Rudder box with gears

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

This photograph is of the new rudder box with a NEMA17 stepper (underneath) and the two gears. The smaller gear is on the stepper and the larger, quarter gear will be clamped to the rudder shaft. It's a 4:1 ratio and the rudder gear is 90 degrees so one complete turn of the stepper will bring the rudder from end to end. That's plus or minus 100 steps.

  • October 2, 2013
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The new rudder

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

Thanks go to Colman Corrigan for designing and building the keel and rudder. The keel follows the traditional NACA shape, with a rounded leading-edge, tapering off to a narrow trailing edge. It is approximately a 6318 shape, with the maximum width being about 36% of the length of the cross-section. Overall, the keel is coming in at about 750mm from hull to the end of the bulb, and about 240mm from front to back. That's a 3:1 aspect ratio.

  • October 3, 2013
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Hull water tests

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

Earlier this month, once the hull and keel were mostly finished, we took the boat down to Aughinish bay to see how she performed. I have some video footage of the hull in the water, which I will upload a little later on. To ruin the suspense, Beoga Beag didn't sink! In fact, she moved through the water quite nicely, but more about that later on.

  • October 26, 2013
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REDIS

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

After a lunchtime conversation with a friend of mine, I ditched some of the earlier design considerations around message-passing and MQ-based systems in favour of the NoSQL database Redis.

  • October 26, 2013
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The First Sea Trial

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

On September 1st, we launched the hull in Aughinish bay, without sails, rudder or electronics. The purpose was to see how the hull performed in open water, with the keel attached. As the keel wasn't properly attached or sealed in place, the main compartment flooded with water, but as the compartments are individually water-tight, this wasn't an issue. It did lower the boat in the water somewhat, but not to any significant degree.

  • October 27, 2013
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