THEMA:

And here are shots of Rick's prototype for retract mechanism for the bow planes based on what he's done earlier for Kilo. Fox retract is shown on the right of the Kilo's & in the second photo.

Last is of the shaft housings that will be molded in the hull.

Absolutely outstanding !! :anbeten:

herrmill 22.01.2009 schrieb: Won't be long, boys, before we have ourselves a Foxtrot kit!!!

Hi,

please define "Won't be long"! It's nearly one year ago...
Another one for finalisation and delivery?

No, not quite. Once we have the PE deck & vents that are also underway, we'll have a kit.

Compared to some other long awaited projects you'll find under development on Subcommittee, SubPirates, etc... I'd say we're sitting pretty good at this point.

Here's David's latest installment as be begins work on a new SubDriver WTC designed specifically for the Fox.

OK, guys, here's another look at the work I'm doing on the FOXTROT project. I have every confidence that you will have no problem following along, as I'm fond of observing to others: My readers are a pretty sharp group of guys, the cream of the crop, actually. I can't say that enough ... honestly!



Desperate situations demand desperate measures! The damn Taig lathe belt broke last week and I can't do any heavy turning with it till the replacement belt arrives. I've been making do with rubber bands ... that's right, rubber-bands! ... but when the time came today to turn a RenShape master of the FOXTROT motor bulkhead, sized to fit a 2.5" Lexan cylinder, the Taig was simply not up to it.

So, I put the little drill press on its side, pressed a gel-cell battery into service as the foundation of a tool rest, chucked up a 1/4-20 machine-bolt used to hold the work, and spun a hunk of RenShape into shape. It isn't pretty, boys and girls, but it works!



OSHA standards?! ... we don't need no stinking OSHA standard!



Using the shop drawing I prepared of the FOXTROT SubDriver motor bulkhead to guide me as I took the work to the critical diameters.



Turning work on the drill press... err ... lath requires the insertion of a good firm mandrel through the work -- that was accomplished by drilling a hole through the center of a RenShape blank hacked out on the band saw, taping the hole for a 1/4-20 bolt, inserting the bolt, and making things fast at each end so the mandrel can't rotate within the work. Then its a simple matter to spin the work and do your worst.

This is a close-up of the shop drawing of the proposed FOXTROT motor bulkhead. The trick was to come up with a three-motor arrangement. It turned out that a motor bulkhead sized to fit a 2.5" cylinder would be big enough to accommodate three 280 sized motors. And the good news was that these motors -- employing the German formula: you can direct-drive a propeller providing the propeller diameter does not exceed the motor can diameter significantly -- were only a tad smaller in diameter than the propeller each would spin. Simplicity at its finest!



Showing off the ass-end of Rick's magnificent hull -- this is the business end where the three propellers swing in the breeze. Above, you see some of the components that go into the WTC/SubDriver that will be developed specifically for Rick's FOXTROT. The one unique item, to what will in all other characteristics be a 'standard' 2.5" SubDriver, is the use of the three-motor motor bulkhead -- seen here in the form of a tooling master. Tonight the first half of that rubber tool is curing -- tomorrow morning will see creation of the second half of that tool, And by late afternoon I'll have some pre-production cast resin parts in hand.

Tomorrow night I'll have the first pre-production FOXTROT SubDriver in hand.



The SubDriver I'm producing is but one option for the eventual FOXTROT customer: Rick will produce his own WTC, featuring an ingenious floating-piston ballast sub-system and hoists for retractable masts.

Now, it's back to the Caswell work and a long promised re-visit of a RTR USS MIAMI, and some SKY-DIVER master making.

Busy, busy ...

Here are the test shots from David's tooling for the upcoming kit. There's not much of a cabel report today, but plenty of photos to show what modeling craftsmanship looks like.

After seeing these, I fully understand why RPM Tech chose David to do the fitting package for the Fox. His attention to detail & accuracy is superb, & its no wonder that David has been doing fittings & other detailed parts like this for just about every US-based supplier of model submarines over the years.