Newbie RG65 Help Please
 

Hi folks

I want to buy a racing yacht in the RG65 class. I'm a total newbie to RC yachting but I have a local club which I intend to join and sail with.

I have Googled the net for hours looking for RG65 boats and am finding the choices extremely limiting.

As far as I can see, at the affordable and realistic end, there is the DragonForce65 V6 of which there are many being sailed. A decent boat but as I understand, it's never going to win any serious race. Kits for the DF cost around £160 without radio gear.

Aside from that I can not find much else that comes complete as a kit other than perhaps the German Graupner 65. Not sure if that is a decent yacht or not. Would appreciate any views on that and it's performance vs DF65's.

Apart from the above 2 yachts there seems nothing unless I am willing to pay huge amounts for just the hulls of boats like the FONIX or ARGON which are £400-£500 without any rigs. Aussies have one at GoSpectre.com but again an absolute fortune just for the hulls.

Am I missing something here? It feels like a guy looking to buy a car and finding that the choice is limited to either an affordable Audi A4 otherwise it's a Ferrari or Lambourgini !

The RG65 class has been going for quite some time so why aren't there loads of complete racing RG65 kits out there covering the whole range?

Any ideas welcomed here because at the moment I feel like I am being forced down the DF route.

Cheers

The DF65 is a one design class within the RG65 class, sort of intended to keep costs in check. The lack of restrictions on construction in RG65 has ensured that what could and should have been a low cost class almost instantly, because state of the art technology was used from the off, went straight into big chequebook territory. When you consider that any "65" is basically a half size Marblehead, it should not be amazing that the developments that pushed up costs and prices in the large class should have been applied immediately. There isn't a market for mediocre boats - they are purely for winning with, so there is the one design end with relatively low costs and somewhat restricted performance, and the rest, with performance at any cost. Unless you happen to be good at designing and building extremely lightweight hulls.
A properly set up and sailed DF can beat an RG, but probably only if the RG skipper thinks that just having his type of boat makes him a winner without regard to being able to set his boat up and read conditions on the water. Racing isn't always simply about top speed. Racing yachts don't simply go fast because of their design or build, there is setting them up for the conditions on the day and knowing how to sail them and reading how to position them on the water to best advantage.

most one design classes have only a few builders. early on, a few builders make molds that become known to work well and everybody wants a hull or boat from them so it becomes hard to break into the market after the class is well established, unless someone new buys out an existing builder's molds. being one design,.....a mold has to go through extensive measurement to qualify, there is a lot of work involved so the few people that have good molds hold the market.

The DF65 is a good boat. Given the inherent limitations of a boat that size and cost ,you DO need to do regular maintenance, it is a very good beginner boat. To learn about racing and general rig tuning, a one design fleet is probably the fastest way to learn. Given the ability to learn, the DF is probably the best starting point. Once you are regularly beating the others, maybe time to invest in something hotter.
But start with something hotter without knowing the basics is the fastest route to disappointment. Add to that, that this years "best" RG65 probably won't be next years "best". On the other hand, a well set up "this" years one will certainly beat next years "best" that has been bought by someone who thinks that just having the "best" makes him competitive. A well set up and sailed DDF65 will certainly keep him honest.

I'd say apiece of this puzzle is that buying an RG65 is actually more like buying an experimental airplane than like buying a car. I say that from the standpoint of having been involved when the US RG65 class was being established and unlike cars where we're over a hundred years into the game and nearly every choice is mass manufactured, RG65s were intentionally established such that the owner, designer, and/or builder have a LOT of leeway in how the boat ends up. In the end, that precipitated a lot of different designs and a lot of innovation from the start. And that's something we wanted -- allowing and encouraging any skipper to have a boat that incorporates their own ideas.

There have been a number of good designs put out there and a number of those have been molded, but with a lot of variety, only so many are going to be successful for production in quantity (especially if fully rigged boats or full kits would imply very limited choice in the setup.) So maybe it's just the natural course of things that providing more value often means the market splits into a choice of either low priced offerings OR high performance offerings.

Aim High!
RG65 106

Curious to know if Realist ever found a RG65.

Possibly went away disappointed to find out that having a potentially fast boat does not make you a winner in a field where skill and experience count for a lot.
But that is being a realist.

To bad. There are some nice boats to be had out there. Just have to put in the foot work to find something nice. And like other class boats quality and price can go from one extreme to the other. What you do behind the sticks is another story.