Reply to Ray's message concerning "design team"

[Michael B Holt <michaelbholt@juno.com>]

On Fri, 16 Jul 1999 10:05:26 -0700 (PDT) Ray Keefer writes:
>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.

I appreciate your sharing of your experience.  

I spent days on teams, and noticed that things only got done after hours.

>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.

We're working on that choice.

>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.

We need, perhaps, a map showing where everyone is located.

>   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.

Any suggestions?   I don't have AutoCAD, but I do have something that
will read the AutoCAD format successfully.

>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.

This may be especially insidious in this case.   We might wind up with
two
(or more) boats being designed at once.

>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.

See the message from Jon Shawl about this one.

>5. Another tough issue is deciding the basic question: ambient or 1atm.
>   I won't go into the pros and cons of each approach.

I think this very question is a "dead horse."

>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)

This seems a very good start.  It may wind up exactly like this, after
some
iterations of the design procedure.

>Good Luck,

Thanks.



Mike Holt
-- 

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