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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 12, 2020 21:44:39 GMT -8
Hi, I recently purchased this vintage two man sub. I believe it is a home built starting with an aluminum aircraft drop tank with two modified trolling motors. FIberglas seats. I suspect it was built late 60's/early 70's but don't really know. Was told it was built somewhere between Fremont and Hollister CA but I don't really know. At some point it was donated to an air museum in Hollister by the son of the man who built it (it was made from an airplane drop tank). The Museum decided it was not aircraft and sold it a year or two ago before I recently purchased it. Hoping someone may recall seeing it or a newspaper article about it. Any information would be welcome. Sent a note to S&K Divers in Marina del Rey but got no reply. Comparing to online photos I believe the tank is originally from a Korean War era F86 drop tank.These planes were Introduced in 1949 and retired from USAF in 1965. (These planes retired from Bolivian Air Force in 1994). From the 1961 catalog the Healthways sub was $2,500 with canopy and $1,500 for their base version. Don't know how many they sold at that price. The only one I know of is the Ivan Torr used in Flipper which is on display in Las Vegas. s214.photobucket.com/user/eskimo3883/media/submarine/SampK%20Sub.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0 |
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Post by nikeajax on Aug 13, 2020 7:44:26 GMT -8
Those things are dangerous, you'd better send it to me for proper disposal!   As for the "drop tanks" coming from a Saber Jet, maybe, but they could just as easily come from any other military aircraft of the time. These tanks came in various sizes too. For those of you who don't know what a drop tank is, it was a disposable fuel tank to extend the rang of a fighter plane and would be jettisoned moments befor going into combat. Judging by the size they look like high-capacity too because if you look at this Saber:  there is a size discrepancy. Very cool machine you have there!!!!! JB |
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Post by SeaRat on Aug 13, 2020 16:46:55 GMT -8
Hi, I recently purchased this vintage two man sub. I believe it is a home built starting with an aluminum aircraft drop tank with two modified trolling motors. FIberglas seats. I suspect it was built late 60's/early 70's but don't really know. Was told it was built somewhere between Fremont and Hollister CA but I don't really know. At some point it was donated to an air museum in Hollister by the son of the man who built it (it was made from an airplane drop tank). The Museum decided it was not aircraft and sold it a year or two ago before I recently purchased it. Hoping someone may recall seeing it or a newspaper article about it. Any information would be welcome. Sent a note to S&K Divers in Marina del Rey but got no reply. Comparing to online photos I believe the tank is originally from a Korean War era F86 drop tank.These planes were Introduced in 1949 and retired from USAF in 1965. (These planes retired from Bolivian Air Force in 1994). From the 1961 catalog the Healthways sub was $2,500 with canopy and $1,500 for their base version. Don't know how many they sold at that price. The only one I know of is the Ivan Torr used in Flipper which is on display in Las Vegas. s214.photobucket.com/user/eskimo3883/media/submarine/SampK%20Sub.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0Drop tanks come in a variety of sizes. The ones on our HH-53C Super Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopters looked like this in 1971:  37th ARRSq Jolly Return-Al on hose copy by John Ratliff, on Flickr This is a Super Jolly with rescued fighter pilots on board. Their aircraft had been shot down over Laos. They are getting ready to receive the "saves" with a fire hose dousing, champaign and celebrations. Note the mechanic with his finger in a bullet hole in that drop tank, stopping the fuel leak onto the tarmac. You may well be correct about the F-86, as the time line is about the same. I saw F-86 aircraft in use in Korea by the South Korean Air Force in 1969. I actually have to recoveries of dead pilots from the Yellow Sea during that year. They had a malfunctioning altimeter, and came down through a cloud cover thinking they were about 10,000 feet over the water. In actuality, they were only several hundred feet over a glassy smooth sea. Without visual reference, they flew the F-86 into the water, and were ejected through the canopy. I found them surrounded by their parachutes in the water. They apparently had either ejected very low, or been thrown through their canopy upon impact. Both died upon impact. I also witnessed an amazing recovery. A pilot radioed the Korean air controller that he had an emergency, and it translated to a broken canopy when we got the alert (we were Local Base Rescue, flying HH-43 Huskie helicopters), and got airborne to watch the landing. What we watched was an extremely smooth landing, and upon taxiing we flew over the F-86. Over the intercom, I heard the flight engineer state, "He has no canopy at all!" Sure enough, I watched as he taxied and shutdown. My Korean friends later explained what had happened. He was high, and his winscreen/canopy disintegrated. Luckily, he already had his oxygen mask on, and hus visor down. It frosted over immediately (it's very cold in Korea in February, and he was at about 20,000 feet). He put it in a dive straight down, and asked the Korean controllers to tell him when he hit a certain altitude (probably below 10,000 feet). He was flying completely blind. With their instructions, he guided that F-86 in for a greased landing! We could not believe that he did that blind. But they had been flying the F-85 since they received them just after the Korean War, and had thousands of hours in the aircraft. It was quite a day. John |
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Post by SeaRat on Aug 16, 2020 14:59:18 GMT -8
I'm going to open this discussion up a bit, as there are more than one varieties of subs. Here's an article in Popular Science (July 1991) on Man-Powered Subs.  Man-Powered Subs-1 by John Ratliff, on Flickr They show several different models of subs in a diagram in the article.  Man-Powered Subs002 by John Ratliff, on Flickr Any idea of what happened to these subs? John |
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Post by nikeajax on Aug 16, 2020 15:32:18 GMT -8
John, I posted this before but... Which was used in:  I do love me a minisub! JB |
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Post by SeaRat on Aug 16, 2020 17:27:01 GMT -8
JB,
That video looks, from the dive gear, to be from the 1950s. Thank you! I love human powered locomotion.
John
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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 20, 2020 13:34:52 GMT -8
Hi John, I had seen shorter vids on the aerojet sub but had not seen this longer version. Appreciate you loading it up. It is amazingly nimble and when you compare it to the new human powered subs it still holds its own. My sub has the same set up for the front dive planes (right/left planes are reversed) and a large flap on the rear for up-down. If my sub can be put on edge with the front planes the rear flap would also help turn right/left. Plan is to change the original buoyancy (inner tubes) to something than can remain neutral at any depth. I will end up with something floats on the a horizontal but I am not clear what this will do in terms of the ease of roll.
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Post by nikeajax on Aug 20, 2020 14:16:37 GMT -8
Man, am I envious  Have you seen the film, "The Mermaids of Tiburon?"   You want to see the original, it was reedited as a softcore/nudie-cutie which was pretty lame. Dianne Webber is certainly nice to look at. Part of it was filmed in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, which is in the Sea of Cortez  JB EDIT: That's a Healthways sub BTW! |
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Post by SeaRat on Aug 20, 2020 14:26:54 GMT -8
Hi John, I had seen shorter vids on the aerojet sub but had not seen this longer version. Appreciate you loading it up. It is amazingly nimble and when you compare it to the new human powered subs it still holds its own. My sub has the same set up for the front dive planes (right/left planes are reversed) and a large flap on the rear for up-down. If my sub can be put on edge with the front planes the rear flap would also help turn right/left. Plan is to change the original buoyancy (inner tubes) to something than can remain neutral at any depth. I will end up with something floats on the a horizontal but I am not clear what this will do in terms of the ease of roll. You will need to put together some sort of ballast tank(s) for your sub, like those of submarines of old or like the Dacor Nautilus CVS (constant volume system) buoyancy compensator. This system included a water entry valve, a Overpressure relief valve/vent, and a regulator second stage to ensure that the air pressures remain at the surrounding water pressure, and, of course, a scuba tank. John |
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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 20, 2020 17:06:00 GMT -8
The sub came with buoyancy based on inner tubes which I am not comfortable with even if their rubber wasn't rotten. It has a rack in the front to hold double steel tanks for on board breathing air with Stainless steel lines to move air to the rear seat. As of now that steel line joins the tank rack with very old 3000 psi rated hose compressor hose. I think it's safer to put a reg on the tanks in the rack and have a low pressure air line running to the rear seat. Thinking a small side-mounted or leg mounted pony tank on my person would give me a little time to arrange a controlled ditching of the sub. An old oxygen tank served as an onboard ballast air tank running to several inner tubes for trimming with valves to fill them and to drain them. These tubes complement the fore and aft inner tubes which were inflated on land before the dive. Not a friendly situation when you change depth, so I have doubts this sub spent much time in use. I am changing the original trolling motors over to two Apollo AV-1s. I have a pair of 65 lb BCD wings that will bolt below each seat. These can handle flooded DPVs (which are neutral in water but around -55 lbs each if they flood). Also, by positioning the wings low I am hoping they will elevate the sub a bit at the surface for more efficient surface running.
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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 20, 2020 17:07:05 GMT -8
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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 22, 2020 10:31:14 GMT -8
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Post by eskimo3883 on Aug 22, 2020 10:32:07 GMT -8
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Post by nikeajax on Aug 22, 2020 11:23:05 GMT -8
I do like Sea Hunt, but this is the show I really like:  This is as close as I will ever get to owning a mini-sub:   JB |
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Post by nikeajax on Aug 22, 2020 12:39:44 GMT -8
The sub came with buoyancy based on inner tubes which I am not comfortable with even if their rubber wasn't rotten... This reminded me of: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbeater's_skin "Goldbeater's skin is the processed outer membrane of the intestine of an animal, typically an ox, valued for its strength against tearing... Large quantities of goldbeater's skin were used to make the gas bags of early balloons created by the Royal Engineers at Chatham, Kent starting in 1881–82 culminating in 1883 with "The Heron", of 10,000 cu ft capacity. The method of preparing and making gas-tight joins in the skins was known only to a family from Alsatia called Weinling who were employed by the RE for many years. The British had a monopoly on the technique until around 1912 when the Germans adopted the material for the internal gas bags of the "Zeppelin" rigid airships, exhausting the available supply: about 200,000 sheets were used for a typical World War I Zeppelin, while the USS Shenandoah needed 750,000 sheets. The sheets were joined together and folded into impermeable layers."Just a bit of fun trivia is all because I'm trapped inside my house-- SIGH!  JB |
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