High speed blue water hydrofoil

Success with the Ultrasonic sensor works fine with water and wasn't put off with splashing. Now I am waiting for a new gyro/gravity/magnetic heading sensor the one I had was for another computer model so I ordered one for the Pi Zero I am using, should get that tomorrow then I will hook up to the servos and test again.
I don't think I need a level sensor anyway, the gyro magnetometer is so sensitive, it will be able to detect the acceleration upwards and downwards which is what you should use rather than distance above water, I will just use the ultrasonic as a reference.

 

Meanwhile back in virtual reality I have been spending a lot of time checking the feasibility of constructing different structures. CAD is awesome for testing mechanics, you save so much time and avoid costly mistakes. If you can see something you can usually tell whether it will work just by looking at it, you get a feel for what will work with what materials but if you cant see it and just have measurements on paper then it's hard to tell. My main problem at the moment is the wing sail, if I make it like an aircraft wing then I can make the structure strong and rigid but if you want to make it so it can rotate then it's difficult to keep the structure strong and rigid, the boat in the background is using wings that can rotate and then in the foreground the same version without rotatable wings. I am going to make a few models and see which works best.

 

I am going to use hydraulics for the controls, would require too many electric motors otherwise and too much weight. I will use a single hydraulic pump and then use actuators, I found a suitable pump, so I am putting the link here for my own use lest I forget.

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Looking at the possible mechanics of controlling the foils. Thinking about some sort of screw jack system mainly because it's easy and cheap to make. 2 Motors at the top, geared with a screw thread to push and pull the rods up and down, the mission here is not to have the inside of the keel full of mechanics or it will be too large and weak. 2 holes running inside is easy to make the keel.

 

They had 400,000 people working on the Apollo program, you have one. The question is, was that 400,000 times more difficult, than this ? I reckon that is doubtful !

 

OK here is an old gate opener, over 30 years old, made in South Africa in the days of apartheid, they have used a windscreen motor and it has not been designed by an engineer, it is over engineered, massive cast aluminium base, big bronze bushings.....which is why it is still as good as the day it was made. I only got rid of it because I switched from swinging gates to sliding gates. It is about to be re-purposed for better things. A lot of stuff was made like this during apartheid and sanctions, they would take what they could get like windscreen motors and then use them to make other stuff.
I was going to use it for controlling the foils but I think I am going to go straight to hydraulic, I don't want to waste money on electric motors and then have to change to hydraulics at a later date. And hydraulics is so easy to make stuff move with, getting gears and levers and bearings etc for electromechanical movement was going to cost too much.

I am going to make a bridge out of scaffolding poles across my pool then attach my test foil at the end of the arm and rotate it around in large 3m circles. I am going to put a camera above the foil so I can take video of the foil and look for visual clues on performance, cavitation, drag etc. It is an infra-red video camera so I can also test my theory on the laser range finder by observing the existing infra-red laser I am using. As the computer will be doing the video I can check any readings from the sensor against the video at the time.

 

I wanted to enter the first private satellite in space competition but my wife threatened to leave me, I used to have a farm and I built my own supercritical reactor using a huge hydraulic press that the Toyota factory threw out, could pressurise to 1000 Bar, at very high pressures gases behave like gases and liquids at the same time, this is called supercritical, I once blew a lid on my reactor at 700Bar and luckily I had built in redundancy everywhere so the lid was contained but it blew a stream of water up to at least 1000ft I reckon. I don't have a TV I need to make my own entertainment. hahaha

 

Carry on !

 

Mission accomplished.

 

So did it get built?