Whoop! I finally have a hull design. I found a STL model for the type of shark I wanted my design to mimic. The white you can see poking up behind the red shark is my hull design.
The elliptically shaped flats on the hull are for mounting fins. This approach will let me push out the problems of fin design until later. I’m hip deep in problems as it is. I also like that it will let me repair the fins, try out multiple fin designs, and remove them for transport. I’m going to shop off the tail as well, but I am debating how to add control surfaces, so I left it intact for now.
Here you see the outer surface of the hull. I am trying a cast acrylic hull design. The wall thickness will be just over an inch. So there is much less room inside the hull then it initially seems. Since things are going to be tight I modeled up the critical parts first so I could play with different layout designs and test fit.
The ballast system is driven off of a 24oz CO2 tank, which you can see got pushed out into the tail. Electronics will be housed inside a 4inch pressure chamber. The weird grey cylinder is a bilge pump being repurposed for propulsion and steering. I am still figuring out where to put another pump, ballast tanks, ballast weights, batteries, and some other goodies.
I have a lot more work to do on this – but I am happy how it is shaping up.