David Merriman's Flying Sub project part 3 page 2

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David Merriman's Flying Sub project

part 3 page 2


	This is an auxiliary view of the retractable tail-hook, showing it in profile, both sitting in its trough like well and extended, ready to snag a wire. A small plan view of the hook proper reveals it to be of standard shape to those used by the USN. Obviously Mr. Creber … or whomever he tasked to prepare the drawings … was a student to some degree of American Naval aircraft. This drawing also shows a simplified hatch and hatch hand-wheel in the center of the bottom hemispherical pressure hull section.


	I suspect that cannibalization of existing movie miniatures on the Fox lot was going on back there in 1964; I have a minds eye picture of young Carpenter Apprentices, new to the prop and miniature shop, told to search the Property to cannibalize the required number of deck hatches off the submarine miniatures scattered throughout the Fox property. Unresolved is the number of hatch models scrounged and used, and which hatch was purpose built for the FS-1 miniatures.


	We're looking at the upper annular intake and hatch of one of the actual effects miniatures. This specific hatch struck me as the most attractive of the bunch and I selected it as the prototype for the model hatch parts I would produce for my FS-1. It has all the prime ingredients: A semi-hemispherical hatch, a proper hand-wheel with thick hub (just like the hand-wheels on the bulkhead doors seen in the SEAVIEW set), a reasonably stout hinge support


	arm, functional looking split hinge bearings, a practical hatch return spring (to help counter the massive weight of the hatch as it is opened and closed), and return-spring torsion adjusting ratchet wheels. This is a well preserved miniature. The only damage seen on the hatch is the broken strand of wound cord used to represent the hatch return-spring. If you look close you can make out the holes between the gussets used to de-air the miniature when it was placed in the water for filming.


	The Pattern Makers at Aurora made good use of the documentation provided them by Twentieth Century-Fox. The injection kit parts laid out here are a Monogram pressing for the Tsukuda offering of the kit in the mid-eighties. I was hired by the Japanese company to build up a unit of the kit for their trade-show representatives and this was the kit they sent me for the build-up. The kit is faithful to the William Creber design as stipulated in the studio drawings of the FS-1.


	This Aurora/Monogram/Tsukud kit is faithful to those drawings but not to the actual miniatures: The injected kit has wing-fences/strakes at the front, top and bottom; it has the tail-hook, raised window frames; and two simplified circular access hatches top and bottom with four-spoke hand-wheels. This kit, in competent hands, can be worked with file and filler into a spitting image of one of the actual effects miniatures, a task I have yet to see done with any care.


	The hull of the radio controlled FS-1 submarine model is not the watertight envelope you would first expect. In this case the FS-1 hull is simply a hydrodynamic fairing; a means of letting the water slip by with the minimum of drag. But flying in the face of that objective are the nearly vertical bow and stern bulkheads, these two areas contribute a great deal of drag inducing turbulence … thank you, Mr. Creber.


	It is left to the main WTC and the four smaller WTC's (containing the pump-jet propulsor) to keep things dry and at a one-atmosphere pressure. This type of submarine, featuring a water filled hull with only smaller internal vessels kept dry to house the equipment, is described as a 'wet-hull'. Wet-hull submarines weigh a lot less out of the water than do the dry-hull counterparts. The wet-hulled types are also much easier to design, build, and maintain, as their access hatch(s) need not be outfitted with exotic seals and closure fasteners.


	Casting a reflection off the surface the dived FS-1 model awaits a command from the transmitter. Carefully trimmed out with small amounts of lead weight and buoyant foam the model hovers in a condition of near neutral buoyancy when the on-board ballast tank is fully flooded – in this condition all it takes to change depth is a pitch moment produced by the in-nozzle stern planes to tip the hull either up or down so that its forward motion will make the hull rise or dive depending on its angle of attack to the relative water flow.

This is 'dynamic depth control', where the vehicles form generates the force that causes a change of depth. The broad saucer shape of the FS-1 makes this vehicle very easy to control in depth. The in-nozzle stern planes and differential use of the thrusters (ahead and astern PJ's) are all the controls I need to control depth and direction.

Next installment we start working the kit. A thorough look at the re-contouring of the kit hull halves, what's involved in correcting the forward and after bulkheads, and other preliminary chores that have to be done before the two hull halves are bonded together. You'll get the basics of how to select and use exothermic and air drying fillers and putties; abrasives; and automotive grade primer.

And, time permitting; I'll toss in a rant or two.

onto part 4

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