Aslak David Schøyen — ROV pilot and inventor · Drøbak on the Oslofjord
ROV pilot in the North Sea. A lifelong fisherman. Measures, designs and makes parts that can no longer be bought.
I work offshore, flying an ROV in the North Sea. Inspection, maintenance and light construction work on the seabed. The work is done from a control room with a wall of screens, and a workshop through the door at the far end. You are never in the water. You watch it, twelve hours at a time.
I did not get into the trade through an application. I built a small underwater vehicle at home, from scratch, and demonstrated it in a swimming pool. That demonstration is what got me the job.
There is less flying in the job than people imagine. Most of a shift goes on maintenance. Washing the vehicle down after a dive, calibrating and swapping sensors, topping up hydraulic oil, replacing worn parts, fault-finding. With two pilots on one vehicle, one works the manipulators while the other keeps the umbilical clear of the structure. You learn to stay calm and run the checklist the same way every time.
Down there you get one clean approach. You are looking through a camera and you cannot feel anything, so whatever the arm has to grab must be built to be grabbed: the right handle shape, enough clearance to hit it, tolerances that hold. You also learn to read a fault back to a geometry. A part can pass its test and fail anyway, because of how it was built rather than how it was specified.
The fishing has been there the whole time. I live in Drøbak with the Oslofjord outside the window, and time off goes on the boat, the rod and the pots. That is where most of my problems come from: a holder that does not exist for that particular gunwale, a part that snapped in the frost, something sitting on the bottom because it did not float.
The printer came into the house to make one spare part. Now it runs most evenings I am home. Parts for myself first, then parts for people who asked, and after a while commissioned work for businesses: signage, trade-show pieces, technical parts. It is the same work either way. Measure, draw, print, try it, change it.
The goal is to live off what I make rather than going back out. That will take time. My own products do not go up until I have used them myself through a season — commissioned work for businesses is different, there it is your measurements and your use that decide. This site is where the work gets put out as it happens.
Before the ROV
The technical background is broader than the job title. Aslak David is a qualified electrician and has spent years taking apart, fault-finding, repairing and rebuilding mechanical and electrical equipment. The point is not to collect trades on this website. It is that a fault is rarely treated as a black box that must simply be replaced.
That way of working started at home. His father has the same broad practical curiosity and raised him in an environment where equipment was opened, understood and repaired. His brother is an IT specialist. They are a close family and a technical sounding board for one another, even though Schøyen itself remains deliberately focused on maritime problems.
Understand first. Replace only what actually needs replacing.
Nothing goes on sale before I have used it myself, through a season.
Public ideas are shared to get better input. Work with unresolved IP or confidentiality stays internal until publication is a deliberate decision.
Norwegian weather, Norwegian boats, Norwegian size limits. That's the starting point.
Boats, nets and pots — and most of the ideas start here.
The winter mountains serve up the same problems in new clothing: cold, ice and gear that fails.
A printer, a set of calipers and a spare evening. That's where ideas become parts.
Leave your email and you hear from me when a new case is documented and when the next period ashore opens for orders.