X1AaronW

I like fishing from a canoe and I like rc boats. I figured I could combine the 2 making a tug that uses a trolling motor. In order to keep it scales I would prefer to use rudders. The tug will be used to push the canoe, spread chum and possibly fetch jug lines. It will be a canal tug design. My question is how will I be able power the motor? I'm thinking I'm just going to use the bottom part of the trolling motor setup and possibly the top part with speed control and just hook a servo to it to work as a manual speed control. The other way I have heard was to hook 2 400a escs to the motor. Is there another any other cheap way of doing it or which of these 2 ideas would work the best?

mfr02

The servo operating the existing control is probably the simplest and certainly the lowest cost way to do the job.
I don't follow the idea of 2 ESCs for one motor. And 400 amps seems excessive, unless you have been looking at Chinese ESCs, because they have some strange ideas about figuring out ratings. Assuming its a brushed motor, you need to know its current draw, then you can start considering ESCs.

X1AaronW

That's what I was thinking. Do you think a motorcycle battery would be to small? I'm trying to get a good run time out of it but I think a car battery would sink it lol.

mfr02

If its in an enclosed space, forget any automotive battery. They are rarely sealed, and are unsuited to the charge/discharge cycles that model boat use gives them, mostly because they tend to vent, what they tend to vent is a mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and bits of sulphuric acid. Between them, they make a mess of their surroundings. The acid corrodes stuff, if the H and O get a chance to recombine...
You need to know the current that the motor(s) take under load and how long they need to run. The tells you how much battery you need. Then you need to know how much weight your hull will carry (max displacement in fresh water). Effectively. this tells you how much battery you can have. Archimedes was a clever guy.

dauntlessfan

Years ago I played around with a tow boat design that used a Sevylor blowup raft motor. It's similar in size and design to a trolling motor but doesn't use as much current. The company sold them with a SLA battery for power. For simplicity, it could be wired using a servo and heavy duty switch for forward/reverse.

Here's an example:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEVYLOR-12-V...p2054897.l5660

blutoh

This site has plans for a large tug that uses a trolling motor for power.