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The kit arrived to our door undamaged and complete with a booklet of instructions - which, I promptly tossed into a dark corner
of the shop, never to be consulted. Hey... I have my pride! It was bad enough that I lowered myself to building a stinking 'kit'!
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Reference material?!.... We need no stink'n 'reference' material!... I had the
seventeen foot miniature in my custody for over five year! During that time I had the good fortune of meeting Rick Knorowsky; who, during the miniatures stay here, lofted an excellent set of orthographic drawings off it, complete with sections - they today stand as the definitive 'document of record' of how this particular miniature was arranged. Of course, Rick's drawing became my prime 'go-to' reference as I worked to upgrade the DeBoer kit.
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An underwater shot of the completed DeBoer Hulls SEAVIEW. Though difficult to drive owing to its awful hull form, the SEAVIEW
subjects makes for a stunningly beautiful r/c model submarine as it slinks around in the depths.
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The first departure from the DeBoer instructions was to remove the portion of hull under each propulsion tube. I figured that
the intake flow requirement of each pump-jet would be much greater than what the scale 'gill slits' at the front of each propulsion tube could provide. I saw to it that additional water was drawn in
through the many flood-drain holes, limber holes, and open mini-sub/bathysphere hatch.
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Care was taken to assure symmetry of position as I attached the two propulsion tubes. Here I'm using a Machinist's surface gauge
and inside calipers to check position before bonding the second propulsion tube in place against the hull. Most critical bonding was achieved with thickened epoxy laminating resin.
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The DeBoer kit arrived with the hull pre-assembled; the two-piece bow joined to the two-piece hull. However, a little touch-up
work with automotive filler followed by careful file and sanding block work was required. 'Filler', as I use the term, denotes any two-part exothermic curing material used to fill and/or re-contour the
surface of the work. 'Putty' is any of those air-dry glazing smears used to fill small depressions and file marks. Don't confuse the two - filler ain't putty! Don't use hobby store putty, it's all crap.
You'll find the Nitro-Stan, 9001 I use at your local automotive refinishing supply house. It won't be displayed - you have to ask for it and they'll drag it out from behind the counter.
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I made the lower stern section of the model removable to facilitate installation and servicing of the various gadgets back
there. You see the two installed pump-jet units set well back in their propulsion tubes. From the rotor of each pump-jet projects forward an aluminum drive shaft which makes up to the motor output of the
water tight cylinder (containing the drive, control, and ballast sub-systems) in the middle of the hull.
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Looking at the three rudders and stern planes. Only the central 'skeg rudder' is made up to the rudder servo - it drives,
through a transverse push-pull rod, the two outboard rudders. The turning radius of the SEAVIEW model is, when submerged, rather poor due to the large 'weather cocking' force of the tall 'Cadillac' fins
above the stern. However, on the surface (with those fins in the air), the model turns quite well, as long as there is water being pushed out by the pump-jets. Turning rate at low throttle,
understandably, is poor.
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The water tight cylinder (WTC), a length of clear Lexan tube keeping dry all the devices needed to operate this r/c submarine
model, is located in the middle of the free flooding model submarine. Here we're looking at some of the contents on the lower side of the equipment tray. This tray, attached to the after 'motor bulkhead'
can be easily slid in and out of the tube for adjustment and testing. Here can be made out the two-motor speed controller and r/c system receiver. In the background is the helically wound receiver
antenna which sits just under the models sail - the GRP structure is transparent to radio frequencies as is (to a lesser extent) fresh water. The model can be controlled to depths down to twenty-feet.
But, like model airplanes and other vehicles, 'if you can't see it, you can't drive it!'
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The upper end of the equipment tray aboard the WTC. Here you see some of the control surface servos to the right. The square
white box just forward of the servos is the vital 'missing pulse detector' used to command a blow of the ballast tank if and when the r/c signal is lost. To the left is the APC-3, an 'automatic pitch
controller'. Its job is to sense pitch changes and to drive the stern plane servo to get the submarine back on or near a zero pitch angle. The APC and missing pulse detectors are vital equipment aboard
an r/c submarine. Here I'm mounting the APC on a hinge affair, which will permit remote tilting of the APC (and hence the 'zero set point' of the unit in relation to the model submarines horizontal datum
line).
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The DeBoer provided vertical fins at the stern featured cast in place conduit tubes that permitted chasing of the stern light
wiring from the tips of the fins to the inside of the after hull. However, cracks developed during the priming process right over these encapsulated sections of aluminum tubing. This necessitated repair
by applying re-enforcing fiberglass tape on both sides of each fin followed by a careful fairing in with filler and putty.
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The stern of the completed fifty-seven inch long DeBoer Hull SEAVIEW kit. Note the two fixed horizontal vanes in the nozzle of
each propulsion tube - they are angled to deflect the jet flow upwards. This needed to counter the 'nose down' moment produced by the shape of the SEAVIEW's unique bow.
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The two stern lights, each housed within a 'bullet' shaped clear acrylic lens at the after tip of each 'Cadillac' fin, are
grain-of-wheat sized incandescent bulbs favored by the model railroad crowd. The wires run down an internal 'conduit tube' within the fin and down into the stern of the model. From there the wires are
run forward where they make up to the lighting buss, near the propulsion battery.
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Layout and accurate marking is everything to the advanced kit-assembler. Here I'm employing a transverse vertical 'fence' to
guide a waterline-marking tool as I establish the radial cut-lines near the stern of the SEAVIEW. After marking off the radial and longitudinal cut-lines, I employed a moto-tool to separate this portion
of the stern from the rest of the hull.
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Marking off the horizontal cut-line using a flat worktable as the reference plane. The removable stern facilitates assembly,
installation, and maintenance of the control surfaces, their linkages, the pump-jets, and buoyant foam.
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Applying the initial coat of primer. Note the multi-colored surface ahead of the primed area. You're looking at sanded white
gel-coat (the substrate), blue two-part filler, and red touch-up putty. The primer produces a thick, easily sanded neutral gray surface that permits examination of the models surface and easy
identification of areas needing more work with fillers of file. I use the DuPont Lucite 131S gray acrylic lacquer. Don't use hobby paints!
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Sometimes, as is the case here where I'm confronted with the chore of sanding out the square openings of the many flood/drain
ports in the bottom of the SEAVIEW hull, I'll make specialized sanding tools. In this case I bonded various grits of sandpaper to the faces of Popsicle sticks.
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The only scribing I did on this project was to cut in the outlines of the bow planes. The scribing tool was a simple Jeweler's
rat tail file ground to a sharp needlepoint. A custom-made thin gauge aluminum sheet scribing stencil guided the tool as I cut in the bow plane outline into the soft and easy to work white gel-coat
substrate.
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Ellie using a soft-jawed Jeweler's vice to hold the brass sheet strongback as she works it with files. This piece, placed on the
inboard side of the models bow, works to hold the clear window lens up tight against the inboard side of the window openings. The strongback is secured and pulled up tight through an array of machine
screw fasteners screwed in from the outside of the hull.
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Near completion of the project the clear part and strongback were installed. The sunken screw heads covered with filler and the
bow filed and sanded to shape. Here I'm at the wet sanding stage, cutting with a wet piece of #400 sandpaper.
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An early step during the SEAVIEW assembly was establishment of the 'floor' plane of the Observation Compartment. This was easily
done by first marking off the floor plane on the outside of the bow with a waterline-marking tool. I then drilled holes through the hull and ran transverse brass rods through it - the rods establishing
the plane of the floor and a temporary support for the floor master piece.
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Looking down from the open FS-1 hangar bay we see one of the temporary brass rods and a cut piece of thick plastic sheet
installed to form the master of the Observation Compartment deck. Atop the bottom of the hull is a big transverse mounting bracket that will later be glued to the bottom of the deck - this piece
strengthening the deck and providing the outboard attachment points for thumb-screw fasteners later used to secure the OC within the bow.
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next in part 2 -- The Sail
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