Thinking about Boats
 

Any one defected to water? Catamarans or Vee Hulls. Lipo?/brushless Gas engines.
Seems like a fun project. Thinking about building on 1/4 scale .

Mark,

there is a [very active] fast electric rc boat club in your area called the "Devil Mountain Water Boilers"

for information on club activities contact Dan Chase at:

Danimation@aol.com

click the link below for video clips of some go-fast electric boats in [1/16th mile] time trials action...

Regards,

Ron

Boats look really cool. I mean brushless and li-po power, direct drive to the prop. So I could get around 55000 with a Mamba setup, I'm thinking it would be a fast boat. Just have to worry about the water.

the boats in those video clips were all NiMH powered...

with the exception of one mono clip with [6s-2p] a123 M-1 cells...

Ron

I've been looking into boats myself. I have a buddy of mine that is into boats, and I've been helping him out with his setup.

What really surprised me about the boats is how cool the cheapie Feigaos run iwth the water cooling. We've been playing around with a boat that's about two feet long and put an 8XL into it and getting over 40mph was pretty easy.

We are now starting to experiment with all of the motors that I have and different battery configurations. All in all, it's fun.

From what I've seen, the big advantage to the cat hulls is that they handle the turns better.

For me It more like I've defected from Boats to Planes and Cars, not that I don't still enjoy boats, for me Fast Electric Boats are the best form of RC but I have a road just outside my door for cars and the flying field is closer than the nearest legal Lake so my car gets the most use.

Try a fast boat I'm sure you will love it, there's something about having a course what changes conditions constantly that make running boats more exciting.

I love Cats and would take one over a V any day, I would have to disagree with AAngels generalisation that cats turn better tho, While a wide cat with a fair bit of deadrise will turn a lot better than a deepV mono, a long narrow (scale offshore type) cat with a flat bottom has very little advantage if any in the turns to a meduimV mono with a pair of turn fins, and a submerged drive shallowV mono will turn MUCH better than anything else on the water.

A Cats advantage is that the deck or tunnel between the sponsons provides lift which means your boat weighs less at speed so the wetted area decreases and if set up right it will go faster, In Europe we run Cats in with the Hydros and the speeds are similar to the scale Hydros but not as fast as the best riggers. It may interest you to know that the full size prop driven water speed record is no longer held by an Unlimited Hydro but by a Turbine Cat.

Monos DO have there advantages tho, a deepV mono with a fair bit of freeboard will handle rougher water than a cat, and monos can be made to be self-righting.

Hey, I know squat about boats. I had no idea that there were different types of cats. I only know about what my buddy has.

We could get a little "boat" subculture going here. Lots of the equipment crosses over.

http://www.rcboataholic.com/images/hulls/tunnel.jpg
This is an inshore cat, they are very wide for optimal turning ability as they race on a short oval turning almost all the time, and have low tunnels (also better for the turns) because they race on lakes with relativity small waves.

http://www.rcboataholic.com/images/hulls/catamaran.jpg
This is a modern offshore cat, its long to cope with swell at very high speed, its narrow to reduce frontal area because they run for many miles between turns so speed is more important than turning ability, and it has a high tunnel to cope with big waves in the sea.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...1147202895.jpg
This is an older offshore cat, it's a cross between the two above, it's much shorter and wider than the modern offshore for better turning and has more deadrise for better turning and better ability to cope with waves and swell for its length (at the cost of some speed), and it has a higher tunnel than the inshore to cope with big waves in the sea.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...1102551568.jpg
Its boats like these that fit my criteria for modelling and my cats are semiscale representations of the Hydrolift CR 28 seen painted pink above, I believe the red one is the slightly smaller CR 26.

Just like cars, its all a bunch of compromises and my ideal boat won't necessarily be the best for what you want to do, or where you want to do it.