Speaking of, my co-pilot Jason's boat is Non-Op. He's still down to come. I'm going to try and convince him to bring his KGV so he can work on it with Kas, Kevin et al. chipping in on ideas etc. I'll probably end up tag team driving the Texas with him if he comes, that way he at least gets some trigger time.
I can bring my packraft either way. that way if the boat goes down out past a certain depth, we just go out with the raft instead of swim/wading. my rescue line is good enough to haul the boat up. I don't know about everyone else's rigs though. That boat's carried me, a gun, a 60 pound bag, and half of a dead moose down class II whitewater, so it's solid.
What is Kas solution? I know wait till the lake freezes over, and mount tracks on the boats, like a tank? I went water skiing in January or February on Union lake, Michigan back in High school, with just swim trunks on, now that was cold. As soon as I jumped in the water I turned blue. Once I got up on the skis it was not too bad, the wind was cold but way warmer than the water. Then I hit the ice, the lake was about 50% or so frozen over at the time, and my skies stuck on the side of the ice sheet. I slid about 100 ft or so across the ice, till I went off the end of the ice sheet back into the water. My brother, and our 2 girl friends had to lift me out of the water, by that time I could no longer move, or talk. Yes I was stupid, my father told me the same that evening when we got home.
Oh hey BTW, If you guys could get a loaner ready for the guy coming with me, it'd be pretty cool. I'm hoping he'll still bring his KGV, but right now his last operational combat boat is sitting in my workshop being rebuilt. I don't think he's had a running boat for a few years.
Installed the new gear set, and am going to be testing them once the weather stops being gross. I think it should be an interesting experiment, with implications for the New Mexico build
Cool. I'll tell Jason. I made a video this morning of the new drive arrangement. it should finish uploading in the next two hours.
View: https://www.facebook.com/Papertrooper/posts/10156711368178794?notif_id=1539459490463389¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic that should work. took almost three hours to upload. gotta love rural wisconsin internet
Looks good, you have more faith in your deck seal and pump than I do haha It’s good you found a setup you like for Texas For the New Mexico I would suggest looking at my California build to see how the drive it set up, very similar boats with just a beam difference. Go with 1.5” to 1.75” props, drive shafted toed in with props touching. Rudder should just clear the blades, rudder height either prop diameter or slightly taller, and about 60/40 split with more swing aft of rudder post. Make rudder wide if that doesn’t offend you. Drag shafts will help too. I’d use the same BC gear boxes with 540 motors or Johnson 600s. Depending on the stern shape below the water line, also try to get the props ‘under’ the hull as much as possible to serve as a thrust ‘roof.’ Some hulls are better for that than others. In my time experimenting with different drive setups I’ve been surprised how much difference small changes in placement can make, so I typically make the props and rudder actually touch then grid off wherever the contact point is. Good luck next weekend, I won’t be making the trip to MI this time, I’ve had a busy few months and need some reset time
Has anyone ever done a direct comparison of “toed-in vs not” shafts? I have always looked for two near identical ships in one place where I could compare. It has never happened for me. Ships that were very close always had other differences that had to much impact. Theoretically I know it should be better and my Radetzky (Zrinyi) is set up “toed in”. I would just really like to see something a bit more “scientific”.
Aw bummer. Yeah I looked at your CandyCornia a while back. I was thinking of running a pair of 1.25 props almost touching to generate an extremely tight thrust cone with about a 50/50 split rudder with a fishtail profile. Once I get the mockup laid out (learned a new trick a while back where you mock up all the ribs etc with the 1/4" foam presentation poster boards and do the layout first before you cut any wood), I'll play around with the prop sizes and see which is best for what I'm trying to do. I figure the ideal will be to have 90-100% of the thrust cone blocked by the rudder when it's hard over will do the trick, so at least part of my layout/prop size will be based on the final dimensions of the rudder. I checked the width of the GB500 here a second ago, and if I have those guys side by side and touching, it still gives me enough clearance to run a 1.75 prop. looks like anything smaller would require a toe-in. Considering the performance of the 1" 40 pitch props, I'm looking at running the smallest props possible with a 14:20 or 14:18 gear ratio. At some point, I think the issue would then become acceleration, so a 1.25-1.5 might be where I go. meh. we'll see where I go once I get the Mockup cut and built.
want to test it? like, seriously? We'll need to build ten boats minimum. say the five classes of STBs. They're incredibly similar, so that will help with analysis. two of each. one "toed in" and one not. identical in every other way. We'd need to define the control and experimental concepts. We'd need to define the units of measure. battery voltage, temperature, turn radius, speed, gear ratio, everything would have to be accounted for. I have friends who can get access to some video analysis software to get a full measure on it. just put white ping pong balls on the boat as reference points and it's good to go.
I’m not really interested in optimization so much as proof of concept. Two identical ships with the only difference being the shafts. I was leaning toward using my Tennessee (bulged) for it eventually.
The Tennessee is pretty close in hull profile and performance to the New Mexico. it'd be a matter of video footage at given speeds.
I like the toed in setup for more than just Theoretic performance. I find that the best place for a bilge pump is between the drive motors. Keeps everything more compact.
I'm thinking something similar, but reversed. motors tight together, with the pumps to either side. Anywho, figured I'd jump on before heading to work. I'll load pics tonight, but suffice to say, I took on Craig's Baden, his VDT loaner, and occasionally squared off with Mark and his Graf Spee. If you're thinking "None of those encounters probably ended well".... You're right. it was fun though. my trigger finger's not up to speed, so every time I got alongside the Baden, I had maybe like two shots to his eight or ten. Buttons are in order. But in spite of maneuvering like a puking dog, and having my systems fail on sunday one-by-one until all I had left was a single shaft turning and my haymaker, I still landed a few punches. And will be using Mark and Craig's ideas to turn the boat into a reliable, semi-effective platform.
