After 20 years of travelling around the globe in containers, sailing in croc waters in Aussie, snake invested lakes in Thailand, and attacked by occasional swan in ponds around New Zealand my very first RC yacht an ORGINAL KYOSHO FAIRWIND now see's the light of day in Germany.

She looks fit enough to take any aggressive WELZ fish commonly found German ponds (don't know the English name for those fisherman out there) however, she needs a total revival before she can be ready to sail again.

Basically I have complete hull (less rudder) and mast & booms, everything else has been robbed by my sailing buddies (namely my sons) for building their own RC Yachts.

First thought is to start with the hull where has lots of holes left by the railing screws, never had any experience ABS any ideas ? Darth has idea to put wooden deck on her, which thought was great idea, once again had not experience there either ?

Photo's below and any advice or ideas would be real glad to hear them.

Cheers

WOO HOO!!! It looks like it's a go for you KoneWone! I think you've just inspired me to get moving on mine too..... bought all the parts and everything for her yonks ago but never really got going because I'm trying to strip off the old paint (not easy when it's 15 year old aerosol spray and you're dealing with ABS under it) and I haven't figured out how to give her a timber deck.

Once I've figured out the timber deck I'll STILL use the holes around the gunnel for their intended purpose- to install the stanchions for the pulpit railing (which you can buy replacements for) and install the timber over the rest of the deck.

It's amazing- Fairwind is well over 20 years old but is still one of the better yachts out there and still available in GenIII guise today. Definitely one of Kyosho's masterpieces.... and parts are still readily available. Sails, rudder, NO PROBLEM!

Oh... but junk the servo board. The consensus over at the Fairwind's home page here is that it's rubbish. I'd tend to agree and when I rebuild mine it'll be just a solid piece of plywood epoxied into the hull with just cutouts to receive the servos.

Do it that way and you can use a 1/4 scale sized proper sail winch servo- in my case it'll be the Hitec HS785HB (also already bought yonks ago) which'll give it a nice "scale" gradual sheeting-in action!

Go for it mate...... I might just get started (again) on my own Fairwind's restoration and tag its story to this thread!

Darth

Ha your Soi Cowboy shot requires a bit of imigination but works for me.

All the best with your restoration project , keep us posted .

Cheers ,

James

Oh.... but if you DON'T want to restore the pulpit railing and just want to plug the holes around the gunnel, just use some epoxy putty (any hardware store) and fill in the holes with that stuff..... it'll sand level easily and a couple passes with a aerosol spray and you'll never know there's holes there.

Darth

Love the Beneteau look Darth (without pulpit railing) will do some research with balsa decking with black silicon, surely someone has done it? Making curves with balsa should be relatively easy with a steady hand, will get some 2moro & try it out on the bench.

Hey thanks for the US parts suppliers, get order off tonight.

Will be making complete servo box with continous loop winch, but will work on hull first, have made sail board and progress on making sails is going really well, just need to make a few to get the hang (experience) of broad seaming with double sided tape avoiding puckers, it is much easier than I thought, calculating the panel draft line percentages into angles is the only hard part, but a spread sheet fixes that. happy to share it with you if your interested.

Hey James, will drop e-mail off to Alibaba asking for address to inspect goods before TT and shipping, will let you know if we get a response ... however sounds like real genie in a bottle from what you and 959 have been saying, put worth checking out all the same... some wishes do comes true

Cheers Alan

James, seems that Alibaba is something like a Asian trader (dodgy maybe)

James I have the adddress

Good to see you got the ol girl out again. The Fairwind has such a nice shape to it. I'm sure you'll do a great job! Steve

Allan , i know where Bekasi is , it's either 40 mins or 2 hours away depending on traffic.

i should be able to get out there sometime next week for a look.

Will send you a PM with some contact details.

Cheers ,
James

Hi James, ah good old Asian traffic that's about the only thing I don't miss, look forward to your mail.

Darth, religious holiday here today, nothing open so will get the balsa 2moro.

Looking at the curves on the deck, it does not look that difficult to get the shape right, what do you reckon about adding some sort of black tinting substance into epoxy when decking, can imagine silicon or similar would be nightmare to sand and varnish ?

KoneWone , PM sent .

james

For all the faults of the FW, it still is a good boat. Best of luck with your project.
A few pointers from my building experience. I built 20 boats for the local yacht club. Scrap the radio box and use cross beams (suggested in an earlier post). Fill the corners of the transom with a little epoxy and filler. Use wax to hold the ballast in place, not epoxy. Epoxy gets too hot!
The Bakersfield building guide is great, and you can find lots of info on line.
Keep posting pictures of you progress.

Dave

Thanks for your tips Dave I will incorporate those into the old girl

Well today was experimentation day with wooden decking, couldn't find anything on the net on the subject so had burn a few brain cells & I don't have many of those anyway, whipped down to the local model shop and picked up a few strips of balsa 2.5 mm thick.

Started thinking that all the problems working with strips, glue and silicon so first attempt was to cut small strip and use black ball point to imitate the lines on wooden deck, thinking if it looks ok I would cut a cardboard template of the deck and transpose it on balsa sheet and draw lines, well as you can see from the pic’s it looks ok ... but close enough ain't good enough for me, it’s gotta be perfect

Cutting strips of equal width is a hit and miss exercise so made up a jig which mounts knife blade onto it and bingo works perfectly. Next instead of gluing planks to the deck, found double sided carpet tape that is strong as hell, stuck it along one side of the deck and then simply followed the line of the rail with balsa strip ...bloody riper ! it bends nicely cool

Only had grey silicon in the workshop so ran a line along the gap, recessed it by running my finger along it and then using straight edge scraped the excessive silicon off ....unbelievably easy and looks great

Ok it’s only an experiment and it works, now need to consider the pro’s and con’s of using balsa for the deck. Need to waterproof it (wood sealer should do the trick) Should use double sided tape of glue (holding strip into place while glue sets is a pain in the butt) Need to put little tint in the varnish to give that TEAK DECK look, but not sure how balsa going to weather ? ... sigh !!! ...

Wow.... carpet tape! I can't believe you nailed it mate- I been scratching my head about that one for close on a year now!

Congratulations and now you've made it easier for me!

Thanks, buddy.... but yeah- best to go with black silicon instead of grey. The other thing is that 2.5mm balsa may be a little bit thick- are you intending to sand it down any thinner?

As for finishing for the balsa I had determine to go with staining waterproof spar varnish- it'll stain the light coloured balsa and hopefully bring the grain out some and it'll also make it waterproof to stand up to real life conditions.

What do you reckon?

Darth

Ok..... just spent a couple minutes thinking about it......

1) waterproof balsa (I'm going to use the thinnest one I can find- I think 1.5mm) with staining waterproof spar varnish;
2) apply carpet tape (again thinnest one available) to one side of balsa;
3) use stripper to strip balsa into planks;
4) cut balsa strips to make planks of varying lengths;
5) bunch strips together and mix well- so that grains of adjacent planks don't line up.... for that "realistic" look;
6) use carpet tape to lay planks down on deck;
7) fill gaps with black silicon.

I think that'll about do it. Cheers man!

Darth