Commander 147

[Commander 147]

Mike

First I'll address your question about batteries.

As far as batteries go I have done a lot of reading on the subject and part of that research taught me that in a battery bank like you and I need, not only do the batteries all need to be the same model and age, but they should also be in the same physical location. The reason is that ambient temperature can cause batteries to charge at a different rate and get out of balance with each other. Which could possibly explain part of your issue. Destiny will be a coastal cruiser so I probably need more range from my batteries than you would being located on a lake. But also like you the added 500 LB lead pig is coming out of Destiny and I really like the idea of a similar amount of weight going back in, in the form of batteries. So my batteries will be these….


http://www.odysseysoutheast.com/pc1800-battery.php

Four of these batteries will fit very nicely on the cabin floor under the forward end of the cockpit. They can all fit in the same location with square aluminum tube under and between them for air circulation and heat dissipation. My charger has a thermocouple heat sensing unit that will go in by the batteries which will keep them from overheating. If the heat climbs to high the charger shuts down until the temperature drops back to a lower range and then it starts up again. Because these batteries have a very large inrush capability they can be charged faster than many other batteries. But in this heavy charging mode than can also develop more heat. So I may decide I need to add a temperature sensitive fan to the battery bank area to assist in the heat dissipation.


I also like that for the same dollars I can get close to twice the range with the Odyssey batteries that I could get with the Lithium Ion batteries. Those batteries are just too expensive for me.

The progress on Destiny came to a screeching halt for a while. Business got so bad that I was down to 30% of my normal income and it meant that all non essential expenses were eliminated. So I put all my effort into doing what I could to turn that around. Thankfully things are improving again so I am finally getting back to work on Destiny.

The construction of the support beam has proven to be more of a challenge than I first anticipated. I am actually on the second attempt and this one so far is going well. The first attempt went bad when I tried to use resorcinol for the glue in the mahogany lamination. I did not have enough open time with the glue to make it in one layup and so I was forced to do it in several steps. The resulting beam started to seperate when I applied the first 20 layers of carbon fiber. And this is too important to take a chance with so it was back to the drawing board.

For the second shot at the beam I used a tropical blend epoxy (very slow setting) to give me plenty of time to get glue on all surfaces and everything clamped up. The beam came out perfectly. Then I shaped it to fit the underside of the deck (no small challenge) allowing 5/16" accross the entire top for the carbon fiber that would come next. Then I layed up 20 layers of 9 oz unidirectional carbon fiber on the top of the beam. After it cured I ground the edges flush with a belt sander and to my delight when I test fit the beam I had a very good fit.

Tonight after work I plan to get everything set up and ready for the 20 layers of carbon fiber and two more layers of mahogany that will go on the bottom of the beam. Then tomorrow evening I can hopefully do the laminating.

Here are a couple of pictures of the beam in it's current status.