Bright idea or not?

Ok
here ya go , all the big vendors are building them

http://www.voith.com/en/products-se...ne-thruster-voith-inline-propeller-11014.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim-driven_thruster

http://www.schottel.de/marine-propulsion/srt-rim-thruster/

http://www.rolls-royce.com/news/press_releases/2012/120920_tunnel_thruster.jsp

http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMV/2005nov00150.html

 

I am thinking about the fun boat builders and not rich millionaires just us poor blokes wanting a cheap push out fishing and the likes.

I tried the rim thruster but I called my playing around a Turbo Drive. Built for low income boating.

 

That would be an air cooled, hand cranked direct drive diesel then, everything after that gets complicated

 

I love the story of the turbinia. To witness a ship passing at over 30 knots at the turn of the century must have almost beyond comprehension.

 

Turbinia was a great proof of concept. Six years later, the first Dreadnought with steam turbines was launched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought

Back to thrusters. Thanks for those links powerabout. I think they are a little beyond the budget of most of us here, but they do demonstrate the ingenuity of manufacturers. How about these units from Volvo Penta?

http://www.volvopenta.com/volvopent...a_ips/Forward facing/Pages/forwardfacing.aspx

 

Zf also has a duo drive, the zeus

 

The Zeus pushes, the Volvo Penta Duoprop pulls, so it operates in undisturbed water. Still, either of them would be too rich for my blood.

Linked to GPS, these systems can automatically hold station & practically park the boat at the dock. Makes the owner look accomplished.

Good ol' Captain Ron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alNxLjCBJc

 

Yes the Volvo has the props out in the open so anything that comes by will hit them.
I have a buddy running a boat in here in Singapore with a pair, he dives on it after every trip and 90% chance he has a bent blade or 2.
Yes GPS hooked to independent drives will do that, can do on Merc outboards and Sterndrives as well
L3 ( DP manufacturer) in the USA did this project for them I believe.
That technology not far away from the hobbyist, you just need to create your thruster allocation logic so you get your joystick control then plug in the GPS

 

I had a beautiful old Penta outboard Model PA120 (Volvo) given to me and it was robustly engineered forward and reverse neutral on the tiller but had no water pump and relied on the water flow of the prop to push the water up to the motor and of course that did not happen going slow or in reverse so all the heavy steel cylinders got very hot.

As heat kills vacuum when I stopped the motor there was no way it could be started because it could not induct the fuel. The only way to get it started was to pour water over the motor to cool it or wait hours for it to cool down. They made many similar mistakes??? along the way very silly ones.