The Helm, Bridge, Wheel

 

 

There seems to be a few different configurations of the controls at the helm and pictures are very scarce so I may change this layout as I feel it may be in the PT103 class rather than the later 80 footers but I have drawn it from much research and it is accurate and of use to those building a PT103 or PT109 class Elco.

The cockpit

The vertical line at the bottom of the picture is the centreline of the boat

 

 

A more detailed view of the instrument section

The instruments on the top "shelf" or "dashboard" would appear to be, and I would love to be corrected, (from left) a clock, the torpedo aiming "box" and a bracket for the rocket aiming "box". To the left of the control panel are the three throttles, one for each engine. The square thing with a dial to the right of the control panel is, I believe, the binnacle and/or compass, later boats seemed to have a more traditional type of binnacle mounted just in front of the wheel, I can imagine that a small dashboard mounted compass could be fairly crap! To the right of that I believe is the torpedo firing controls but I have never seen a photo of those in detail.

 

The Control Panel

I read the wording with a magnifying glass from a pretty good photo, I am pretty sure of the text but there could be an interpretation error here particularly on the tacho's - I know they say RPM but not entirely sure about the REVS X 100 as it's just too small and blurry....

Note: The control panel surface sits back at about 45 degrees on the boat and in the views above this one, so if you use the 14" known height of the actual control panel as a reference measure it will only be about 9.9" (or 0.707 x 14").

 

The Wheel

These are my determined dimensions - there is no basis for this being accurate other than from photo's of the cockpit and comparisons between the wheel and the control panel whose dimensions we do know.  This makes the wheel 23" from handle tip to handle tip and 16" or so diameter at the outside of the main wheel and the handles would be about 3 1/2" long. 

How was it connected to the rudders? What happens inside the vertical metal section, is it connected by gears, belts - anybody know?

 

Redrawn Elco Logo.

This took me ages, with a magnifying glass off a photo of the control panel and if you don't agree with it - draw your own!