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BAIRNELL DRYDOCKS - MIDDAY
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Shirley is currently working inside of the ship the two purchased (relatively cheap too, thanks to Robin's persuasiveness), and is busy installing some tech in a compartment that the two have attached to the interior of the ship's hull. She's wearing protective goggles as she fiddles with a bunch of intricate-looking wires.
Robin wanders about the ship in the general vicinity of there Shirley is working. He's mostly handing her tools as she works on the technical parts, busying himself with poring over the blueprints, and generally chalking out the plans to the interior in preparation of the next few steps. "Should we rethink the freshwater barrels? This hull is longer than we were going to start with, they should probably be up here in the middle."
Shirley calls out from within the hull, her voice having an odd resonant quality to it thanks to the enclosed space. "Yeah, we'll want to keep an eye on overall ship balance, and keep it as even as we can. The envelope keeping the helium contained should suffice, but it never hurts to keep things even like we're sailing on the sea."
Robin pokes his head around the corner into the little room. "What? I didn't catch any of that. Anyways, I think it'd be good for balance. Too much weight at the back or front and the winds not gonna play nice. Again."
Shirley looks over at Robin as he pokes his head into the compartment. She's currently dangling upside down on a rigging with a harness ensuring she doesn't get hurt from this weird position, and she's busy carefully connecting wires inside what looks like a junction box. "That's what I was saying, Robin. Keeping them either spread out, or else clustering them together in the middle of the ship will help with balance. The helium envelope will keep the ship steady, but only so far."
Robin nods, tilting his head a bit automatically as he looks at what Shirley's up to. He can only manage it for a few moments before his head feels light and he steps back from the doorway. "I think here and here, maybe?" He traces a couple circles on the floor boards, jotting 'WTR BAR' in them before moving on. "How's that all coming, by the way? We didn't forget to pull anything from the controls, right?"
Shirley nods. "Yeah, it's coming along just fine. Really, connecting everything is the easy part. The true test is when we power this thing up for the first time. It'll be the only way to know if we wind up with an overload in the power transfer system or not, or if any of the wiring is faulty."
Robin sighs, poking his head into the chamber again. "Whatever you just said, I just hope we didn't nick any of those wires pullin' them in. Would prefer we had the equipment to test them before hooking everything up." He steps back again, holding the blueprints up to glance between them and the ship.
Shirley shakes her head a little as she finishes connecting one of the wires and securing them in place. "They should be okay. We packed away everything well enough, I think. As long as we follow the blueprints properly, things should operate as we need them to." She pauses, then scowls a little at the jumble of wiring in front of her, "And with us being in a hurry, this ship bloody better operate as we need it to."
Robin nods, humming as he takes a few steps towards the back and eyeing up the turbine layout. He pauses, squinting between it and the blueprint for a second before calling out. "Hey Shirley? How fast were we going to try to get home?"
Shirley calls back. "How fast? What do you mean? Like... timeline-wise, or actual travel speed?"
Robin hums. "Both? I mean it's all relative, but we ain't going anywhere with a seven and two fours. Least, not anywhere fast."
Shirley finishes attaching another wire before she boosts herself out of the compartment along the rigging system, though it does leave her dangling in the air in the doorway as she looks at Robin. "Well, that's all we had on hand at the moment. Do you think the engine's main driveshaft is able to handle the torque for larger ones?"
Robin picks up a pipe wrench from the tool kit, gripping it onto the drive shaft and putting his weight down on the handle. As he puts his weight on the driveshaft, the gears in the turbine shift, though it only moves a bit before the prop bumps gently against the floor with a dull thud from outside. "Well no. The ratio kinda sucks. But the driveshaft is a solid chunk of flag pole, it should be fine. These gears though... We're gonna sheer teeth in a bad headwind."
Shirley hums thoughtfully. "What do you think we should do, then? If we change the gear sizing on the fours, that might make the ship unable to operate at full speed if need be." She shrugs a bit, "The only things I can think of are changing the fours to threes, or else getting a slipper clutch to mitigate the force."
Robin hums. "The only threes they had here are clockwork. We don't have any actuators left after setting up the rudders, right?"
Shirley sighs a bit and shakes her head. "Unfortunately, no. We can't very well use clockwork gears, either, since those are made out of... copper or brass, I think? We were working with steel up in Vamas. The only other thing I can think of is just... keeping the ship below max speed until we can swap out parts properly."
Robin sighs as well, turning the wrench the other way until the prop blade stops turning again. "With this setup, a speed that's safe in a headwind isn't even gonna be enough to keep us moving forward. Speed's not even what I'm worried about, really. If we get caught off guard, we're not gonna be able to move at all. a clutch would be fine, but one of us would have to be below deck all the time."
Shirley groans a bit. "Not the best solution, but it's something, I guess. We don't have much to work with, but we can't really send out for parts, either, if we want to get this operational before that other airship gets back in the air..."
Robin grunts, using the wrench to idly lever the driveshaft away from the other gear as he thinks. "If we could just... Push this down." He tilts his head a bit. "How many knots of wind do ya think the weakest gear can take?"
Shirley tilts her head. "If we're flying into a headwind, or just in general?"
Robin lets the transmission back into place, it's own balance keeping it firmly against the drive gear. "The maximum before it goes all smoothlike."
Shirley shrugs. "Depends on the material. Steel gears are the strongest, of course, and it takes some particularly intense conditions to shear the teeth on those. Copper is a lot weaker, which is why clockwork gearing is... not good for this. The gears we have now... hm..."
Robin gets a bit of a faraway look as he stares at the rig for a bit, turning to the wall with the chalk in hand. "Cause if we know that, we could like... Take a sandbag and rope... And some pulleys. Ships have lots of pulleys, we can find some somewhere. And set it up like this and this... And a ring here around the transmission. And a small sail on the deck... And the weight keeps the sail in place, right? Until we get at least that much headwind. When the sail moves, it pulls the driveshaft down. The weight resets it all when the wind cuts... And we can easily lock the thing in place if we wanna risk it for a bit..." He pauses, staring at the drawing. "Mh... No that's stupid."
Shirley watches in bemusement as Robin starts to draw up some plans for a system to automatically engage and disengage the driveshaft if winds prove too strong. "...That might work, if you intend it as a stopgap instead of a permanent installation. It'll serve our needs until we get more durable parts from Vamas." She blinks, then smiles as the genius of the idea starts to sink in, "Talk about inspired, Robin! All of the required bits are easily available in any port, and it'd just take a little extra engineering to get it all set up."
Robin blinks, looking from Shirley to the doodled up plan. "Well yeah, I can see like... Three easy failure points as a permanent thing. You really think it's okay, though? You know there's a reason I don't have ideas. They're usually pretty flawed."
Shirley nods. "I can see the failure points clear as day, but if it intends to be a stopgap measure until we get proper parts installed to compensate for headwinds, then I can't see it being an issue if we keep the mechanisms in good shape."
Robin grins, feeling rather proud of his minor spark of inventiveness. "I'll go to the harbor and steal some pulleys then! See you in a little bit, Shirley~" He starts trotting off toward the exit hatch, humming away.
Shirley smiles and nods, then blinks her eyes open when she registers what Robin just said. "You're going to-- wait, what? You're going to... what?!" She starts to scramble to get herself unhooked from her harness, but the lack of a brace makes it far, far harder than it needs to be.
Robin winks at her as he scrambles up the ladder. "Don't worry, I'll save us the gold! You just hang out until I get back~!" He disappears up the hatch, the pattering of his feet quickly leaving the deck down the other ladder.
Shirley: "Bloody, stupid-- ugh! Let go of me you blasted harness-- aahh!!" She lets out a startled yelp as the harness pops open and unceremoniously dumps her onto the floor of the ship's hold after a minute of wrestling with it. By the time she gets onto the deck of the ship to try and stop Robin, the chipmunk is long gone. She groans to herself, then goes back below deck to continue her work, muttering to herself about how Robin better not get caught by the guards...