[PSUBS-MAILIST] R300 Dive report - Canyon Lake, Tx

Tue Sep 1 19:06:41 EDT 2015

Could be voltage.  I did pull the batteries down.  I need to go back and
recalibrate the voltage sensor.  I use this to calulcate the SOC of the
main battery bank.  I will also go back and check all my battery
connections.

Cliff

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Hugh Fulton via Personal_Submersibles <
personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

> All sounds loads of fun Cliff.
>
> Your problems smell of voltage drop especially after 7 hours.  Is it
> possible that you have a dry joint or possibly a wet one at the connectors
>
> Cheers, Hugh
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Personal_Submersibles [mailto:
> personal_submersibles-bounces at psubs.org] *On Behalf Of *Cliff Redus via
> Personal_Submersibles
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 2 September 2015 9:41 a.m.
> *To:* Personal Submersibles General Discussion
> *Subject:* Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] R300 Dive report - Canyon Lake, Tx
>
>
>
> I took the R300 out this weekend.  This was the first time to have it back
> in water since the 2013 Psub convention in Islamorada.  The objective of
> the dive was to evaluate some fairly significant modifications.
>
>
>
> To improve low speed maneuverability and reduce noise, I junked the jet
> pump and ailerons and went to four fixed MK 101 thrusters. I also junked
> the VBT and just add ballast to get neutral. Also I added a Garmin AIRMAR
> DST800 Smart Sensor to measure altitude, speed and water temperature.  It
> worked great.  Installed a new LED 5k light, upgraded to a new HMI, and
> changed the foot and joystick controls.  I also rewired the main battery
> bank for 36VDC rather than 120VDC and installed four MK 101 motor
> controllers.  I modified the aft horizontal MK-101s by adding Kort nozzles
> and used air to pressure compensate.  I used the same pressure reducing
> regulator Hugh Fulton posted about awhile back that he is using on the
> QSub.    The changes decreased the weight of boat by 200 lbs while the
> displacement remained the same.
>
>
>
> My son, wife, a diving friend and I took the boat to Canyon Lake in Texas
> this Sunday.  Visibility was less than 5 ft so could not see much.  My main
> interest at this point was just to get into water.  After launching the
> boat, I did some testing to get the base line ballast both mid-ship and in
> the stern correct so that I could get neutral and trim after flooding the
> MBT.  After establishing the fixed ballast, I took the boat out to test how
> the horizontal thrusters work for surface maneuvering.   I was very happy
> with way the horizontal thrusters performed. Surface maneuverability was
> excellent and these motors are supper quite.  I did find that you could
> cavitate the props on the surface if you hit it with too much power. As
> before the changes, when you get up to about 4 knots, the bow wave obscures
> the pilots vision.   Breaking is much improved and it is now possible to
> rotate on the surface or in the water column.
>
>
>
> I then took the boat out for the first submerged maneuvering.  The
> vertical thrusters were very effective for depth control, pitch and roll
> control.  I found that it was much easier to get to specific depth and hold
> this depth using the vertical thrusters than the old way I did it with the
> VBT.  They worked great.  While removing the VBT simplified dive
> operations, it did result in loss of freeboard of about 1 inch.  This is a
> downside of removing the VBT as the freeboard was already quite low.  I
> just have to be careful when opening the hatch.  I opened and closed that
> hatch throughout the day and only took splash one time when a boat came by
> I did not see.
>
>
>
> The new Garmin AIRMAR DST800 Smart Sensor worked great. With visibility
> less than 5 ft, being able to know the altitude was very helpful on dives.
> As usual, it got darker as you descend but knowing when the bottom was
> coming up was nice.
>
>
>
> On the negative side, during the last dive of the day, the vertical
> thrusters failed while my son was on bottom in about 27 ft of water.  He
> had to surface using the MBT. Why these thrusters failed is a mystery.  It
> was at the end of the day and I had pushed the batteries pretty hard all
> day along but we still had plenty of battery voltage.   My sons second
> attempt to surface was to put some air in the forward MBT to lift the nose
> and then use the aft horizontal thrusters to power to the surface.  This
> failed as aft horizontal thrusters were not responsive.  After surfacing
> with the MBT, we discovered that tree limb about 1.5” diameter had lodged
> in the starboard horizontal thruster between the prop and the Kort nozzle.
> This explains why we lost horizontal thrust but not vertical.  After
> getting the boat back on the trailer, I tested the vertical thrusters.
> They would barely turn even when giving them full power.  My first guess
> was that the air pressure compensation system failed and the thrusters were
> full of water.  When I got the boat back to my workshop, I disassembled
> both vertical thrusters and discovered they were dry. After recharging the
> boat, I tried the vertical thrusters again and got the same slow speed
> operation.  After turning them off and on for about five minutes, the
> starboard vertical thruster stared working correctly.  I kept switching the
> port vertical thruster off and on and all of a sudden, it began working
> correctly.  When I had the motors apart, I put a multimeter on the wires
> going to the brushes and found it showing 35VDC.  At this point the control
> signal to these motors was 2.5V so voltage to the motors should have been
> zero.   My guess is that the MK motor controller is acting up.  But it is
> strange that both the vertical controllers would fail.  Also, if it were
> bad motor controllers, then why did they both start working again.  This is
> still a head stumper for me.
>
>
>
> Also towards the end of the day, the OTS underwater communication stared
> acting up.  Base and standby diver using an OTS Guardian full face mask
> could hear underwater transmissions from me but I could not receive either
> from the diver or from the base.  The underwater commns had been working
> great for the previous 7 hours.   I was also having trouble about this time
> with the VHF radio that Alec gave me.  Again I could not receive.  When I
> get a chance I am going to see if the connection to the antenna got
> disconnected.
>
>
>
> One of the nice new features of the new HMI besides being larger and
> having a higher resolution, was it has built in data logging.  So after the
> dive it was very nice to be able to download into Excel about 50 variables
> logged at a one minute interval. I was able to plot these and get a
> detailed picture of how all the ship systems were working during the day.
>
>
>
> If anyone has any thoughts on why the vertical MK 101 thruster motors
> failed, or have had any negative experience with the MK101 motor
> controllers, I would love to hear them.  When they are working, they are
> great.
>
>
>
> All in all, I was very happy with the changes but have a few kinks to work
> out before I take her out again.  Now if I could just find some clear water
> to dive in, I would be a happy camper!
>
>
>
> Cliff
>
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>
>
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