KnimRod
Jun 07, 2005, 08:42 PM
I've been doing the RC heli and plane thing for a couple years now and since the family makes an annual trip to the lake, I thought I'd give RC boating a try. So last year, I picked up an "Atlantio 059" on Ebay. It was obviously a cheap Chinese made copy of the discontinued Kyosho Atlantio but the price was definitely right.
The Atlantio 059 is 25" long with an ABS plastic hull and performs surprisingly well as delivered. There were lots of shortcomings though... The furnished 6-cell NiCD pack was junk. The furnished radio system was not proportional in either throttle or rudder and the motor would be smoking hot after a session with my substituted 7-cell GP3300 packs. The good part is that this boat was a blast! It maneuvered very well, was very stable even in rough water, and was much faster than I hoped. I'm hoping that after addressing the shortcomings, it'll be a gem.
I've hopefully resolved the cooling issues with a water cooling kit and I'm converting the radio system over to a standard RC radio and servo. I've also added a 200 amp RC car ESC to the radio package. The stock radio gear was enclosed in a waterproof box inside the hull. I gutted the components and am installing a RC car radio and ESC. The ESC isn't water cooled but I'm hoping that by resorting to drastic overkill, it will work okay enclosed in an airtight enclosure. The stock servo was very large and had about 8 wires going to it. I replaced it with a Futaba S3107 servo I had laying around.
The stock motor is advertised as a "RS-540SSH" type. After close inspection, the brushes and commutator are starting to look pretty bad (after several hours of hard use last summer). I've been unable to find an exact replacement motor and will probably look to a stock RC car motor soon. The prop is direct driven and near as I can tell, is 32mm in dia. with a pitch of about 1.6. Can anyone recommend an inexpensive replacement motor?
I've attached a few pictures of my progress so far and I'll update this thread as I progress if anyone's interested. Any suggestions at all would be much appreciated.
The Atlantio 059 is 25" long with an ABS plastic hull and performs surprisingly well as delivered. There were lots of shortcomings though... The furnished 6-cell NiCD pack was junk. The furnished radio system was not proportional in either throttle or rudder and the motor would be smoking hot after a session with my substituted 7-cell GP3300 packs. The good part is that this boat was a blast! It maneuvered very well, was very stable even in rough water, and was much faster than I hoped. I'm hoping that after addressing the shortcomings, it'll be a gem.
I've hopefully resolved the cooling issues with a water cooling kit and I'm converting the radio system over to a standard RC radio and servo. I've also added a 200 amp RC car ESC to the radio package. The stock radio gear was enclosed in a waterproof box inside the hull. I gutted the components and am installing a RC car radio and ESC. The ESC isn't water cooled but I'm hoping that by resorting to drastic overkill, it will work okay enclosed in an airtight enclosure. The stock servo was very large and had about 8 wires going to it. I replaced it with a Futaba S3107 servo I had laying around.
The stock motor is advertised as a "RS-540SSH" type. After close inspection, the brushes and commutator are starting to look pretty bad (after several hours of hard use last summer). I've been unable to find an exact replacement motor and will probably look to a stock RC car motor soon. The prop is direct driven and near as I can tell, is 32mm in dia. with a pitch of about 1.6. Can anyone recommend an inexpensive replacement motor?
I've attached a few pictures of my progress so far and I'll update this thread as I progress if anyone's interested. Any suggestions at all would be much appreciated.