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ORIGINAL: brother

OS LA .40 32"x14"x2" Runs great! Foam core,balsa, and fiberglass.

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ORIGINAL: canadianjosh

Let's see some pics of all of your airboats, I think this wil lgive us all, especially the noobe's some good ideas to work with. Here's mine: The first one is a foam/fiberglass hull, it measures 36"x 14" and has 2 .40'2 powering it with 11x7 props. JRXP642 radio, 4 servos,(one for each throttle and rudder). The second boat was my first one that i built, was balsa/fiberglass, some water got in and rotted the balsa rendering it useless. Same radio, and engines, and servo setup.

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dude, ill bet that this thing frickin flys (no pun intended) why do you have both engines being run by seperate servos, wouldnt you have a tendacy to have one motor gong faster than the otther,????

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ORIGINAL: canadianjosh

The reason for separate servos is for the ease of tuning and throttle control. The engines are both .40's, one is a OS .40 la and the other is a OS .40 FX. Not too much difference here. But with my radio i can have each engine on a separate channel, my setup is left engine on engine channel, right engine on elevator channel. I can mix these channels so that the engine control stick controls both channels, this way when starting i can rev each engine separately and could even if i wanted mix the throttle channels into the rudder channels so that left rudder would back power off of the left engine to aid in turning, however, since my rudders are big enough to flip my boat( happened once allready) i don't need any more turning power, as well i can tune the engines so that half throttle on my radio is half throttle on both engines, most of the time i run at full throttle and then back it off to turn. With that said yes my boat moves, the bottom of the hull is pontoon style so there is only actually about 8 inches of width in contact with the water, it is fun to go full throttle on the water and hit the little sand bank on the beach and get some air, it also moves quick on the ground too, and actually will turn tighter on the ground then the water, i think this has to do a bit with the pontoon design, which makes the hull "grab" the water more. Below is a pic of my radio gear drying out after my flip. The only damage was two stripped servo gears and to my confidence as i watched that thing barrel roll on me. My servos are now waterproofed as they all filled with water, the receiver didn't even have a drop of water in it.

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ORIGINAL: A1RENCH


I've been wondering too, what happens to the engine when you roll an airboat? That hot metal hitting cold water can't be good! So do you guys dump the water out and fire it back up, or is a tear down and clean up in order, or does it destroy the engine?
Thanks
Bud

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canadianjosh Date 3/16/2004 7:56:14 PM
Yes balsa and FG is very strong, as is ply, but you always have the problem of water entering the hull and rotting the wood, treated or not. With ply this is not so much of a problem due to the glue used to hold the ply's together. Balsa wood is like a sponge and can absorb water right out of the air. While i wood hulls are strong, i still think foam/FG hulls are superior due to the fact that they will never rot, they have built in floatation, and they are simply lighter.

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ORIGINAL: monstermaker13

looks good, how fast is it

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