I am new to airboats, but have been reading several of the posts on this forum. Earlier this year I bought an airboat off of ebay called a Hydra Flite by Sharper Image. I have no idea when this was built or where it could have purchased at. I believe it was originally powered by a 380 brushed size motor. The guy I bought it from said that he had installed an brushless outrunner motor, servo, walkera 30A esc, and converted the radio to a digital proportional. He also said that he had doubled the speed by doing all of this. Everything that he said he did was in fact so, but if he doubled the speed then the thing went 0mph before. I realize that this hull probably is not the best, but I thought I might be worth learning a few things by working with it. But any suggestions will be welcome.

First I looked at the motor which was a brushless outrunner Turborix pancake motor. This had been epoxied into the motor shell along with epoxy all over everything attached to it (motor mounts, screws, etc.) By the time I got it off I wasn't sure I could reuse any of it. So I decided to build a frame work for the motor/rudder mounts from aluminum angle & flat stock. I also found an align outrunner 1000kv motor at the lhs for $20. So I started in on it this last weekend. Below are some pics of it so far. I'm still trying to decide on whether 1 or 2 rudders and what size to make them.

I finally finished the rudder deciding to go with one 5x2 made from alum. With it mounted on the boat, I tried 7x6 prop along with a 6x5.5 and decided the 7x6 was much better. So to pond I went and tried it first with a 9.9v a123 battery. It ran quite well except for the hopping quite abit and my right turns weren't too well so need to work on the steering abit. I also tried a 11.1v lipo which did make it go faster, but I flipped it trying to steer too sharp at high speed. Before I could get it back it smoked the lipo. Don't know if everything else works or not yet, but we'll let it dry out & then see. I need to do some work on it anyway. Here are some pics of the boat, rudder, and interior damage after flipping.

Certainly sorry to see that. Must have been a heavy drain on the battery when things got wet. Hey, on a different subject - we're going to start racing these ABC Jet Skis and was wondering what motor/battery you've been running for top speed? Sdg.

[link]http://www.rcuvideos.com/video/Hydra-Flite-Conversion[/link]Here's a vid of my second run after replacing esc, servo, tx/rx. Rudder works well even though Not quite a minute into run I dumped the airboat upside down. I'm trying some floats taken off an Abc Hobby jet ski hull and glued onto this hull. Here are some pics.