Hello and first sub

Thank you for adding me yo this group.

I am Alfredo Betancourt from Mexico, I have been a modeler for 50 years mainly building and flying R/C airplanes.

I have always being interested in R/C submarines but never got one, now I am able to get a good deal on two Robbe NIB kits, the Seawolf V2 and a U47.

I believe that the Seawolf could be a good first submarine, what do you think?

Even when I mostly fly with Jeti 2.4 Ghz radios, I still have 72, 75 and 40Mhz systems that I could use.

Any recommendations on how to start with submarines will be welcome.

Thank you

Welcome Alfredo!

You sound to be well set up - the 40 & 75 MHz radios will be particularly useful to you.

As far as the subs you have in mind goes probably the best thing is to try and find someone's build logs.

Do searches on the various sites e.g SubCommittee and this one and Facebook.

A quick search on this Forum shows 6 hits for "Seawolf" but you will have to go through them for relevance.

Sorry I don't have any personal experience on these particular subs.

My basic advice would be:

- Keep things simple (to begin with anyway.)
- Make sure that you can carry it (subs are as heavy as the same volume of water) and it goes in your car.
- Make sure that it is watertight (I test the hull for air tightness using an inflated party balloon and expect it to remain inflated for 20 minutes or so.)
- Sail it where you have a chance of recovering it. (Good water visibility, helpful Club Members, "wade-able" depth etc.)

You will have fun I'm sure (and no spectacular crashes just the odd sinking!)

David

Hi Alfredo,

i own a Seawolf, which i have heavily modified over the Years for static diving and depth control with an Arduino.

What i like about it:

the size is great , so it easily fits in any car and you can carry it with one hand if neccesarry.

What i didn't like:

the fit of the 2 halves of the bow pieces, it had a Gap of some milimeters in the front.

The same for the stern pieces.

And that was also the sme issue on the kit my friend bought.

Also to close the boat, you have to put in an Allan wrench into an opening in the bow and tighten the back part against the pressure hull.
This is a very poor method to make a boat watertight and if you overtighten it it breaks. which happend to me several times.



The U47 is more scale looking but 1.7m is quite long, so you need a bigger pond /pool for it.

EDIT: looked at a few pictures of the U47 and it uses the same mechanism for closing the sub.