BilgeWater

Hi everyone,

I am new to FE and looking to buy my first boat. I have found three that i like the looks of and would like to hear your thoughts about them.

1st and my preferred choice: Pro Boat'sBlackjack 26 SS BL Catamaran 2.4 RTR

2nd choice: Pro Boat'sImpulse 31 Deep-V BL RTR

3rd choice:Traxxas Spartan RTR

Most interested in which is best for a newbie to R/C FEs, reliability, quality of construction, and best bang for the buck.

Thanks for your comments.

Stinger9d9

Of those 3, the Impulse wins by a country mile. After that, the Proboat Mystic catamaran would be a FAR better choice than the Blackjack - the steerable outdrive on the BJ26 will steal power and/or just plain break if you add too much power. The Mystic was designed with input from Darin Jordin (an accomplished racer and record holder) - as was the Impulse - both would be great choices.

Speaking of accomplished, you can't beat a boat designed by Mike Zabroowski (Grimracer). The Motley Crew catamaran may be the best one yet (if you can find one in stock anywhere - if you have to order one, it'll be worth the wait). Also, the aquacraft UL-1 is a masterpiece - in the hands of a professional (Brian Buaas), that boat hit over 65mph on the stock drivetrain on 4S with little more than a prop change! (None of this 6S nonsense all the fanboys are running to because of the craptacular Spartan).

As far as the Spartan goes - stay far, FAR away. On 6S those things have been burning motors, melting ESCs and flat out NOT hitting 50mph with the stock powertrain. They are basically even worse than I thought they'd be when they were first announced (something I didn't think was possible). That boat wasn't designed by anyone that will admit to it and it's insanely overpriced for a big piece of un-reinforced plastic.

electric45

Iagree with the recomendations. Don't recommend BlackJack(had one, sold it off), or the Traxxas. Since Ihad the Black Jack I will tell you the drive system is fragile andfrankly it handles poorlyin theturns. Ihave owned the UL-1 and it is a great boat! It does have some top end limitations has it tends to want to fly like a plan at very high speeds, but with the base set up and batteries it is a great handling and quick boat. TheMotleycrewis getting great reviews on another well known boating website and seems to be a solid performer.The geico hassome issues, but overall seems likemost people are very pleased with it.

The boat Ifind interesting in the Impulse Mono coming out from ProBoat. It looksverypromising and has a bit more lenght which will help with stability as compared to a Super Vee. Let me sayit one more time do not by the BlackJack not a good boat compared to the others. The traxxas has left many, manyunhappy customers. By the way Iown a number of Traxxasvehicles and ILOVEthem..

madmorgan

My Feedback: (2)

the spartan is a blast after u do a few mods i refuse to take out stock esc motor for even more money just to see what i can achieve with stock components

Diesel6401

My Feedback: (1)

The 2.4 Blackjack 26 SS is updated and the boat no longer comes with a steerable outdrive, it comes with offset hardware now and a proboat 2.4 radio (http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products...B3300S&Index=7). . There are better offerings from proboat though in the catamaran style hulls.

BilgeWater

Thanks for the great replies! After checking out all of the items here that you suggested, I am tending toward the Motley Crew.
Now I just need to sell some things for the investment cash so my 1st Mate doesn't keel-haul me.

I can't wait to get my hands on the boat and start tweaking it!

crazy81

Ok sorry to dig up an aging thread....

I really dont want to sign up on OSE in order to ask this, but it falls under this topic.... Also, sorry Im not trying to hijack...


Ok I sold some stuff on EBay, and this money is just burning a hole in my pocket now.

Ive been going back and forth on getting a boat and or a new truck. At the moment it is one or the other. I just dont have the cash flow that I use to [] I really want a new truck but a boat is drawing interest. I just can not decide to save my life. At least I have the list narrowed down...

• Axial Wraith
• Motley Crew
• Impulse 31

I have done the research on all 3 above, just cant decide... The Wraith needs upgrading, the MC needs a shaft, and the 31 leaks....

Just for a little back ground: I am an off road guy. I did own one boat back in the 90's, it was a RTR Kyosho POS... My buddy and I share the same interests with R/Cs, and he just picked up a Miss Geico.

So there is my problem, any help would be nice!!!


Crazy

flnsx

My Feedback: (3)

HAH! Stock my ass! STOCK means JUST THAT! Stock from the box to the water. Don't say it's stock if its not. Just say stock motor and esc.

"Stock Motor/Esc with 5.5mm bullets on everything. Prop was a Grim 42x55 on 4s using Gens Ace 5300mah 30-60c lipos, also used a upgraded OSE prop shaft and properly aligned the motor and coupler. "

srt10

My Feedback: (20)

Hello? did you read the video discription??
let me post that for you....
"Stock Motor/Esc with 5.5mm bullets on everything. Prop was a Grim 42x55 on 4s using Gens Ace 5300mah 30-60c lipos, also used a upgraded OSE prop shaft and properly aligned the motor and coupler. "


To many if FE, stock means factory motor and esc! it's also called Spec Class in racing (stock motor and esc, I should know cuz I race P-Spec)
many FE boaters like my self upgrade the bullets on the motor and esc (lower resistance), also a shaft upgrade to one that is stronger.. and most any true FE boater, we toss the stock prop for one we know works..[:-]

Diesel6401

My Feedback: (1)

Thank you SRT10... Maybe I should of said Spec instead who knows. Some people I tell you. Provide best info Ican and people still get annoyed...

Bring up an old thread and provide no good information, just talk crap.... SMH at some of the people on these forums!

Maybe you should talk crap about the Miss Geico video also, because it's 5.5 on everything with a prop swap also. So thats not stock enough for you either.

Old Sloppy

Motly Crew

Harry

madmorgan

My Feedback: (2)

i remove my previous statement for the spartan as being a blast in  every aspect it simply is a big plastic pos and do not recommend anyone even expeirienced boaters to buy this unless you have lots of replacement parts (not traxxas stock). other than the hull and tx and rx everything  else has been changed to make it a useable boat and or enjoyable. if i remember correctly  the very first thing i had to replace (had to) was the collet as it simply would not hold yes even with the nimhs. secondly i bought a few 3s packs to run it on 6s i will put it this way it sounded nice until the 3rd or 4th run and now i just cant get that burned electrical smell out of that hull to save my life. i proceeded to replace the burned out esc with a t180 and ran that with a nice and shiney new balanced and sharpened prop, 5 seconds into the run pop the flex broke and lost that nice shiney new prop. i proceeded with the stock plastic prop and a new stock flex i realized that it wasnt running that well  "like it use to" oops i guess i didnt do my homework and found out the motor demagged i guess its just me and i have bad karma. i replaced it with a hk 10xl motor and found out you shouldnt cut the motor wires down shorter and ruined that so i did some swapping and found out with a bit of inner shimming i could toss out the demagged internal from stock with the new motor parts and i was back in the water. i proceeded to run it on 6s and found out the t180 (v1) didnt like internal bec and 6s i now have a crispy hunk of flastic and aluminum. since then i put the v2 t180 in it i run it on 4s x2 with a x440 prop with a complete 3/16 flex , collet etc and it is now a enjoyable boat. to sum it up and i dont even know how much money i sunk into it so far (thts why i pawned it off to my dad so he can now waste his money lol) i do know that i put together a hk pursuit hull and i have enjoyed it very much . the bottom line is i was new to the fe world when i bought the traxxas and traxxas has a good name "with land runners" they have no business trying to corner any markets in the water imho and should leave that to proboat and aquacraft etc (even they need to get a tighter control on their products). i seen 60 mph on the front of the box and i got shafted and found out that traxxas doesnt respond to emails and never even thought about calling them (at this point traxxas isnt worth my time) i will simply start building my own and talking to deisel about running setups as he is 1 hell of a guy and he will help . thanks deisel...
on that note im done talking about the spartan i guess the next thing i need to find out is who to contact about the boat as i know there are laws against sodomy and thats exactly what happened to me and has happened to others before me and even now to others.  this is my .02 but i would never recommend this to anyone ot  even my worst enemy!

hobby_man

My Feedback: (8)

the front of the box says 50+

what the difference, every person on here, buys a boat, rips it apart and rebuilds it and then drives it. This site has a thread about a guy and his Motley crew. He spent so much time on his out of the box boat b4 he even put it in the water. I had just purchased a Notley crew, when I read his thread, I sent it back to the store.

Diesel6401

My Feedback: (1)

O man you should have kept it. The Motley Crew is a blast even stock. More experienced people including myself typically don't run the boat stock, and the reason is not becasue the stock power isn't awesome becasue it really is, it's just that we already have experienced the stock systems and want something a little different. I've had the stock UL1 power in several different boats, not because it didn't work well in the ul1 because it was so awesome I put it in different hulls. A lot of racers take the stock power out and stick it into DF hulls or H&M hulls for spec(stock power) class racing. The motor and esc out of the MC is straight awesome and if you take the time to tweek the strut adjustments is a true blast. My MC was stock for about a month then I sold the esc and motor to spec class racers and put something different into my MC. I didn't do that because the stock power sucked, I did that because I wanted to try some different motors and props out and start pushing the hull a little faster. I don't race so I like to play around with different combos.The MC and stock Miss Geico are awesome boats, you should have kept it. I think you would have really like it.

srt10

My Feedback: (20)

LOL
not everyone including myself rips it all apart and rebuilds it?? just sayin...
why would I when it's dang sweet out of the box.. different prop and a stut adjustmen, and bigo!
It should run mid to upper 40's
point being, on the Aquacraft MC and Proboat MG, you don't really need to rip them apart to have great preformers
traxxas ya do! [:-]

srt10

My Feedback: (20)

three little letters.. BBB

madmorgan

My Feedback: (2)

my plan was to run out of box and found out differant and was forced to  a  replace with stock stuff  which will break the bank with the name spartan tagged to it,  b  buy aftermarket  so i did a ton of reading and watching to find out good setups etc.  i chose b   .