MJD
Posts: 1702
Joined: 5/27/2003
From: Orangeville,
ON, CANADA
Status: offline
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I never built one of these, but over the years I have built several airboats using store-bought foam flutterboards. There was a standard size and a big one. I used the small guys, and built everything from .049 powered free "flight boats" (several over the years) that I would run on lakes, ponds, rivers even, and on snow where they work great. My first R/C one used a Medallion .09 and single channel on the air rudder, and I could easily turn 360's in the river and so was free to scoot around as much as I wanted. It needed more power though, so on went an OS .15 with throttle, now we're getting somewhere! Great on water, you could drive it up the beach a bit but would often hang up, on grass it generally would bop about fine and steer. Snow, no prob. But more power was needed yet, so the next one sported a .25. Aha! Now we're cooking with gas.. and catching air under the nose and doing the occasional end-over. Some weight up front cured that, and now it would tear across the water, turn tighter than you would imagine without flipping, drive right over sand and pebbles and grass easily. A couple of coats of poly-u on the "hull" helped lower friction and toughen the skin a bit.
Point is... air boats are a pile of fun! The added benefit is you can hand one to someone who doesn't fly, show them how it works, and they'll do fine with a little supervision at first. Or race two of them. Okay, 72 megs on the ground and all that, but I have spent my life in the country and felt no qualms at using my older RC equipment in these, rather than put it out to pasture. An aircraft Tx is fine, throttle left, rudder on the right works the best for me.
Hmm.. I have one somewhere with the equipment out of it, I'll snap a couple of pics and post them. But darn it, I cannot find these anymore. For those of you in Canuckland, I used to get the flutterboards at Canadian Tire, but now they only have those fabric covered things that aren't shaped right for this.
MJD
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> "1/2 A" & "1/8 A" airplanes >> Low Flying, lifting body,single channel 1/2A Seaplane project! 
Low Flying, lifting body,single channel 1/2A Seaplane p... - 
How did I ever manage that on my budget? Must have been cheaping out at the hobbyshop for the expensive stuff. No good Dumas products for me.. all cheap ersatz copies made from scrap for me. No wonder my stuff blew up on a regular basis.