The Challenge: To build a submarine that would dive, move forward, move backward, and surface.
Technical Approach: : I built a radio-controlled submarine which dived and surfaced by pumping water out of a ballast tank, was driven forward and backward by a DC motor, and could steer with a custom-machined aluminum rudder.
Selected Design Features: The submarine was built in a compartmental fashion, which was important in preventing the entire machine from flooding as the result of a single leak. Five separate compartments were used:
|The control box.||The pump box.|
|A pencil-box turned ballast-tank.||Up close and personal with the rudder.|