Hi Ron,

I agree, there is a practical limit to any lightening effort but…. my notion is more of a knowledge sense of what the affects are so that best practice building techniques can be employed to build a reliable and competitive boat . Ok, let’s say we had two boats with identical equipment set-ups with one being of ‘standard heat racing weight’ and the other lighter. How light would the lightest boat have to be before it was unstable at racing speed or how light could we get it before it became unstable at speed? This is all theoretical thinking here so…. If we could make it as light as we wanted in dream land could we pass up a weight that would cause us to have control issues? I think you suggested the answer to this question to be yes when you referenced rough water conditions.

Yea, yea, I know, I am thinking to much here but…I can’t really help it. I am really having a ball with this hobby and want to learn all I can.

Something I would like to see done is to take a boat, any boat with known speed performance numbers and weigh it and measure the balance point and then to alter the weight and balance in a controlled and systematic manner while not making any other performance adjustments and then running the boat again to re-measure the speed data in support of making determinations of what the affect of those changes are. (wow, that was a long sentence)

Yea, yea, I guess I should be doing this already with my boat in an effort to ‘tune’ it but I have not been in the RC boating hobby long enough to get there yet. As soon as I get myself a GPS speed measuring devise I will embark upon that testing journey and report my results. Until then is there anyone with the proper equipment that could or has done this type of testing?