deep water, very very close to shore, great visibility, great tourist local, and no strong currents to speak of. To have Idabel ABS certified would of likely cost him twice what it did to build it. So since that was not a financial option and he didn't need the certification where he was taking Idabel, it wasn't done. Karl's not a real big fan of the ABS in any case. I'm sure he has learned plenty about the ABS from Doug Privitt. I have not asked him directly about it. To many other things to talk about of late. I have heard a number of stories of how the ABS tends to make things much harder then they need to be, and charging far more then they should for the man hours and other expenses they incur. So it wouldn't surprise me if that is also part of his reasoning. Paul Moorhouse was commenting on how the prop shaft for the Alicia sub he designed and built was required to be a scaled down tanker shaft, that was far larger then was needed to work properly and be very safe in his opinion. The cost of that far heavier shaft must of been a lot more then a shaft one quarter that size in SS that would of worked very well in his opinion. There is a point when over killing on design for safety is simply excessive beyond good reason. I've worked with building inspectors for years, and I find they tend to be very close minded and make things far harder then they need to. They have so many regulations to choose to inforce. They almost always want to write use up for some thing when they come for the first time, and if we have done to good of a job, I've seen them make things up, that tend to be very stupid in my view and many others, and very labor and cost intensive. So we purposely leave obvious things unfinished that are easy to finish, so they have some thing to write us up for. Of course with the ABS you can file a protest for design review with more inspectors, which helps a lot. Your resident pipe dreamer insurance agent ;)' Regards, Szybowski From: ShellyDalg@aol.com Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 15:12:53 -0400 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Re: Acrylic Viewports To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org Hi Jon. I didn't see it either, but isn't it against the law to operate a sub for profit without it? ( at least in the US ) We can build what ever we want, but taking paying customers down requires insurance. I don't think Karl Stanley's sub is ABS but maybe that's why he operates where he does. The Delta group has a pretty impressive list of customers, and I don't think they'd be willing to risk it. I'll ask them how they do it. Frank D. It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. |