[PSUBS-MAILIST] R300 Dive at Lake Amistad

Thu Jan 28 13:47:21 EST 2016

Thanks, sounds like you have done a Cliff special on your control system.How do you get your pitch, is that through weight transfer or pumps?That's quite an amazing saving on battery usage.If you do find water in the motors....there is a good article in the Psub archiveson modifying Minn kotas for deep diving. I think I re-posted it a while back.   You are welcome down here for a dive. There are places with 200ft+ visibilitybut they are about 10 miles off shore. Keith Gordon lives in view of a set ofIslands regarded by Jacques Cousteau as one of the top 10 diving spots inthe World. He also owns salvage rights to a ship purported to have $3 million worth of gold still on it.  
It might be more viable to wait till Hugh & I have our subs going, & dive them.Cheers Alan  

      From: Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 To: Personal Submersibles General Discussion <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> 
 Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 3:40 AM
 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] R300 Dive at Lake Amistad

Alan, operation of the four Minn-Kota thrusters was a joy.  Maneuverability is an order magnitude better than before plus they are super quite. I use a foot control that you tilt forward to increase speed of stern thrusters and if you tilt the foot control back you can reverse the stern thrusters.  With this I now have brakes.   I have a 3-axis joy stick which I use to control pitch, roll and yaw through PLC. I programed three different vertical thruster modes. The first is full control in which starboard-port movement generates roll, the second in which I switch them over to momentary  switches for up and down movement and have them locked together and a third in which I have them back on the joystick but lock out roll.  I use the first mode when I want to fly underwater with full pitch, roll and yaw control.  I use the second mode for vertical ascent or decent and the third mode which gives yaw and pitch movement but locks out roll movement.  On the surface I have to be careful not to apply  full speed to aft thrusters or they will cavitate. On the ascent from the 154 ft dive, I could see out the viewport a steady stream of bubbles coming from the pressure reducing regulator used to pressure compensate the thrusters.  Also, after the dive I analyzed the logged data and confirmed that during each dive air was been supply to the thrusters for pressure compensation.  I have not done so yet but I plan on disassembling one of the thrusters to confirm it had no water encroachment during the dive.  I am really happy with the Minn-Kota thrusters.  After a full day on the water, I had a SOC of 90%.  With my previous drive train, my batteries would be at a 50% SOC for same number of hours.  As to boat length, I did end of shortening the boat by 2.5 ft. I also shortened the trailer by 3 ft.  As the pressure hull is shaped like a coke bottle, I could not cut much more off the stern FRP cowling.
After I do a 400 ft unmanned dive to qualify the boat to 300 ft, then I am going to find some clear water.  How you doing for garage space?  I sure you could find me some nice clear water in New Zealand!
Cliff
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:40 PM, Alan James via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

Thanks Cliff,congratulations on getting the refit finished.How did you feel it operated with the 4 Minn kotas. What was the steering like on surface & diving.I notice you didn't shorten the sub. What were the reasons
for that, I thought that tale section would just be anappendage now.That was a shame about the visibility. Wait till you get in to some reallyclear water, you will be blown away.Cheers Alan

      From: Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 To: Personal Submersibles General Discussion <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> 
 Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2016 11:07 AM
 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] R300 Dive at Lake Amistad

 Lake Amistad 2016 is a link to YouTube video of dive last weekend.  This is the deepest dive to date with the boat.  Got the thruster electrical issue from my last dive sorted out.  The objective in diving this lake is that it is the deepest in Texas and most of the time, the clearest.  Having said that, last weekend visibility was bad.  Surface vis was 6ft, lost all light at 80 ft and zero visibilty at 154 ft.  Still if was fun to get the deep dive in.  
Clif
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