Work commitments have kept me away from the Ark, but I'm determined to get it on the water properly before the end of the summer.
With a few minutes to spare, I thought I'd dig through the stash of model boat bits and see what I needed to replace after the dunking. Out came a receiver and servo, but first, I fired up the boat.
And it worked!
OK, the Radiolink R8EF receiver doesn't look pretty, but it only works!
The servo seems happy too. So all the bist go back in the stash.
When I tried all this a few weeks ago, the servo chattered but didn't operate properly. Now all is well. I can only assume that in the interim, the electronics have fully dried out. So by waiting, I didn't bin perfectly good (if ugly) components.
Let's guess:
ReplyDeleteTomorrow's exciting installment sees you melting some wax over the ends of the sleeving covering those electronics.
Well, it's either that or doing a more thorough job of the waterproofing - by removing the sleeving - giving everything a going over with solvent based contact cleaner - applying varnish anywhere that looks remotely like exposed wiring or solder pads - adding new heat shrink - and then adding the wax.
That's right - in a previous job, I often had to fit and wire strain gauges, many of which would then be embedded in concrete. Some damage / losses would still be inevitable - but I went out of my way to minimise them.
By the way, how did you get on with sealing the hull?
Were you able to find a solvent that properly glued any gaps in the hull - or was it a case of adding loads of filler?
Whatever the score, I hope it all works soon.
If it were me I would ballast this up & run it in the test tank (sink) for a minimum 30 minutes without the top to see what happened whilst keeping a close watch.
ReplyDeleteIf your previous video is typical of how you sailed it the hull / deck join must be a lot lower than I would have guessed or no water would have got high enough up the hull sides to get inside.
My initial guess would have been the sealing around one of the holes you made in the bottom or water up the propshaft but then I am sure that you have checked for all that.
Good luck.
Let's just say, next weeks update looks a lot like this...
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