"Roger Long" wrote in
:

"Jere Lull" wrote

I'm SO glad I don't have to pay those fuel bills.

I see by the address in your signature file that you will be. Don't
worry though. It's not as bad as it looks. Full speed operation is
limited to 10% of operation by engine rating and the boat will spend
most of it's cruising time burning about half of that. Most of it's
overall time will be spent on scientific station burning just 5 - 10
GPH.

BTW, it's also one of the smallest vessels in the world to have
dynamic positioning. Give it a command and it will stay within a
couple meters of a spot over the bottom and maintain heading.
Yesterday, I watched it back slowly up to a buoy to the position where
it could be attached to the A-frame in a 25 knot wind. This was under
completely automatic control while we just stood and watched. It then
stopped at the right point and just sat there. The autopilot is part
of the DPS system which is connected to the LAN and the satellite
Internet so, with the several video cameras on board, you could
literally sit at your computer on land and drive it around with no one
aboard.

Very cool.

--
Roger Long





Back in the 1980's I worked for Tracor, Inc., Applied Sciences,
Electronic Systems Division....one of the Beltway Bandits that actually
functioned well. They sent me over to install an extensive
fire/flooding/intrusion alarm system aboard Tracor Marine's SEACON sea
construction barge, that was at that time being fitted to build an
extensive chainfall anchorage inside the volcano cone that is Diego
Garcia Golf Course and Luxury Resort in the Indian Ocean. SEACON had
the wierdest propulsion system. There were two units in the stern and
one in the bow. I thought they were like Z-drives but they weren't. I
never saw what was underwater they used for steering.

The hydraulics were controlled by a PDP-8E minicomputer programmed from
a paper tape reader and tape drive. A joystick interfaced the computer
with the humans and the computer signals controlled the hydraulics on
the drives. It would do about 8 knots in ANY direction, even sideways.
As I was quite involved with the project by the time this monster alarm
system, which even included a VHF paging system to alert crew via pagers
from a 150 watt paging transmitter on the ship, I got to go out on sea
trials with her after the retrofit.

Pushing the joystick to starboard resulted in us pulling sideways away
from the dock out into the river. As we were pointed the wrong way, the
mate ROTATED the joystick clockwise, causing SEACON to rotate on its
central vertical axis until he released it. Then, the computer simply
stopped SEACON pointing in the direction, after a little overshoot
because he was too quick, the mate released the joystick. Simply
pushing the joystick forward resulted in our moving in the general
direction the bow was pointed in down the river, to the astonishment of
some fishing boats who saw hit and stood in awe scratching their heads.
As they watched, the mate moved the joystick a bit to starboard causing
the boat to not turn, but to SLIDE at an angle as it was going forward
towards the starboard shore. It was uncanny the way you could make it
go in any direction.

Once over the work area, sonar pingers were released to the bottom
(disposable). A small sonar array fed the position of the pingers to
the PDP-8 and it drove the 3 crazy diesel drives to compensate for any
drift, holding SEACON in position, perfectly, over that pinger in up to
6.5 knots of current, no matter which direction that current tried to
drag her or turn her. She moved up and down in the waves, of course,
but maintained her position and didn't rotate a bit.

You could also drive it like a proper boat with a wheel and all but that
was simply a computer-generated illusion as it had no rudder or screws
to kill the divers that I ever saw. They towed it with a big seagoing
tug from Norfolk VA to Diego Garcia Resort and Insane Asylum.

SEACON was quite an underwater work platform. There was a pretty huge
crane running on a captive railroad track on port and starboard rails
hovering over the whole boat. An electric drive turned gears that moved
the crane fore and aft from the stacks to the stern and the crane could
reach out quite far aft and to either side overboard, pick something up
really heavy and set it right on the big flat deck astern of the
"Garage", the only way I can describe its workshop. There was a huge
trunk open to the sea under the centrally located "garage" whos decking
was like a draw bridge and whos "roof" opened up so the crane could
lower/raise things from the sea bottom right up through the center of
gravity of the boat. Closed, with the rollup doors down, you had a
quite large giant workshop to build things with, ocmpletely out of the
weather.

I tried to find a picture, but even Google couldn't find her, now that
Tracor Marine is but a memory.

Well, wherever she is, she has a helluva alarm system. It took 5 of us
3 months to install it. There were thermal intrusion alarm heads almost
everywhere to the central alarm center hidden away in a storage
compartment. I got 18 miles range out of the POCSAG paging system from
a 6db antenna on top of her mast....(c; I could even listen to
intruders (crew) talking from that far away with the various
microphones.

I've always regretted my refusal of her captain's offer to ride her to
Diego Garcia on her crew. My boss in electronic engineering had other
ideas....(c;

Damn.....