Thanks Jerry and Dan

...wondered about both alignment with drums and movement with the brace. I'm excited to start getting the below deck things going on Scorpion. One step closer to getting the deck on.


tim

Looking at available space (servos are actually closer than the first drawing), and considering the arc of the swing arm being inefficient and requiring a lot of "swing-space", I think a linear pull system will be better.
This goes back to one of Jerry's original design proposals with a simple spring.
Because Syren has eight separate braces (P&S x Main&Fore x Course&Top), a compact "trapped" system seemed a better option than free lines or swinging arms.
The posted design is simply 8 short pieces of rectangular brass tubes. Four are soldered together for each side (P&S) with a bracket to attach to the center servo (being slightly higher, its mounting screw heads are at about the right height for the brackets).
Dims and alignments have to be checked - drawing is still very rough.
This design uses the total L between servos for travel of the brace adjusting block, with the bungees (or springs) having a lot of room for their travel.
I prefer bungee to springs - easily adjustable L, small dismeter, tension range adjust by adding strands, bungee has higher stretch ratio.
The block bodies will be made from delrin stock for easy slide within the tubes. The tubes and blocks are rectangular to prevent twist and resultant tangling.
Small screw stops can be added to the ends of the tubes to prevent block escape.
More thought necessary, but given that this fits the existing setup with only the addition of the tubesets to the center servo and solves the problem of block travel space tradeoff with bungee/spring space, it's likely to be the way I'll start testing.

makes me wonder if it`s not better i.e. much less moveable parts to install a second winch and you reel winch to winch, adjusting endpoints & Travel to maintain line tension which would be easy enough with todaysmodern radios. i doubt that 2 extra winches would be much heavier than all teh extra hardware installed for tensioning.

hi meatbomber,
Two separate programmed winches is an approach.
I'm proposing solutions based on modifying what is already installed. If starting over, I would mount the servos to slide on a spring loaded base or use spring loaded servo drums.
If I could come up with a simple way I could build a spring loaded drum, that seems to be the most straightforward, compact way to go.
I can cut tube, solder, etc, so it's the old story - if you know how to use a hammer, that's the tool you use.....

Darn - now you have me thinking "spring-loaded winch drum..." (previously suggested in these threads by others)

What amazing part of the world are you in now?

just plain old plain old Dan tho going to fly into teh alps in a few mins for a Paradropping wekend in Zell am See where there is also one of the largest austrian glaciers and ski resorts.

i really need to make a mokup and test the 2 winch system, afterall i need to see how i do it on my large Snake when i finaly get teh courage to continue on that project

Plain old?
I don't know about Klatovy, but Praha was the most amazing place....we really enjoyed it.
Have fun in Switzerland - tough duty.....

Even with a two winch system, there will probably have to be some bungee or spring in the system as a shock absorber and to prevent overtension (the "servo-saver" function). Two strong servos, even slightly out of calibration with brace rigging, could break something.

Every time I set up for sailing, the braces and other rigging need to be tweaked and tuned - the complicated assembly has many variables... Sprung tension adjustment allows for some play in the setup.

beautifull,absolutely beautifull ship.if you ever get tired of it.... wish you luck,i will be following this build with great interest motts

In the last post on braces, I showed a drawing that had 8 tensioner tubes: P&S x main&fore x course&topsl. But I think that the tensioners need to be only on one side of each drum, either P or S, but not both. So the number of tubes goes to only 4 rather than 8. Much simpler. Each tube though now has to take up about 4" of slack. The tubes can easily be almost 3" long if placed aside the center servo (the spanker servo). An inch of pull takes up two inches of brace slack, so this should work. Details and actual dim's still TBD.
Some rough sizing based on available K&S brass tubing makes the tubes 1/4" square, big enough for small pulleys that can handle the diameter of the braces.
Hope to make a test install on one drum servo this week.

dan if you go fully braced up both braces go usually slack and squared both are going tight. but now you tension one side so won`t you end up with a tight brace on the tensioned side only ? i.e when the tensioner is sitting on the left sie only you`ll brace maximal to teh left but when you brace to teh right you will loose brace angle as the slack of teh right brace which is now teh weather brace will be taken up from the left brace line so you`ll have less yard swing to that side.

meatbomber...
Just getting back to all this.
I think I'll try rigging a simple spring on one side (per Jerry approach) and test functionality. May as well try the simplest mod first.
Likely no model work until early Dec.

OK, just pulled all my servos, electronics ,etc friom the hull. Will start from scratch with sliding servos for slack control. Attached is s very prelim drawing based on fairly close dimensions.
The headsail servo will be very low . The main and fore servo drums will ride above the headsail drum. The main and fore servo drums will be on separate planes to allow slide-by clearance.
The driver servo will be mounted to the rear, very low and on its side. The arm will be vertical and swing to the side of the other sail drums.
Hope this works. Help/comments welcome.

can you make a pic how that looks like now ? i`d like to see how much access you have with the completed boat basically to change or modify the layout inside!

other than your dore servo overlaps the driver servo (in your drawing at least ) which you of course only drew to show teh general layout... i think it`s also helpful in which direction your lines will be running from each servo for visualisation.

Nice compact layout of servos.
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Operationally, for steering anyway, I don't think you need to control both headsails and driver off separate servos. Since they oppose one another, you could put them both on 1 servo: when one is let out, the other is taken in. Of course, if you are using the headsail servo to cross the jibs when tacking, that's another story :-).

On my brig-rigged Aldebaran, I did not think the driver helped steering that much. That is, if I wanted to bear off, squaring in the mainmast yards did the trick better than loosening the driver sheet. And for bearing up, squaring in the foremast yards worked fine (jibsheets also automatically slackened when foreyards braced square). Only small adjustments of the yards are necessary, for steering purposes.

Since the driver and mainmast squares are on the same side of the CLR, you could just put them on the same servo, as I did for Pamir (4th mast jigger=your driver). When the after yards are square, the driver sheet should be slack, and when the after yards are braced sharp for a beat, the driver sheet should be taut. This was easy to arrange using servo arms, instead of a winch. But I think you could achieve the same with a multi-turn winch by using a small diameter drum for the driver sheet, and your usual large drums for the braces. But maybe not...since your winches are going to slide :-/

meatbomber,
Tomorrow I will rig a spring loaded dummy pulley to measure distances required for rotation and to control slack on each set of braces: forecourse and top and maincourse and top (the other yards just rotate with the ones below)
I corrected the drawing a bit and added lines to show braces as you suggested.
Will take pics as I test further.
Brooks, thanks as always for your sailing expertise. I just don't have that knowledge set yet. Need to sail more and observe more - I"m usually focusing on taking pics and firing carronades. I do know that I get really good tacking capability when I use the crossover headsails, so I'll keep those separately controlled. I have no clue on the driver. I've tried playing with it, but it just seems to do its own thing - usually too slack or too full. I need to figure out if it's my inability to control it properly (very probably) or if it needs to be re-rigged for more precise control or a non-linear control curve. My vision is not that great, so even from a chase boat I can't seem to judge sail position too accurately and end up simple trying to respond to the gross movement of the hull and how far it's listing over.
Feels good to be working on the hobby again. Thanks to Gary, Andrew, Tim and others on posting their SC&H builds to get me going again.

quick post -
actual measurements on model indicate that only 1.25" of drum travel is necessary to control main course brace slack. that really simplifies servo setup!!!
sketch attached. more later.....