Re: design team

[shawl@torchlake.com (Jonathan Shawl)]

Thanks Ray for the advice and for this site! Like others I have met and made my
best internet friends here.
I don't intend to cause a split, but rather I see it as a branch or bud as the
P-sub tree grows.
If a sub is ever built?  I was thinking it would be more like a learning
experience for the ones involved and then if a person learns enough he can use the
basic ideas and customize it and build what he see is the right sub for him.
As far as a leader goes I think Mike Holt and I can share that part as we seem to
connect ok on the side. Right Mike?
And I have the web site room for it. I will keep you all up to date as I make
progress on it.

Thanks again Ray and Jon for the P-sub site.
May it grow some more!
Now I'm off on vacation :-) but gone from the computer :-(
Later Jon Shawl

Ray Keefer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Well I stayed away from this design team because I was involved with two
> previous teams and they fizzled out in under a month. You have some
> significant challenges ahead and they are mostly due to geography.
> So here is some lessons learned from previous attempts.
>
> 1. You need a leader. Someone willing to head the project, make tough
>    choices regarding design tradeoffs, and with adequate communication
>    skills and spare time. The leader will probably end up doing most of the
>    hard work so they need to be willing up front to do it.
>
> 2. Communication. I have seen so many projects suffer due to lack of
>    communication. Do it any way you can. E-mail, list group, fax, phone,
>    personal e-mail, in person. In person is best. One day in a face-to-face
>    meeting is worth a month any other way.
>
>    Decide on a method or standard to send sketches and drawings back and
>    forth. Snail mail will add significant time to the project. IF you can
>    pick an electronic medium the pace will be faster.
>
> 3. Too many people give too many conflicting design notions. This is where
>    a strong leader is important. Out of all the ideas the leader needs to
>    pull together a workable design.
>
>    However too few people and you don't have enough synergy to be innovative.
>    Your leader must be able to draw out ideas from the team and pick the best.
>
> 4. Where you going to build it? Who is going to build it? Who is going to fund
>    it? Who gets to use it? :) These are very tough questions. Due to the fact
>    that PSUBers are spread across the world these will be amongst the
>    toughest issues to address.
>
> 5. Another tough issue is deciding the basic question: ambient or 1atm.
>    I won't go into the pros and cons of each approach.
>
> 6. For what it's worth, my design input would be:
>
>         1 atm
>         Hull Form: like a fast attack submarine, streamlined
>         Depth: 200 ft
>         People: 2 (can operate with 1) in tandem
>         Speed: 3 knots
>         Endurance: 4-8 hours
>         Trailerable
>         Lead-acid batteries
>         Two electric motors on horizontal planes (simular to SportSub)
>         Soft tanks (at least 2) for ballast, fwd and aft
>         Hard tank for trimming (many of the WWII midgets failed due to not
>                 being trimable)
>
> Good Luck,
> Ray
>
>
>