Darin, understand about questions, that's why I used the word ignorant. But believe me there are stupid questions. Never understood where that saying came from. In my years of teaching, I heard a lot of questions that showed the person wasn't listening to what was being said. Stupid is the inability to learn and some people can't learn cause they never listen.
But I know what you were getting at and I have no hesitation at letting people know when I don't understand or know something. I have been looking through those manuals you put up the link for and even though of course this little sub isn't the same as most, much of it still applies and they will be of great help in setting up some training for those who will be helping out on the boat. There are so many things I want to do, but have to go one step at a time. I do have confidence that there will be people around the Omaha area that will want to work with the boat. Before when a private company owned it, they used volunteers from Offat Air Force Base and a couple of other military installations around Omaha to man the park. None of them were subvets, so we will already be starting out with a better help situation.
I don't believe the Marlin has AC at this time. I have been an HVAC contractor for over thirty years, so will use some contacts I have to get that type of equipment when we are ready for that. On the Scorpion of course, our AC guy was a an aux. MM, but we didn't have a forward puke and after puke relationship on that boat. We all were one crew and all helped each other, so I spent plenty of time working on our 60 ton ACs and also running our Lithium Bromide Distillers.
In civilian life, I have worked on systems with cold decks and hot decks, built in humidifier and drier circuits that were 30-40 feet long, down to window units and lots of heat pumps and evaporative coolers, so don't imagine that we'll have much difficulty getting some type of AC going on the Marlin when we get to that time.
When I taught a HVAC course in the high school, I got equipment from the wholesalers that they donated, so will try the same thing on the Marlin if we need it. Right now, I am going to see about rigging some heat for it. It's only about 50' from the Missouri river, so a water to air Heat Pump might work cool. But as small as each of the compartments are, I imagine a 1500 Watt space heater will make it livable.
While the actual size of the boat is about 131', the space in which you walk around is probably not much over 70' and it is only about 13' wide at it's widest, so it won't take much to cool it or heat it anyway. It's like an old singlewide trailor. It is hard to imagine how small until you walk through it. They don't even have a conning tower. You go up to the deck through a ladder, then climb another ladder to get to the bridge. I think somewhere on these pages, Lance has several pictures of the Marlin. The use of fans certainly does do a lot. Where I live here in Iowa, some people still cool their houses with a fan that takes air in through the house and then blows it out through the attic, cooling down the attic and bringing fresh air through the house. I never had my air conditioning on in my house once last summer. If you run fresh air fans, you do want to shut off the AC though as it is designed to recirculate to work.
I am sure Paul and Rick will come up with some good advice as they have been through all that goes on with one of these boats. Another person who will be helping me is Bill "SOB" Parker who is on the board of the Maritime Association which runs the Pampanito. SOB and I belong to Cyberspace Base of USSVI and he is always great help in things I need to learn about subs.
Talk later,
Viejo
