Topic: My 12 foot Gato class submarine! (Read 273760 times)

sub john · « **Reply #575 on:** July 18, 2020, 10:11:23 pm »

HI every body

On last up date i said that i was doing radar for the sub but i came up with a big problem, processing 2 software which i was using for the radar screen worked fine on PC but when it came to putting it on to a laptop it just would not work, i have spent hours trying to find out what the problem was in the end i thought i would give it a brake and go back to it at a later date. But i then found out that other people was having the same problem running it on a laptop and could not get it to work. But in the end i found out what the problem was it basically was the laptop screen would not go into the right size stopping the software running, of course i ended up having to change some of the code so it now auto sizes itself and it runs fine. But as things work you end up doing other things as well i have been making a DC variable load which can run up to 100amps which gave me some thing to think about of course with this i can test polylithium cells and lots of other things as well with full digital read out for amps and volts. But of course this thing does generate allot of heat when running i can use it as a electric fire when I'm cold in the winter

Somebody ended up braking one of the oleken guns off on the conning tower i must say a big thanks to Micheal Mcguinn for making me a new gun, the oleken gun that was on the back of the conning tower has now been changed to a boffos gun which is what it should be and it has made it look allot better

I have just also fitted it the big sub digital read out for the pressure in the main air tanks so i can set it from any where from 30psi to 140psi if need be this is allot stable than mark one , and this has to tell the compressor when to stop, the compressor in the sub would other wise if need be would run the tanks up to 400psi which would not be very safe for pipe work and valves.
Hope you are all keeping away from covid19 stay safe sub John

salmon · « **Reply #576 on:** July 20, 2020, 07:08:27 pm »

John,
It is good to hear you are alive and I pray doing well. Most of what you typed went over my head, but I do like hearing about people pushing the edge of technology especially for our hobby.
Please stay safe and keep posting your updates.
Peace,
Tom

sub john · « **Reply #577 on:** October 08, 2020, 10:31:59 pm »

HI Guys
About 4 weeks ago somebody i know wanted to see the submarine he had seen it down charnwood waters where i used to sail it but had not seen it close up, because i new he was coming round to see it i set up some of the units one of them being the telemetry unit which sends back data showing pressure in main air tanks, battery voltages rpm of props, amps being used and temps plus other bits this was all done using CMOS chips 30 years ago, no processors was used where this is all going when i tried it before the guy came around it worked fine but when he got hear tried it again it would not work. The RF and TX unit had failed could not repair it has it had been covered in a varnish that i could not even get off with acetone this has turned out to be a night mare, tried to replace the units with the new RX TX units that are out there but could not get these to work as the new units are looking for board rate say 4800 and 1 bit stops but the problem is the data i send doesn't work like this. So i had to find a TX RX unit that sends just raw serial data ended up finding a company called digikey that had got what i needed this went on for 4 weeks trying to get it back together and working. I could of designed a TX RX unit but they needed to be small to get back into the units, i could of updated the hole lot but i wonted to leave it as it was when i first made it.

The misses found on eBay a video camera colour and believe it or not the size of the camera is only 5mm square with leans so i ordered one when it arrived of course i had to try it and could not believe just how good the picture was, and for £23 pounds i had to have it . The plan is i won't to get it to look up the periscope i think it's time to now put the torpedo's in. I keep working on more electronics to go it i think where it will end up going the sub will be that heavy with electronics it will sink and never come up again because of the weight.

Stay safe Sub John

salmon · « **Reply #578 on:** October 09, 2020, 03:55:44 am »

Sorry for the RX/TX issue, but good to see you still plugging away. Would enjoy more pictures if you got them!

sub john · « **Reply #579 on:** October 10, 2020, 06:03:07 pm »

HI Tom
The guy that came around to see the submarine said you should take it to shows but i said it's so much trouble to take it out being so big but what I'm hoping to get onto is this 5mm square video camera that i have got. Quite a while ago i did a low frequency video link for under water will have to start putting all this RF tat in to the sub its a good job it runs on big battries 24v at 72amps so should keep it running for a while. You said about putting some pictures up will have to try and do this so you can see the new guns which was made for it by Micheal Mcguinn i think he did a very good job it has made it look alot better.

Thanks for reply John

sub john · « **Reply #580 on:** March 29, 2021, 10:48:55 pm »

HI Guys
some of the new electroincs that was designed for the Engel Gato has been a testing ground to see how reliable it would be, so what i have just been designing for the big Gato is a self levelling system and what this will do, say you was to fire a torpedo out of the front of the sub if the torpedo was positively buoyant what would happen is the front of the sub would go down but the system i have done will compensation by levelling the sub by moving grams of water. Its all solid state electronic no relays and i hate this word Micro switches, the system has only got 1 trim tank a pump for in and out of the water to the trim tank. When circuit was tested on the bench you could place a couple of grams of weight on the unit and it would compansate for it, all i can say is i think it,s time to put the torpedos in

Sub John

sub john · « **Reply #581 on:** December 11, 2021, 03:18:12 pm »

HI Guys
Don't know weather you will find this interesting, the batterys in the big Gato are now about 6 years old they was starting to show signs of not having the same amp hour as they where when they was new.What i have been playing around with is a thing called desolphastion what this process does is brake down the solpha on the plates of the battery, there is 3 types of these units that you can make 1 is inductive which is useing a coil and firing it into the battery runing at about 1khz but the trouble is with the first coil type the process can take quite a while to bring the battery back to its forma self. The 2nd is a resistive based circuit now you can speed the hole process up because you can fire the resistive circuit at a much higher frequency and speed the process up of desolpastion, and the 3rd circuit you fire a capacitor been charged to a high voltage in to the battery and over a time of 8 hours if you look at the plates inside the battery you can see the solpha braking away from the plates the solpha fulls to the bottom of the battery and is put back in to the battery acid. To give you some sort of idea tried the circuits out on 2 12v 24amp hour the batterys at start of tests was only showing just over 9amps but now after been desolphated the batterys are back to what they where when they was new, had writen the amp hour of the 2 batterys on the side so i new what they should be.

Also built DC variable load to test batterys with LCD screen and it will do up to 100amps and it does get hot at that currant so the end result is you can bring a battery back to life provided it has not got cracked plates or insurlaters. The batterys in the big Gato after playing around has come back to what they was as new battery fot the big sub would be £480 which gets expensive

Hope you find it interesting by desolphating old batterys you can double the life if not more but it comes down to how you do the desolphastion process

All the best Sub John

salmon · « **Reply #582 on:** December 15, 2021, 06:05:08 pm »

Always great to see updates from you.

sub john · « **Reply #583 on:** December 16, 2021, 10:19:01 pm »

Hi Salmon
Hope you did'nt find it to boring but it is quite interesting to bring batterys back to life, i can not see any reason why you can not make a battery last 20 years but its knowing how to go about it. Some of the ways take to long but you can do it in 8 hours

PS Merry Christmas Happy New Year John

Martin (Admin) · « **Reply #584 on:** December 16, 2021, 10:23:15 pm »

"Desulphation" ..... never heard of such a thing!

https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/impp-1105-battery-desulfators-fact-fiction/

https://youtu.be/IRHR9EaxSgE

sub john · « **Reply #585 on:** December 17, 2021, 09:38:08 pm »

HI Martin

I know you said you have never heard of such a thing as desulphation most of the units you can buy on the market today if the battery is badly sulphated it can take weeks if not months to desulphate it, with some of the units you can buy i think that is why alot of people say the units don't work. But with the latest one im doing it can bring a really bad sulphated battery back to a very good reasonable state after 8 hours. One of the worst things to do with a lead acid battery is to discharge it well down and leave it standing for a few weeks and don't charge it, this is when sulphation really starts to take hold after i discharge a lead acid battery i always charge it stright away.

Martin can you remember the early battery chargers for cars they had the amp meter in the front, because they only had a transformer and a full bridge rectifier and a amp meter that was a crud form of desulphation but would take a long time the other problem was with these chargers some of them can charge over 15v and leaving a battery say a gel type lead acid battery would turn the gel in the battery back to crystals but that can be solved buy putting distiled water back into the battery.

The software charger that i built for the big gato it changes how it charges the battery between summer and winter, because of the tempeture of the battery it does make a differance

PS Have a nice Christmas and a happy new year John and pauline

Akira · « **Reply #586 on:** December 18, 2021, 01:35:15 pm »

If memory serves me correctly, don't count on it, but I seem to recall that lead acid batteries could be desulphated by a relatively short high current charge being put into them. essentially is shocked the sulphur off the plates. That said, I don't believe that approach can be applied to SLA batteries because it would boil the acid out of the battery and could not be replaced, where as the old lead acids could and often did need, water added to the cells to replace what had been lost. I can't say that I ever attempted this technique, not successfully anyhow, but I least a did not blow up a battery, which IS a serious potential result.

sub john · « **Reply #587 on:** December 18, 2021, 07:38:00 pm »

HI Akira

Thanks for reply yes the basic idea is to fire a high energy pulse but like i said some of the differant methods of going about the problem works better than others. Part of the process is in taking the battery down in voltage why you go about desulphated the battery but it should cut out around about 10.5v and then go back in to charging the battery.

Yes you can desulphate SLA batterys as i call them gel type but you are right in you can boil them dry, i have just done 2 SLA batterys and they have come back as near as dam it to new but what you can do to gel types with a thin blade brake the top part away it is only held on with little plastic tags and brake away quite easy that will leave you with like little cups made of rubber if you pull these off you can get into the cells and put distilled water back with a syringe on say a 12v 24amph i normally put about 20mill of water back in on each cell, it does seem to work for me and of course you can put the rubber cups back on and glue the tags back into place job done. But im not saying people should have a go at this because it can be dangerous you have to be carefull with gases venting off the battery

PS NICE TO HEAR FROM YOU AKIRA HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS AND A Happy New Year jOHN

Akira · « **Reply #588 on:** December 18, 2021, 08:00:57 pm »

Right you are John. That said, I'll stick with the KISS method and play it safe. The last thing I need is a battery leaking acid inside a model. UGH!!!. SLA's are pretty cheap now so I'll just replace them as need be. If I keep them serviced, they do last a long time.Happy Holidays to you and all the Model Mayhem'ers.Jonathan

C-3PO · « **Reply #589 on:** February 11, 2022, 01:43:40 pm »

Sub John's Project in progress

This is the view above water - underwater version to follow...

https://youtu.be/gNjwUOYkdYE

https://youtu.be/gNjwUOYkdYE

sub john · « **Reply #590 on:** February 13, 2022, 05:19:54 pm »

HI Jonathan

Radar screen looks good will look good when it is in the sub, transmitting data back to the bankside so you can see the radar screen what the sub is looking at on the water. Its interesting to see all this working useing lidar makes it easier when i could get hold of water proof unit

Thanks for your help on doing codeing and processing screen i would not have got as far as this with out your help so thank you. Like we have talked about it comes down to time of flight useing RF for radar sensor trying to use RF at close distance is the main problem because of this thing called time of fight. But lidar time of flight is done for you interesting stuff

Tworrs · « **Reply #591 on:** April 19, 2022, 04:42:39 am »

Wow, just wow, this build is absolutely on another level.

sub john · « **Reply #592 on:** April 20, 2022, 10:12:04 pm »

HI Tworrs

Thanks for interested in sub, have a look on youtube type in videos of 12ft gato submarine and you will find some more bits on there

All the best John

C-3PO · « **Reply #593 on:** April 28, 2022, 02:01:40 pm »

John - Stumbled across these images of your 12 footer on the net

Absolutely awesome....

Regards
C-3PO

Tworrs · « **Reply #594 on:** April 28, 2022, 08:47:45 pm »

Quote from: sub john on April 20, 2022, 10:12:04 pm

HI Tworrs

Thanks for interested in sub, have a look on youtube type in videos of 12ft gato submarine and you will find some more bits on there

All the best John

Thank you John, I had already done so, and again WOW.
ATB
Garry

sub john · « **Reply #595 on:** April 30, 2022, 06:48:21 pm »

HI Jonathan
Thanks for putting pictures up it does look good, but for some reason i can not post pictures on mayhem any more which starts to be a pain in the back end
Catch you soon John

C-3PO · « **Reply #596 on:** May 15, 2022, 03:08:44 pm »

Images posted on behalf of sub john

Evaluating Sub based LIDAR hardware, LIDAR data transmitted to shore to allow shore based viewing...

salmon · « **Reply #597 on:** May 15, 2022, 05:02:21 pm »

This is amazing. I see this and cannot fathom the wisdom needed to build a working LiDAR system or any form of radar for our subs. This is so far beyond me it becomes magic and pixie dust.

C-3PO · « **Reply #598 on:** May 15, 2022, 05:32:33 pm »

Images posted on behalf of sub john

A few more pics of the sub

sub john · « **Reply #599 on:** May 16, 2022, 12:12:16 am »

HI Jonathan
Thanks for putting up pictures of lidar radar it will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Can you remember that water proof sensor what they had been using for bait boats i saw a video on you tube the sensor has got a pizo sensor in it and it is water proof and will work under water, on the video they took one apart it was interesting to see what was inside, i know i said that i had reworked drive circuit for pizo sensor so with what i have done i can not see why we can not use it for under water sonar. Because of the reworking i did should beable to get more distance under water it all comes down to drive voltage

Catch you soon John

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Author Topic: My 12 foot Gato class submarine! (Read 273760 times)