Found some pictures of our 2 air boats,The big one shows what the Chain saw motor version can look like. We do not make the cages or Rudders yet, And never will in house as we are a fiberglass shop and not a wielding Machine shop. But the great running hull is always a foundation. That is useful to people who do not want to guess on a great running hull. The smaller boat shown is full size at 35"long by 16" wide.The deck over was done by the customer, we only make the bare hull for 70.00. They are great powered with a .80 four stroke or a .60 2 stroke. I do not know what the right power would be for electric. Many cut this hull down to make her look more scale and remove the rounded front with a straight flat front. We made it taller all the way around for better use in open waters.This hull has won many competitions held at the Coacoa civic center. Cocoa is the Air boat capital of the world. Having a hobby shop here. it was easy to get real knowledgeable help on these boats. In both cases. the customer has to put together the power package and rudder assembly. But hey that is modeling and you get a great foundation. Winter is coming, Air boats were Originated in Canada to get people who fell through the ice, These are fun boats in the snow. C' mon RCG lets talk boats...

Never mind

If you noticed I do not talk bad about any companies that promote model boating. What I say is based on feed back from customers all over the world. weather they are racers or just people who play with model boats for fun. Tiger king and CY and RCMK and Quick Draw for that matter are all purpose built Marine motors. Zenoha's are Air cooled motors turned into Marine motors. and stock they do not compare to what comes out of the box with the other motors. But once built they hold the records Have the biggest following. And are what most engine builders use as a foundation for there work, Even the fastest RCMK inline twins use Zenoha cylinders. I really do not give all that much credit to racers, as IMPBA and MAMBA have both dropped the ball on GROWING the hobby. There are a few thousand members in both Organisations combined. Most of them do not travel around and race. So when you have a world title in a single class you beat what ? a small handful that even make a honest attempt for it. There are plenty of model boaters out there that play in there local area's that we will never know that I am pretty sure are the homes of the fastest boats. A good exsample would be if you gave that boat you posted about to 95% of the other racers and they raced it , they would not have won. Racers make race boats and engines, Not manufactures.What's most Important though is we are talking BOATS. I was very glad when Tiger king came on the scene and there was another party pushing our great hobby. Again if you look at my post I said nothing bad about them or CY for that matter, just said they are not in the spot light.

I have used Zenoah Engines since there first release back in the late 70,s, starting off with there 2 port cylinder single coil 23cc units to the now high performance 29.5 cc 4 port stroker crank twin coil units. these engines are made in Japan and are extremely reliable plus they hold the most speed / oval race records world wide. an example of how these engines compare to other brands on the market, take a look at the CC Racing Web Site . i also am not knocking other brand names as no doubt those engines are also quite good .

I think this would look great on the Cheeta...https://www.mhz-powerboats.com/shop/...4/z-drive?c=73

The Z drives are very nice. not a performance item. So I would stay with a stock motor, mainly for practical reasons. Your boat will look awesome 90% of the time when she is at your house, she will run just fine when you do take her out and run her. Scale models are a different class then race boats. Just like Air planes, Again the best thing is we are talking Boats here on RCG.

I agree with the use of a stock engine for this hull , maybe a good tuned pipe with ample water cooling would be the go just to give the boat abit of a kick turbo effect when the pipe comes on. don,t go for a QuickDraw Hot Pipe as these pipes get too hot when fitted in a hull but they are one of the best pipes systems going , i would go for a CC Racing alloy pipe with water cooling ring plus matching water cooled manifold . otherwise any pipe unit thats water cooled will do the trick.

Apache Kemosabi, your post was good. We are just talking and talking boats is good stuff. If the Tiger king is working great in your part of the world then let us all know. things have to get there real start somewhere. I have herd a lot of good about them. Crapshooter I do not disagree that the non water cooled QD does get hot. But there deep v pipe is about all I use when building for customers that want scale looks and price is not a big deal. The deep vee version fits in the hull, works great and the heat it does make has never been a problem in any of the many builds I have used it in. Proper airing of a hull gets hot air OUT and breathable air in. Again, we are just talking boats. My thought is also that a aluminum pipe does not have the resignation of a steal pipe. Aluminum absorbs the energy waves that a good tuned pipe sends back into the motor to stuff it and give it that turbo effect you mentioned. Also if you like looks. they do look good when you take that lid off.

Here is the Hydro coming along nicely. she will get the wood in today and ready for the deck to go on. with the deck ring from the deck ring mold, you can see the deck to hull bond will be rock solid like the carbon fiber boat itself. We will blow the dust off but still need to make some more, trimming these parts, At 275.00 this great running boat is hard to beat. http://expresscraft.com/hydro.html

So I have the rails in place on the 1st Apache, they are carbon fiber, Just need to glass them in when the taching with putty dries, We have the orange C-54 laid up and are prepping the 2nd Apache now. Have the molds ready to be sprayed for the 2 Phantom 2's we have to build next.

very nice hulls there. love the cowl too , lots of work in that one.

Thank you. We got the yellow Phantom 2 hull sprayed last night as well as a radio box, I have a handful of radio boxes that we need to start making again. Just got to far behind on other things. I really want to get Expresscraft to it's potential and help grow model boating. All these years I was pulled in to many different direction, (all good) but to much on the plate, owned a hobby shop. Always over a 100 hr work week. Lucky I could do my boats at the same time. Then raising kids. How do you count the hours of that? But now on the comeback trail for Expresscraft. It's all boats and the wife is on board! Who could ask for more?

So you mentioned the C-54 cowl, I need to tell you about this boat. It is modeled after a 1 off Cigarette boat that they cut the deck off of and fitted the hull to a Skater deck and canopy. Then they added the Engine cowls. They did this to try and take the speed record away from fountain performance boats. They missed it by a few MPH but it was the fastest Cigarette boat ever made. Our model is doing great in the Superboat class of model boat racing (one of the biggest classes racing) With a inline twin she is running in the high 70's and handling very good. back to the real boat. She has been cut apart again and fitted with a nice interior and is called strength and honor with a America n flag painted on her. I love models with stories. The blue one is not finished yet. still needs some detail and clean up work done, the with picture of the model was how the real one looked when it went for the record. The picture of the real one in the shop is when they had not added engine covers yet. Only joined Skater deck to Cigarette hull. the real one at the boat show was after they did get there speeds and sponsors like peir 57. Dave that ownes Pier 57 has also got some of our boats.

I was given a Cigarette Hull complete with glow motor and radio that a friend found beached on the banks of a river some years ago. i contacted local hobby shops hoping the owner would come in and ask if his boat was found but never heard a word. it was a timber hull and no doubt a kit by who ever i don,t know.
For the average guy wanting to get into some fun off shore boating with one of your hulls , would you recommend the use of a single engine set up such as something in the 30 cc bracket. as you know alot of guys can,t afford the big twin set ups so a good single would be great .