[PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report: Snoopy at Seneca

Sat Jun 6 23:30:46 EDT 2015

Hi Dan!

Long time no hear :)  I have the boat running great now an actually still hitched to the truck!
Anytime you want to go up, just holler and I'd be more that willing!  Maybe this time I can get you on some of those barge wreckd I promised!

Al Secor

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 6/6/15, Dan Hryhorcoff via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report: Snoopy at Seneca
 To: "Personal Submersibles General Discussion" <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 Date: Saturday, June 6, 2015, 9:58 PM

 Yep, Al has the boat and
 he has experience too.  Experience in the deep 
 water testing operation, and experience in
 hauling up hand over hand from 
 more feet
 then he or I would like to do again.

 Seneca Lake in New York state is a great place
 to dive.  Deep and clear with 
 a great ramp
 on the southern end.  It's only a few miles off the
 ramp to get 
 to five hundred feet of
 depth.

 Great report Alec, 
 Seneca lake is so deep that the water doesn't seem to

 mix up much.  What's at the bottom and
 cold, stays down there.  Probably the 
 biggest drawback to that lake is that it's
 quite cold year around.
 If you have plans to
 get up there again let me know.  Maybe I'll head up 
 that way.

 Dan
 H.

 -----Original
 Message----- 
 From: Al Secor via
 Personal_Submersibles
 Sent: Friday, June 05,
 2015 11:28 PM
 To: Personal Submersibles
 General Discussion
 Subject: Re:
 [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report: Snoopy at Seneca

 Tim,

 It's basically a 20' 150 hp
 outboard...good for towing the sub out to the 
 dive site.  I have 2 other larger boats but
 they aren't as easily towed on 
 the
 highway.
 I provided support for Persistence,
 Dan H's K-350 sub when we did the deep 
 test for that.

 Al Secor

 --------------------------------------------
 On Fri, 6/5/15, T Novak via
 Personal_Submersibles 
 <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 wrote:

 Subject: Re:
 [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report: Snoopy at Seneca
 To: "'Personal Submersibles General
 Discussion'" 
 <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 Date: Friday, June 5, 2015, 11:11 PM

 What kind of surface
 support boat do you have, Al?  Could you post
 a photo?
 Tim

 -----Original Message-----
 From: Personal_Submersibles [mailto:personal_submersibles-bounces at psubs.org]
 On Behalf Of Al Secor via
 Personal_Submersibles
 Sent:
 June-05-15 7:19
 PM
 To:
 Personal Submersibles General
 Discussion
 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive
 report: Snoopy at Seneca

 FWIW, my boat is available for any surface
 support for deep tests and I can
 also
 provide guidance to local
 wrecks in Seneca if anyone else
 is
 interested.
 I also have a
 scuba compressor for air fills.

 Al Secor

 --------------------------------------------
 On Fri, 6/5/15, swaters at waters-ks.com
 via Personal_Submersibles
 <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 wrote:

 Subject: Re:
 [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report:
 Snoopy at Seneca
   To: "Personal
 Submersibles General
 Discussion"
 <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
   Date: Friday, June 5, 2015, 9:20 PM

   Alec,So

 cool. I wish I could of made it! Can't wait
 to see the
 video.Thanks,Scott
 Waters

   Sent from my U.S.

 Cellular® Smartphone

 -------- Original message
   --------
   From: Alec Smyth
 via

 Personal_Submersibles
   <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
   Date:06/05/2015  5:16 PM  (GMT-06:00)
   To: Personal Submersibles General
 Discussion
 <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
   Cc:

 Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report:

 Snoopy at Seneca

 Hello
   friends,
   I just got
 back
   from a dive trip to
 Seneca with Dan
 Lance and thought  I'd
 share how it
 went. This was supposed to be a
 two sub  trip
 with Scott Waters, but
 unfortunately a
 business 
 emergency intervened and it ended up being
 just
 Snoopy.

 On the way
 up
   the weather
 was terrible, with driving
 rain so heavy I
 could  barely see
 the lines
 on the road. It had been raining  heavily for
 several
 days
 previously.
 Three times there were
 emergency
 announcements about floods,
 large
 hail, and  damaging winds, and the closer I
 got the harder
 it rained.

 The problem with all that rain
 is that in
 your typical lake,  the runoff
 ruins
 visibility for weeks. That is what
 happened  last year when
 Trustworthy and
 Snoopy
 rendezvoused at  Summersville Lake, and it looked
 very much like this would  be a repeat.
 I'm happy to say Seneca must be
 rain-proof,  because the deluge only
 reduced
 the visibility in the top
 fifty feet or so,
 and even
 those were clearer than most  lakes.

 Here's a
   few things we
 learned:
   1) Of props and

 shroudsThe stern thruster
 speed control was dead  on
 arrival,
 although I
 had tested it
 successfully before  leaving. I opened up the
 enclosure,
 pressed down all the  spade
 connectors, and
 found it now worked - so
 attributed  the
 issue to road
 bumps. However, it died within a minute on
 the first dive. I had a spare speed
 controller,
 so switched  it out.  The
 replacement died
 within five
 minutes on the second dive.

 This time at least the cause was obvious, the
 prop was
 jammed by weeds.
 The current Minnkota props
 have
 a little  twist at the end of the blades,
 and Snoopy's shroud is  made with
 almost
 no clearance. The little twist to
 the
 blade  tip causes any
 object coming between prop and shroud
 to
 jam
 tight, and had already smoked one
 controller during the  convention in the
 Keys. I'm going to put the prop on the
 lathe and take off the tips to
 eliminate the
 pinching effect 
 and to reduce the amperage draw a little
 so
 the motor goes  lighter on
 the speed
 controller. By the way, the
 speed
 controller
 was
 protected by a fuse rated a little below the
 controller spec
 current draw,
 so perhaps
 those specs are  optimistic.
 Anyway, as a result of
 the double failure
 all of  our dives were done
 on just the
 side thrusters
 because I was
 out of spare speed controllers. Lesson for next
 sub:
 Design
 the electrical
 system with a
 controller bypass, so I can 
 operate thrusters
 with simple on/off
 switches if a speed
 controller fails.
 They're
 electronic,
 they
 will  fail.
   2) Of air

 bubbles in compensation oil

 Snoopy is now routinely diving deep
   (250
 ft) and this has showed
 up a puzzling issue with the
 thrusters.
 They
 were feeble during dives,
 one died  altogether on one dive, and they
 kept
 coming up leaking oil.
   At
 first we thought the
 seals were failing, perhaps due to
 some
 chemical
 incompatibility. We found
 suitable seals at an  Amish farm supply store
 that
 sold things like tractor spares 
 (viva
 trolling motor simplicity!) When I
 disconnected the  bladder hose I got quite
 well sprayed with oil. The motor
 turned out
 to be pressurized. 
 Previously, I thought if one had a
 small
 quantity of air left in the system it
 would not be an  issue so long as the
 compression volume of that air could be
 handled by the flexibility of the
 hose (aka
 compensation
   bladder.) Wrong. I now think
 what happens is that if the  dive exceeds
 the
 pressure rating of the shaft seal and
 there
 is a bubble of any size, you
 will get water
 added to the
 oil  and the bubble stores the pressure.
 Upon
 surfacing,  the bubble
 squeezes oil
 and water back out until the 
 pressure
 in
 the motor falls
 to the "cracking  pressure" of
 the seal. Thus, you get an
 oil
 leak even
 though the seals are fine. Lesson:
 Zero tolerance with
 oil
 bubbles, even a small bubble is
 unacceptable if you are  diving deep.
 I'm
 going to put set screws on the
 motor  caps so
 I can get rid of the
 bubbles
 more
 easily.
   3) An easy way
   to
 add buoyancySnoopy's buoyancy is adjusted 
 by placing
 trawl floats in
 PVC tubes. On one occasion,
 the  oncoming passenger's weight required
 the
 addition of  just one float (i.e. the
 new guy
 weighed seven pounds more
 than the one
 getting off). The
 support diver wasn't  suited up and
 the
 water
 was 42 degrees, so I just pushed
 a  float under the lip of the forward MBT.
 It worked like a  charm, and the float even
 stayed in place throughout the
 tow  back to
 the ramp. Lesson:
 You can easily add a few floats  for
 buoyancy
 on a standard K sub,
 no special
 tubes  required.
   Most of our
   dives were
 along a very steep incline, not
 quite a wall
 but  more like a
 series of
 ledges and very steep slopes. Between  the
 steep terrain
 and the
 good
 visibility, the K250 dome for
 once offered a
 really good view. We
 typically made our
 way  down the slopes using
 very slightly
 negative
 buoyancy,  trailing
 the back corner of a skid on the slope.
 Looking  aft,
 you could see a zigzagging
 trail of silt
 hanging  motionless in the
 water
 and
 tracing our path.
 The sub  compresses with depth, so
 slightly
 positive
 buoyancy at the  surface
 turned into slightly negative at depth, but 
 we're
 speaking of just a couple of
 pounds and not
 anything that caused
 difficulty. In fact at
 one
 point we  stopped dead in the water four or five
 feet above a flat  bottom for about five
 minutes, just waiting for a
 pre-arranged
 touch-point call
 on comms. The sub didn't  rise or sink
 an
 inch, she just hung there
 completely
 immobile for five minutes. At
 about
 140 feet
 the
 visibility  would improve significantly, and the water
 changed
 from  green to blue.
 It looked like
 ocean instead of lake
 water.
   I'll post
 a
 video, but that'll take a few days to  put together.
 The only
 "incidents"
 we had were
 a  cold bath we took when we
 closed the hatch over a
 corner of  the
 crew's shirt, and when we
 got hooked on
 a log at 220  feet -
 fortunately reversing
 got us right off  it.

 Best,

 Alec

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