During my 6-month internship I will be working on rebuilding a MacArtney Trixaxus. I am absolutly thrilled to have the oppertunity to help my ship regain an extremely useful piece of equipment, however I am also somewhat terrified as all of those boxes contain random parts, cables, and electronics that I don’t quite undersatnd at this point.
The above image was taken on the R/V Point Sur and stolen from Wikipedia.
As for what a Triaxus is….I’ll leave the description to the MacArtney website article:
“ Adding a new dimension to towed vehicles, the TRIAXUS is the natural step forward from the existing 2D towed vehicle technology to a true 3D towfish. The TRIAXUS uses state of the art computer technology and fibre optic telemetry for vehicle and sensor communication.
The TRIAXUS features flaps for vertical as well as lateral control. A powerful industrial PC controls the vehicle based on input from the onboard vehicle control sensors according to the preprogrammed flight path.
The TRIAXUS is developed for high-speed oceanographic data acquisition work, and is designed to undulate between 1 and 350 metres*. Lateral offsets of up to 80 metres to either side of the ship is possible, enabling the vertical profiling to be carried out in an undisturbed water column.
Towing speed* between 1 and 10 knots and vertical speed* of up to 1 metre per second are possible. The TRIAXUS has been designed using the latest carbon fibre moulding technologies and the Danish Maritime Institute (DMI) has supplied the hydrodynamic design. The embedded telemetry system is based on the successful NEXUS fibre optic multiplexer system, allowing interface of up to 9 additional sensor packages using the Plug and Play principle.”