Steering

6/6/2016: So, I've been trying to figure out the steering for this model. I thought I had a plan; the tiller lines would run through blocks in the waterways into tubes in the lazerette hatch coaming and down below, then on to a servo mounted in aft end of the cabin as shown to the right, but that part of the plan wasn't going to work out. The problem is, for the servo to move tiller sufficiently, it needs an arm double the width of the tiller's length and there isn't enough room in this space for such a thing. I tried several ideas using a quadrant or drum and that just didn't get it.

The only place I have some space to place the rudder servo with a 10" wide arm on it is up forward of the battery, which I did, and routed the tiller lines up to it. The arrows point to the tiller lines in the photo. I'll probably put some sort of deck under the sheet controls so no loose sheets will get tangled up in the tiller lines.

6/9: I epoxied in a couple of blocks just forward of the battery to mount the rudder servo deck on, which is held by a couple of wood-screws. A quick jury-rigged arm to mount on the servo and now I can try to nail down this rudder control thing.

6/11: The cross-arm idea wasn't going to work, it just kept pulling one side further than the other no matter how I adjusted it, so, change tack and go with what I know works - the same set-up I used in Constellation. I made a new arm meant to run fore-n-aft and swing side to side over the battery - a tiller basically. There's a pair of cleats on it to attach the steering cables and allow for adjustment. The loose nylon line shown in the images is not what I'll be using permanently, instead I'll make up some smaller Dacron line on the rope-walk which will run through all these fairleads smoother than this stuff I'm testing with.

6/12: The rudder arm got some red paint so you can find it in the pictures now, and I threaded the hooks for the gaff haliard blocks on the doubling of each mast. They now have a nut holding them on with a touch of CA to keep them tight.

A little video of the new steering set-up operating.

6/16: I ordered some shaft collars and servo cable extensions a couple of days ago and they came in today, so I made a prop. A very simple thing; some sheet brass soldiered to a shaft collar, shaped, bent to pitch, and stuck on the shaft. It's not pretty, but hopefully it'll do the job. She's no motor boat, but if this will move her, it'll do. I guess I have to fill up the tub and give it a test.

6/20: Put the fitting pieces in the mast partners. The lean back a little too far and I need them at the right angle while I play with the sheeting system. A ledge was installed back aft to catch the end of the subdeck and make everything solid back here.

6/21: The sheeting system looks like it will work, but I'm having trouble with the sheet binding and getting stuck, so I had some quick and nasty blocks to smooth things out a bit. The nice block came to me from Victor Yancovitch, those I'll drill out and install working sheaves, like the one center front in the picture. These will get used where the steering cables are visible on deck.

I decided to put a hatch between the cabin trunk and the main mast where the actual boat had a hatch over her engine room. I began framing this "engine hatch," adding a beam for it's forward edge, and a pair of beams on the hatch itself. I'm thinking of widening the main hatch as well, it's going to be very hard to get at the fairleads for the sheets that are mounted on the hull up under the deck otherwise.

8/23: Hatch gratings. I started experimenting in making hatch gratings, which is detailed in Constellation's worklog. The first experiment worked ok, but serveral teeth broke off the strips that make the grating. A portion of the resulting grating was usable, so I glued it up, dipped it in some oak stain, and it'll be installed in Pride's lazerette hatch under the tiller.

11/15: Mark gave me a nice cigar box for me to put the HK transmitter's guts into, I started on that today.

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