For some reason, fiberglass arrow shafts are as they say " as straight as an arrow". I taped one along the keel and had it overhang the stern. Heavy walled K&S aluminum tubes were clamped to the rudders. One of the rudderes was set parallel to the shaft at the Futaba neutral of 1.52 milliseconds. The other one was then set parallel to that. At least the are parallel at that point. Probably not at any other. Dan.

I just use the TLAR gauge.

Tom, that may have been accurate enough but I prefer some measurements. It looks like the maiden voyage will be some time next week but not Wednesday. Any day better than any other if you want to join me? Dan

Any day next week I am open Dan!

Dan, just a heads up. I don't know if I will be able to see you maiden the CC and take pics. I hope I can, but something has happened to me.

My knee has been hurting and it has become near impossible to walk. I am going to call the doctor tomorrow and until I get it checked out I do not know what is going on with it. []

Tom, right now it looks like I'll be at the lake on Thursday. I'll tell you for sure on Wednesday. Try to wobble over. Dan.

Dan, just got back from the medicine man. I'm doing better, should be able to make it Thursday.

Tom,

Looking forward to some excellent video.

Bob

Here are the images of the radio installation ready to go. I basically copied what was in the PT boats. The cavernous hull of the Corvette made it easy because of all the room.

Yep, I am looking for some water shots also as I have a hull that was built twenty years ago and the wood for the cabin was so bad I quite and the building and looking at you guys builds make me want to finsh her.
Jim

Jim, go for it. I'm still planning on Thursday. dan.

<font size="3">Dan,

I notice you don't "appear" to use BEC; that or I'm showing my ignorance and Astro does not have BEC.   That appears to be  a receiver battery all the way in the aft end.

Bob</font>

Good observation Bob. The Astro Flight speed control does have a BEC circuit built in but I am not using it. The primary reason is that it’s a very unreliable source of power for the RC system. There is an awful lot of circuitry between the BEC output and the motor batteries. We call these things in the aerospace industry “single point failure sources�. I prefer to have the receiver connected directly to the battery with only a switch and a couple of connectors in between. When the connector from the speed control is plugged in to the receiver, the BEC voltage was applied right across the plus and minus bus of the receiver and I was using two of them with a “Y� connector. This was disabled by cutting the red wire coming from the controls. The guys flying the large electrics use a separate RC pack for the same reason. If the BEC or control gets toasted they can still make a safe landing. If this happens in the boat, I can still motor back on the one surviving control. So far, no failures of the AF controls in the past 10 years. Here’s another image in the sun. You gotta love the "sky hook".Dan.

Looks like a question mark. What's it for? Seems rather unusual for a Chris~Craft.

Tom, maybe they could have used one. I'll be at the lake at 10 on Thursday. Dan.

<font size="3">It's a beautiful boat Dan. Maybe you could fly a short ribbon from the "sky hook" for decoration.

Bob</font>

Any thing would make it look better. Tom, PM me your phone number in case I get there earlier. Dan.

Sent.

I met Dan at the lake this morning and enjoyed watching his maiden voyage of the Sterling Chris~Craft.

I took some video, and lots of photos. I am working on the video right now. It will take a while to get it finished, and then I have over 100 photos to go through and pick out the good ones.

In the meantime, here is a teaser photo. Oh, and also the reason behind Dan's "skyhook"

<font size="3">That Chris Craft Corvette is cutting through the water like a hot knife through butter.  Nice.</font>

I packed up the Corvette with one of my PT boats in the Suburban for the trip to the lake today and you can see the difference in the size of the hull from this perspective. While Tom was on his way, I launched the Corvette and got in a couple of images during a slow speed run to break in the bearings and it’s a good thing I did. One of the bearings in the left strut galled but eventually freed itself after some more gentle running. As you can see the boat sits bow down according to the scale waterline but picks it up when it’s underway. It also rocked side to side when it hit some rough water. I experimented with the placement of 3 ½ pounds of ballast until I found a sweet spot a little more forward of the CG. The bow is down some more at rest but the boat runs better when it speeds up and is much more stable. I’ll permanently install the ballast at this point. There was some water between a set of frames that may have come in via the lubrication tubes in the stuffing boxes. I did not have anything to plug them up with me. It wasn’t much after ten minutes. Tom’s preparing another one of his Academy worthy productions with video and more stills. Dan

Video is being produced now. Gonna take a while!

Here are a few more photos Dan:

Tom, Excellent. Dan.

Well, I am having technical difficulties right now with producing the video. I have tried two different formats and each one hung up at 58%. Not sure what the problem is. Might not get it sorted till tomorrow or so.

<font size="3">Dan and Kmot,

The bow curls the water away real nice and the one picture show her right up on step.  Great photos of a great model boat!</font>

Bob