system selection

The Sub atlantic vehicles are rubbish 👿
The Cougar is good though and powerful too 🙂

I’m a little bit biased (I work for Sub-Atlantic in the Electronics and Software Dept.) but I think the Sub-Atlantic vehicles are pretty decent. We’re up to Comanche 10 (in just over 18 months) and our Super Mohawks and Mohicans are selling pretty well too.

In the new year we’ll be introducing a new control system Sub-CAN which is based upon the very reliable CAN (Controller Area Network) Protocol used in a lot of high/mid end cars. It’s increased diagnostics capabilities, modularity, protection and inherent reliability should enable the operator to increase their up time significantly.

http://www.sub-atlantic.co.uk/userfiles/file/ROV_Comanche_12_Sept_2007.pdf

If you need any more info. please feel free to contact myself or the sales dept. here.

martin.wareham@sub-atlantic.co.uk

😀

Seaeye vehicles are more simplistic to work on 😀
Hydrolek hydraulics are by far better than Subatlantics.
Circuit boards should be kept seperate to oil resevoirs 😯

An ROV is an ROV, whether its held together w/tyraps and devcon or state of the art titanium bolts. Whether it’s TTL / CMOS or all done by one effin’ processor, whethter the electric motors (thrusters) are filled with Florinert or freakin’ diesel, whether they’re 63 shp or 138. Who gives a flyin’ FARQ what they are and what all these gaseous bloody threads and the daft carnts that have written them say!!!???

Lads, just get on with the job and shut thy cakeholes!!! And oh yeah just to be anal for a moment… Lot’s of you guys really do need a very large dictionary. There, that’s my blowout done and dusted for awhile…. 🙄

Go in heavy on spares and your supervisors will think you’re a hero, you’re accountant/bank manager will think you’re an idiot! Loose 3-4 shifts on down time a month for a year and figure which one you’d rather listen to!!! 😆 😆 Be prepared.

I don’t know what seaeye supply as part of their standard kit, but the following is a sort of ramble/rant as to what we had in 6 months with a panther (about 15 year old I think – so they last!). It’s late so I’ve chucked in other bits n bobs too.

Are you sitting comfortably????

Trying to get a replacement thruster is a pain in the arse at the moment out of seaeye – took me 12 weeks and then two came along at once! at the time they were really pushed for staff in their production line. for a while we ran with only 1 vert and/or 3 lats. fun fun fun 👿 Go for a spare SM4 too for your TMS – that one burnt out when we lost the tension in the TMS bailing arm.

also, go for enough components for a complete mainlift or soft tether reterm and feature a "bad scenario" of 1 of either every 12 weeks if you are doing high-currents work in winter north sea and using a 440 and less than ideal launching conditions and up/down like brides nighty!!

Make sure you have TMS junction box plugs (feed mainlift through it!)- very difficult to get a hold of at short notice – we split ours in situ and had to get one made – not ideal-DOWNTIME 👿 . Also quad rings for the pplus jb.

Low value consumeables that probably add up with time;

complete set of every type of connector, kellums, electrical tape, scotch kote/cast, big boxes of nuts, bolts, heat guns, heat shrink, video tapes, silicone oil, newton meters (need it for the TMS setup), power tools, multimeters, soldering irons, invertible air dusters, meggars, teng tools are nice, angle grinders, big friggin mallets for "maintenance via attrition" 😯 Go for quality and not B&Q. GAS AXE>!!! figure on loosing a clear-coms headset at least once a mobilisation cos some muppet will ALWAYS leave it in the rain! 😯 Grease guns for sheaves and working joints on the LARS, blue steel primer, finnegans wax oil for lubricating your mainlift umbilical, washing materials, brushes, PPE, – keep that lars clean! 😆
inspection costs associated with load testing your mainlifts, costs associated with mobilisation -weld inspection via the old magnetic particle inspectorate brigades……..

go for a good optical fibre splicing kit- 3M are quite good at hot-melts!
You shouldn’t loose a slip ring within 12 months-should be redundancy there anyway. ours is 15 years old and still no problems.

Go for two/three replacement thrusters bare minimum! I lost two in the last 6 months but they were really old, (but my back to back was also extra special and was pretty much using nails as protection fuses so little wonder!).

Go for a complete replacement pan-tilt unit (better to share around a couple of systems I guess!)- you can repair in field, but you’ll end up with diala EVERYWHERE – really long job and also a critical path component. Ours failed to tilt unit mode and we got away with that for over 5 months but your contract may specify pan too.

Sonars tend to be fairly robust- never lost one yet. Had one stolen though from the vehicle! Cameras – are you going for rear view?

Lots of tyraps, fuses, bulbs – considered using LEDs?, scotch cast, oil goes with the territory, you’d need a good barrel or four. anodes should last a while. computer for plugging in an ADAM, watching intellectually stimulating DVDs? 😯 replacement

Go for proper log books – handwritten and duplicate books and costs therein. Computer-based logs suck – go old school! Wireless adapter and wireless printer so that you can get internet in the shack (where permitted).

Whips and cabling should last 12 months at least – they’ll last longer for sure. The brass fittings on seaeye connectors are good, but with constant on/off, they get wrecked up good.

Lights- go for a couple of spare housings (seaeye standard spares package??) – if you’re having probs with having to dry em out, better to just replace than add the downtime.

Spare cards – carry enough to replace out the entire internals (think seaeye supply this as per norm!). The topside unit sometimes has problems with compass overlay.

I think that’s the major cost components- shed loads of tellus 32, diala, go for the pumping/vacuum kits and teach your chaps how to oil change the thrusters!

go for a complete replacement tether

Have you considered reading materials for your crew? 😯

It all adds up!

Critical path elements of the panther plus……….baron, lostboy – you’ve known the beast since I was a wain??

Have you considered regular staff – figure this’ll be your biggest cost? Good ones who don’t ramble are hard to find. 😉

Marley- good man. We had similar issues with micro/short-wave comms from a sister ship working with us (they insisted their radars were shut down!)- noise built up with heading and range!!! It was actually on a second system installed on the boat so I didn’t actually see it directly.

Are you sure it was noise generated in the slip ring rather than conducted along the 15-20m of umbilical? What gave the game away?