Engel U177

Here's some info and pictures of about U177. I'm into trimming and making it rusty now so it's almost there. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures processed yet of it in it's current state, soon.....

I won't bore you with pictures of the build because although the Typhoon is a different shape on the outside, and bigger, they are essentially the same
construction on the inside. U177 however has a huge amount of work on the outside.

Laying out the inside was a challenge, there not much room. The ballast tanks are quite big and occupy a lot of space. Picture U177-inside1 shows the start of the inside and it's already getting busy in there. Not unlike the typhoon there are loads of wires. What I found I had to do was to build the inside up in layers and also have the ability to remove it all in layers. This was essential because of the need to get things like the motors and  dive tanks out for servicing. Using the PVC plates provided, the base plate is screwed to beams located at each end of the main ballast, which also stops it moving. Then screwed to the base plate are brackets, also made from the PVC, which support the next layer up. Inside2 picture shows every thing apart from the battery installed, the big space is where it goes. The dive control and speed controllers are mounted on carbon fibre plates I made. These plates are screwed to the supports and everything is either screwed to the plate or Velcro holds it on. When everything is in it's tight. Under the dive control module are the receiver and the switch gizmo for the sounds. The white object behind the main hatch is the speaker for the sound module. Although there are 16 sound on the module I only wired up sonar and dive claxon. It was getting tight for space and I couldn't think of a reason for some of them. I'm using a Robbe F14 Navy radio system. It took me a long time to figure out the inside, I'm sure there are better ways, but that is what I came up with.