Tried to build an R/C sail boat.

[rebelflyer]

I'm very new to R/C boats. I got the interest (in sail boats) from at episode of R/C hobbies on the DIY channel. I decided I had to build or buy something. Limited funds lead me down the build it path. After finding a cheap and used abs hull (electric speed boat was all I could find.) I decided to attempt to put together something from parts around the shop. Here is a picture of the results so far. The only testing done to date is a leak test.;)


I would be thankful for any comments or suggestions for improvement or whatever....Thanks RF...

[rebelflyer]

Mast is Easton arrow shaft reenforced with hard wood dowl. Rigging is fly fishing backing. Bowsies (?) are made from sections of tie wraps with holes drill in them. Sail is nylon (I think )

[rebelflyer]

Closer view of rigging and gooseneck... Next step is to install radio package and sail winch. I am limited to airplane servos so I thought I would try to double purchase (?) the sheet to the winch arm...RF

[RyanPSU21]

Interesting looking boat. How long is it?

It looks like the keel bulb is very small and the keel looks shallow for the length.

Also why do you have a forestay attached to the bow of the boat. The jib is sufficient. You will not have enough luff tension in your jib with that setup.

If you go to the US1m section on www.amya.org there is a good article on building boats. it includes a section on how to modify servos to 180 degree rotation which is what you want to do.

[rebelflyer]

Thanks for the reply Ryan,
The hull is 27". The bulb is pure lead reshaped, slotted, drilled (to fit the keel). The keel was measured from (proportionally) photos of other small (less then OMH) boat kits. Lengthing may not be a problem as the aluminum can act as a mount for a new fin. Do you think a longer keel will offer better heeling? The weight of the bulb is a little over 1#. This weight seems to be keel heavy when balancing at the joint to the hull. I have seen boats with and without separate forestay. Was not sure what to do so I added it on. I will try it out jib alone. Thanks for the referral on the amya site, I'll check it out, especially the servo mods. (getting ready for that part of the project right now.)

[Aten W Arthog]

Interesting and creative approach. I do something similar, but am lucky, bcaue there's a hobby shop near me that gets all the dents and returns from Tower hobbies and sells the parts for pennies on the dollar. I got a Kyosho Fairwind hull for like 25 bucks, a black plastic Victoria hull for the same, and just this weekend, got the fiberglass version of the Seawind SE hull, for 25 bucks. I also found complete mast and boom sets, kind of pricy, so most of my fleet uses carbon fiber and fg arrow shafts and kite tubing for the masts/booms, and sails made from kite cloth (into the wind kites.com).

The Fairwind is about 60 percent stock, the rest is home brew, and she sails GREAt, very realistic, decent enogh speed. Essentially a 300 dollar kit bosat for about 50 bucks and some sweat equity.

The Victoria cost about 40 bucks to finish, more sweat, as i had to create a complete keel from melted tire weights. Lead is toxic and a pain to work with, so i'm seriously considering making the Seawind's keel out of concrete mix and harware store threaded rod and sheet metal. trying to figure out the molding process for that;-)

As to sail servos, My first RC sailboat was an Aristocraft cup racer, very nice, look like real cup racers, I recommend them to folks getting started, not expensive, small and easy to transport, easy to finish, radio included. It used a regular servo with an arm on it to run the sails, and to save cash over a winch for the Fairwind, i found a discount-priced quarter-scale airtplane servo (retract servos are good for this too, lots more torque per ounce), bolted a circuit-board phenolic material arm to the servo, and got terrific sail handling for main and jib, cost about 30 bucks. Did the same for the Victoria. I just used two screws to bolt the sail arm dorectly to the original servo output wheel. Make the arm double, and you can get decent throw under the deck in two directions for both sails, and this way the servo can be center of the boat for balance.

AMYA eligible? probably not, but it works for me, and I have great fun.