ORIGINAL: dadkins
Maybe we can get together in the next few week and I'll be happy to film for ya. I have an HD movie camera too. Wait a minute. I have about a million things coming up in the near future, daughters graduating high school, grad party, her prom..- oh yeah...Mothers Day.
Have you ever been to Nichols Pond -Twin cities model boat club - I have never ran there, but have been there to watch - not many airboaters.
That'd be cool. I've been seeing more and more folks from the Twin Cities area doing the boat thing.. It'd be nice to run with someone else (or even hang out) since most of my bud's r/c's are always broken..
I haven't been to Nichols pond - I know where it is, but from the boat clubs website, they say you have to have some sort of insurance card to run there or something..? Not sure if thats just during races or all the time. I dont expect to be able to race this boat in any official race since I dont think this thing will be able to turn nearly as well as the wet-propped boats. Drag race, maybe... Drop me a PM or an Email sometime.
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ORIGINAL: Mikeup
That airboat looks great. You mention boat clubs; Edina had one , i think it was emyc or something like that. They helped me when Electro-Vee's were in there hay day. That club was mainly monos and they used to go to Wisconsin for races. This might be dumb inquiry, but would it be impossible to toss the airboat enough to get it on plane. There are some gas boat that require tossing to get them on plane. The old BOAT mag had some that showed being tossed.
I dont know that It would be worth me joining any clubs only because most if not all race classes are mono or hydro hulls running inboard/wet propped engines. If there were to be an airboat class, then I might consider it. I will go watch some of the races down at Nichols pond this summer and maybe meet a few people.
As far as launching the boat; I will probably have to chuck it or build a launch ramp to get it to jump on plane right away. During my mock-up/float test I found the water dipped just above the tips of the sponsons up front. I might be able to add some ballast weight to the radio/battery compartment in the rearmost hatch to maybe float the front higher. I originally had the sponsons to be 2" wide x 1 3/4" tall x 14" long but wanted some extra insurance it'd be able to plane on its own so I scaled them up to be 2 1/4"x2 1/4"x18". I figured a nice round 2:1 ratio would suffice for good floatation, stability, and easy planing. In the process I added some extra epoxy here and some aluminum there adding to the overall beef of the thing. My GPS weighs 12-14oz which adds a ton of weight to the front so I will go looking for a smaller lighter weight handheld GPS for getting speed numbers. My test pond is small and decently accessible around the perimter should I need to retrieve it. I have a small 1 person raft or a fishing pole..
I'm doing the finishing touches on the boat today and maybe do a little testing tomorrow if the weather is decent.