What does everyone use for downed plane recovery?
I picked up a Flyzone Beaver at eWeek and love flying off the water but I popped a rubber band and lost the ability to control my taxi so out came the Canoe and off I went. I would rather have an RC boat of some sort I could just send out in future recovery situations

I am very interested in seeing what everyone else uses and to add yet another TOY to the trailer!!!

my Scratch built Springer tug "The sherman" has had to earn its keep this season...

never ever let the club down... (its the bits of wire and coat hanger that does it)


here she is at the end of "yet another recovery" and yes it is our only recovery boat!




david

This is my OTHER standard rant. The first is about foam-core floats.
!. You always need a man-carrying boat available when float-flying. They can always crash and fragment. They can be faaar away and drifting farther. They can hit a tree. They can drift into the dreaded God-forsaken, snake-infested swampy brier -patch. Only a man-carrying boat will help you here.
Other sometimes useful tools:
A long boathook
A tennis ball on a string.
A bow-and-arrow with a fishing rig on the bow.
A spinning rod with a streamlined bobber for looooong casts.
An RC boat pulling the line from a spinning rod/reel can just loop around the plane and snag it with the line. Then the boat can drag the plane back, or the reel can drag the plane back.(added 1/26/13)
All of those work sometimes. A man-carrying boat works EVERY time.

I fly my small EP stuff from a 10 acre city park pond, man carrying boats are not allowed. I used a RC Boat, Dragging a fishing line with a Foam block and a hook system before, do a couple laps around the plane, typically it will hook on to something or itself and lasso the plane

I have a FPV RC boat concept I'm going to work on over the winter

I have an old zigzag racer, used here. The boat provides some guidance, the wind did the rest.

RC Float Plane Rescue (3 min 24 sec)

Used my Seawind to rescue a freinds plane last weekend...

I usually take one of those cheap inflatable boat/rafts that you can pick up at places like target, with me. Easy to store when not in use.

My buddy flying Funcub here, uses a little boat like mine to take a line with grapple out to the downed plane. I will try to get video of that.

Maybe I'll build a purpose designed boat too, still thinking on it.

No recovery needed here, just having fun.

Boat & Floats TT (2 min 28 sec)

Sometimes the recovery boat needs to be recovered

Rescuing the Tender (1 min 1 sec)

Winter recovery boat.

Has anyone thought about this item from Model Aero??

http://modelaero.com/Merchant5/merch...tegory_Code=AM



Conehead
Orrin Eldred

My NQD tear into jet boat did a decent job today. The roll cage will hook on wings and other parts, and the jet drive means there is no prop to chew up your precious bits of flying foam!

Our RC scale boat club participates in the RC Float Fly put on twice a year by a local club -- we provide rescue services.

My Springer uses the two wands to capture disabled boats and planes. My clubmate uses an "S" shaped float. The float is made form PVC pipe and foam pool noodles. My boat has a 2:1 gearbox and a 50mm prop, so it is slower, but with lots of pushing power. The Safe Sea is faster, and has water jet propulsion, so it can pluck boats or planes form the edge of the weedy areas. But the off-center scoop limits the size/weight of the model that can be rescued.

Between the two of us, there's isn't much at the lake that we can't handle!

When I have to get to a plane fast, I use the Mastercraft, slower but reliable is the Yellow speed boat, for a nice pickup, I use the Duck Boat, the camo one.

Conehead
Orrin Eldred

We use the lagoon for our gas boats as well, however when my buddy forgets to bring his inflatable along, the local crab fishermen are very helpful I think they earn more from us sometimes than crab fishing.....They don't realize sometimes how heavy handed they are. In the below instance, he picked up my poor Avistar by the vertical stabilizer and broke it