Submarine Kit, Part-1

A Report to the Cabal:

A few years ago I build one of these Wallace RC 1/16 KAIRYU submarine kits for a client. He had me install one of the early Swann type miniature color video camera-transmitters aboard it so he could watch the action from the models point of view (POV). I completed that job and remember the ball I had wearing 'virtual goggles' as I drove the submerged model around the lake, feeling all the world like I was on board looking through a miniature porthole.

The only liability to the Swann system (the name under which the system was marketed through the Radio Shack chain) was that they marketed the system without sound, for FCC imposed rules on clandestine cameras, the instructions stated. Well, some things have changed in the last year: the same system is now marketed under the Astak label, but this time through the Walmart stores, and the price has dropped from over one-hundred-and-twenty dollars down to just over eighty-dollars! The Astak is identical with the Swann except for one very important detail: The Astak version has sound! So, in the space of a year this wireless video camera system has gone down in price and increased in capability. It may not seem so, but being able to hear what your model submarine hears is an important asset to you, the Driver.

Over a decade ago I operated a model submarine equipped with an FM audio transmitter. I experimented with placement of the microphone, placing within the WTC and in the water, within the wet hull of the model. With the wireless sound system installed I would operate the model normally, but would be wearing an FM radio headset, tuned to the onboard audio transmitter. I could hear the servos, motor, and ballast system sounds from my boat loud and clear. I could also hear overhead traffic as the model boats around me operated. Passive sonar gear! I could make out the distinctive Doppler shift as boats came towards or moved away from my bottom sitting submarine model. The sound permitted me to even hover the boat as I could hear the bubble stream as I opened the vent, and hear the jet of gas as I discharge ballast water with squirts of Propel; with a little practice I could pretty much determine how much water I took on or discharged, just by the sounds made.

Now, with the availability of sound with the Astak wireless color video system, I get two additional sensory inputs from the model: visual and audio. This is groundbreaking stuff, boy's and girl's.

I'm working with Bob Wallace, the creator of the KAIRYU kit, to improve the quality of the various cast resin pieces. Nothing wrong with the original items, I simply made new masters that have been super detailed to my admittedly anal retentive, over the top standards. I'll use castings from those masters/tools to build my own camera equipped model of the KAIRYU, when that works done I'll forward Bob the tooling and a how-to-make-tools-and-castings DVD so he can upgrade his kit.

That's the plan.

I'll take you through the build of this neat little r/c submarine, and will show you how to install a real-time wireless video system aboard the boat. Now you too can 'be there' as the boat dives and surfaces and operates beneath the waves.

For more information on how to customize the little Swann and Astak video camera-transmitters for use aboard a submerged r/c submarine, I recommend you go to the following site and read my initial report:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=339195

I build up the Wallace RC 1/16 KAIRYU kit a number of years ago for a client. Here you see that model being trimmed out at my son's backyard pool, with an assist by granddaughter Rose. The kit is a bit on the basic side. Though the appendages and other parts seems to be accurate of shape, they are very 'soft' on detail -- The stabilizers and control surfaces do no capture the access plates, vent holes and other details evidenced on the surviving prototypes of this suicide craft. Offered as a supplement to the kit is a photo package that features shots of an actual KAIRYU boat on display at the Nautilus museum, just out side the submarine base main gate, in Groton Connecticut. If you're going to buy this kit, buy the photo package!

What makes the 1/16 KAIRYU kit ideal for installation of a wireless video system is the relatively large sail and presence of a port hole lens in the leading edge of the sail. As it works out there is just enough room within the sail to house a small inch-and-a-quarter diameter Acrylic cylinder needed to house the little Swann/Astak video camera-transmitter unit.

Here you see a demonstration of the installed camera. At the time of this turnkey job the Swann camera was the only game in town and it had no audio (though both the camera-transmitter and receiver are otherwise audio capable, those features were disabled by the factory for alleged FCC rule reasons). The received video has three-hundred-and-eighty lines of resolution and is color. Range between the camera-transmitter and receiver is three-hundred-feet. Not bad for a transmitter that only squeaks out a three Millie Watt signal! At such a low power the transmitter antenna much be above water and in unobstructed line-of-sight to the receivers antenna. The major modification you need to make is to get the antenna off the camera-transmitter body, and up a sail mast so it will be in the air when the boat is at 'periscope depth.'

I was very pleased with the surfaced and submerged performance of the Wallace RC KAIRYU submarine. A very tight turning circle and depth keeping was exceptional. Characteristics which makes this r/c submarine the perfect candidate as a real-time video platform. There are zero concessions to scale fidelity when outfitting this model with the Swann or Astak video camera system.

Here is the entire wireless color and audio video system, less monitor. All for around eighty bucks at Walmart! I think the availability of this system, now, can revolutionize the hobby of r/c submarining: forever answering the question, "But, what can you see of the model when it submerges?"

You won't need the two wall-mount power supplies as the onboard camera will use a single nine-Volt battery and the receiver, in the field, will make use of a twelve-Volt gel-cell battery. The only modifications to the camera-transmitter is removal of the plugs between camera body and battery and the need to extend the antenna away from the camera case and up atop a mast that will poke above the water.

So, you have a video camera in the submarine, and its signal is transmitted to a shore-side receiver. How do you process that signal? Here is one setup: I use one of those TV monitor-VHS recorders that has strapped atop it the two-point-four mega Hertz video receiver which outputs straight into the TV's 'video in' jack. A twelve volt gel-cell batter is also strapped atop the TV, needed to run the receiver -- all this making for a semi-portable receiver-monitor-VHS recorder unit. However, I still need a household power hookup to the unit for things to work.

An alternative, and a more useful arrangement in the field, is to use 'virtual goggles'. These look like a very funky set of goggles, each lens a miniature TV screen. You stick them on your head like glasses. A properly design set of these goggle blocks out all ambient sunlight and only gives you a view from the camera's POV. I use virtual goggles when I run my wireless video equipped boats at the lake. The sense of 'being there' is so persuasive as to get you seasick should the model start rolling around in a chop. I once almost puked wearing these things!

I took the original kit parts and pressed them into service as foundations for improvements I made to them: The addition of 'drain' holes, fillets at the roots, tightening the fit between stabilizers and control surfaces, scribing in access plates, and lengthening of the span of the stern planes and horizontal control surfaces. I also built a new master for the left-hand pitched, three bladed propeller (though I'm not at all happy with the first effort, I'll try again); dunce-cap; periscope; exhaust pipe gooseneck; hex head nuts; hatch; cleats; and exhaust pipe securing brackets. From the rubber tooling I'll pull off these masters I'll produce both cast metal and polyurethane cast resin model parts. I'll also make plugs over which will be vacuformed the bridge well and porthole cone fairing (situated in the leading edge of the sail).

I made a new 'scale' looking propeller for the kit. Here's some of the work. You want more information on my propeller design and fabrication techniques look it up in the Merriman Cabal Report section of SubPirates. com.

Test fitting some of the new masters on the KAIRYU hull. Since the vertical and horizontal control surfaces and their associated stabilizers are symmetrical, I only need one master of each. These masters will later be used to make rubber tools, and from those tools the actual cast resin (and cast metal) parts will be manufactured.

An oft neglected but very viable scratch-building medium is the clay like, heat curable, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), commercially available as a sculpting medium under the brand name Sculpy or Super Sculpy -- you'll find this stuff at hobby shops and art supply stores. The material is sculpted much like clay, but when baked at a constant temperature of two-hundred-and-seventy five degrees it hardens. The cured Super Sculpy is flesh colored (the material is designed for figure sculpting), easily worked with machine and hand tools, takes all primer and paint systems, bonds readily with CA, epoxy, phenolic and other adhesive systems, and has low to medium tensile, torsional, and shear resistance.

Here you see some of the detail item masters I've made from this heat curing PVC: a single padeye, two exhaust line hold down brackets, hex sectioned nuts, and the 'gooseneck' water trap that terminates at the after end of the external exhaust pipe. Sure, I could have manufactured these masters from plastic sheet, Renshape, metal, or other mediums, but the mailable Sculpy was the best choices for these specific shapes. Note the blue Evercoat filler, already applied and filed back to fill some dings in the Sculpy masters.

Unlike most other mediums, clay like materials can be squeezed out through a die to form an extrusion of any conceivable cross-section. Such as these ribbons being formed from uncured Sculpy. The very soft ribbons here will be transferred to a forming jig that will give these ribbons the 'U' shape needed. Notice the syringe device used to push the Sculpy through the die. Next to it you see just some of the dies that came with the device. I've made dies of my own: half-rounds for LOS ANGELES flushing tube fairings, periscope shrouds, hex-head bolts, T-section American submarine external safety tracks, just to mention some of the specialty shapes I create using the extrusion process. You can also use the extrusion process to form Milliput and the other thick epoxy system modeling mediums.

A closer look at the extrusion tool being used to give form to the 'ribbon' used as raw material from which I formed the exhaust pipe hold-down bracket masters for the KAIRYU model. A special forming jig was made of a piece of plywood, wire, and a length of aluminum tube (representing a section of exhaust pipe). Care has to be taken to insure that such tools are made of materials that can withstand up to a half hour in the oven at two-hundred-and-seventy-five degrees -- that's why I used wire to secure the tube in place, most adhesive would fail at that temperature.

To form a bracket I place a short strip of extruded Sculpy over the tube, and poke it with a small brush so that it conforms to the round of the tube, and make the right-angle transitions where the strip falls parallel with the surface of the jigs base. The work is then placed into a preheated toasting oven (you get these for a few bucks from a secondhand shop) for about fifteen minutes, after which the hardened pieces are lifted off the jig and worked with file and sandpaper.