The new boat looks great! I have made major progress on my mister Darby and have moved up to step 39 in just two weeks by staying up to 11 pm every night. I will try and post some picture soon.

Matt

Check out my web page of my My Darby
www.jonesmountaintugworks.4t.com

Hiya guys,

I havn't built the Darby but HAVE built many other Dumas kits. Generally I think the comments in this "thread" are a bit hard on Dumas. I've been to the factory and spent time with owner and workers. ( I live bout a 100 miles from them) Believe me, they are dedicated to this hobby and I think, offer a lot for the money. Designing the kits, creating the processes/jigs for "mass" building of kit components is not easy. A lot of labor intensive work, and everyone knows how expensive labor is--especially competent, talented, creative people. This small, family run and owned business is out to make money, no doubt about it. But in my opinion they earn every penny. No stock major company in or out of the hobbyworld would even bother doing what they do because the big profit margin is not there. Think of the competition Dumas must be feeling from the cheap, foreign labor that build and sell all of the recently marketed "ready to run" "scale" stuff that we scale modelers snub our nose at.

Sorry if I sound like I'm in the Town Square on a soapbox. And no, I have no personal connection to Dumas

John De Broske -- azcaptain

Would any one be interested in a operational tow winch for the MR Darby or other large scale tug boats.

Guys,

I am not anti-Dumas at all. I don't know why anyone would be. True, some the of the kits wood leave something to be desired but overall they are fine kits. I have built several of the Darby tugs. Along those lines, I am putting a couple of these pictures of the latest Darby I am building. This boat is for another club member. It has the Harbor Models power upgrade kit with Pittman 3700's Prop Shop screws, resin rudders and resin prop shaft outlets. Also, it comes with the "steering solution" This allows the rudders to be turned hard over without jamming them. A pretty cool and simple setup. I also enlarged the stern opening so that you can actually access the rear to work on things. My personal Mr. Darby is setup the same way. For such a large boat it is extremly manueverable, even without using a bow thruster. One screw can be reversed while the other is going forward and it literally will turn itself around on its own axis. It also has the power to push and dock a 1200lb barge (we tried it, it will!)

Pete

I am very interested in an Operational Tow Winch. What pics can you send for my viewing? What spec's do you have for the Winch? Also I am looking for an operational crane for the Mr. Darby Tugboat. Everything has to work by Radio Contol. Thanks! -- Racin_rink

I am just tinkering with it right now, but Iam using a 12 volt geared motor from a copy machine and thinking weither I go with a speed controller or just stick with a servo and reversing switch. The cranes sounds great but might be difficult due to hydrallic control on modern ships, but it would be great to find a company that makes operational cranes. Ill post some pictures when I have a proto type.

I would like to see the Operational Tow Winch use a servo and reversing switch. That will work better with my radio and receiver. Using a speed control means a variable speed line-out and variable speed line-in. Winches have one or two speed gear boxes. My feeling is using a high torque servo would be ideal for the my application. Have you given any thought to a locking gear system so when the motor stops that the cable locks in place? I have given a lot of thought to the winches and cranes for my Mr. Darby Tugboat. I just don't have the means of producing the products I want. -- Racin_Rink

The reason I would possibly use a speed control would be so when the speed controller was in the neutral position it would lock the gear in place and that would elliminate the extra work of building a locking mechanism.
I set my darby up with a major reinforcments in the hull to accept the winch when I built her.
Keep in touch
TUG

TUG,
I'm confused. How would a speed controler 'lock' the winch?
- 'Doc

A speed control won't lock things up. In the neutral position the motor will have no power going to it and can freewheel. The best way to lock the winch is with a worm driven gear reduction. Due to the nature of this arrangement it can't be back driven and you don't need a brake or locking arrangement.

....

Hi green-boat
am I right, any winch system probably uses a motor with gear reduction, and can't be driven backwards? So it really doesn't matter what you use, a simple switch on any channel will do the job. If you trip the winch to run one way on full channel in one direction and run the other way on other full extent of the channel, you get the desired effect.
Thats what I intend to do with my mr Darby. The easiest way (low tech) is put switch af full left and full right rudder, so that the winch only runs in these two positions. The high tech way is to use a microprocessor, and monitor one channel for max and minimum signal (1msec and 2 msec) and run the winch motor only as long as that position is held.
I am doing this, but to be on the safe side, I also intend to monitor the winch motor current. If the motor stalls for any reason, the current will rise and the motor will be turned off.
Paul

You could use a friction clutch in the reduction unit. Any stall condition would overcome the friction stopping the winch from pulling and still allowing the motor to turn. A similar setup is used in VCR's on the cassette loading mechanism. To get more functions out of your radio without getting another one with more channels, you can use one of those channel expanders. I have seen them where you can get up to 16 different functions out of one channel.

Paul,
It would depend on the gear reduction method, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to run one in reverse. 'Reverse' can be done by switching or by using an ESC, switching is simpler and a lot cheaper really (unless you just happen to have an extra ESC laying around). A 'limit' switch isn't all that hard to 'do' either.
There's almost always more than one way of doing things. Pick the one you are most familiar with or that you have the materials for.
- 'Doc

Thanks for all the good ideas. The motor I have is worm gear driven so it locks up when in neutral, I wanted to use the speed controler to simulate a variable speed winch, but my Darby has a switch 8 in it and its all controled by a seven channel ace nautical comander, so I have a few options to experiment with. Its time to have a little fun a build some proto types
TUG

ANYONE got any vids of one of these bad boys pulling something?