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| Typical high entropy working environment in the author's living room. |
| The ZeeWolf is a submarine I've designed myself. Because this is my first radio controlled model, I wanted lots of space inside the hull to experiment with equipment. Most military submarines have a length over diameter ratio of about 10, for this boat the ratio is about 5. This means the boat is going to be fat. Using a flooded aft and bow section, this leaves me with a 60 cm long and 20 cm diameter dry section which is about 19 liters. This should provide me with sufficient space. |
| Class | ZeeWolf |
| Build | 2001 |
| Length | 1.05 m |
| Width | 0.21 m |
| Weight | X kg |
| Transmitter | Robbe/Futaba FC-14 |
| Balast system | Gas operated |
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| Typical high entropy working environment in the author's living room. |
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| The balsa wood (1 cm) bulkheads fitted on a carbon rod and additional wooden strips were used for alignment. |
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| Applying the balsa wood (1 mm) skin. These thin balsa wood layers easily follow the curvature of the hull. |
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| The bow of the boat. |
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| Most of the balsa skin layer in place. |
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| The balsa model was covered with glass fiber mats and epoxy resin. Epoxy has the advantage over polyester that the curing time can more accurately be adjusted. Moreover, sanding polyester can really irritate your nose, lungs and eyes, epoxy is much more friendly. |
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| The first layer of glass fiber / epoxy applied. In total three layers of glass fiber were used. |
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| After sanding the epoxy layer, the hull was covered with plaster, sanded, covered with plaster, sanded, covered with plaster, sanded, etc. etc. Finally, a smooth hull should be obtained. |
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| After sanding the plaster layers, the hull was covered with epoxy coating containing yellow pigment. No glass fiber was used. |
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| The model cut open, now this was an exiting step! |
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| Construction of the aft X-planes. The plane consist of a sandwich of two 1.5 mm balsa panels and a 4 mm triplex part reinforced with glass fiber and epoxy. The control rod is 4 mm solid brass fitted into a 4 x 6 mm brass cylinder. The cylinder and the three panels are glued together using epoxy. |
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| The sandwiched X-planes were sanded into an aerodynamic shape and covered with glass fiber epoxy. Afterwards the planes were cut into two pieces. Notice that the brass cylinder extends throughout both parts. The brass 4 mm rod is glued into the cylinder of the upper part of the X-plane. |
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| The bottom parts of the X-planes attached to the hull. |
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| The model with bow and aft planes installed. |
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| Beautiful home-made brass blow valves. However, I've decided not to use them.... |
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