Crate Pics!!! my buddy sent me some pics of the progress last night. this is the first of three major bunks for the hull. then there are end pieces. (see CAD drawing) I have the plywood set aside for the crate, and am going to assemble this sucker on sunday. Everything's out of my house except for the cot I sleep on and the TV I borrowed from my buddy. Park Falls and Port Polar Bear, here I come!
mockup! built the crate today, I'll post photos later. turned out great. once I get down to park falls, I'll reinforce it for regular use, but right now we're just going with "good enough to protect the boat for for four thousand miles in my truck"
Good luck! Most of my fleet is still awaiting repairs from the last cross-continent journey. Looks like you're a bit better prepared.
So..... as promised, here's the crate! things are getting officially nuts. don't expect to hear from me until after the 16th of april. All of those empty spaces, I stuffed with shopping bags and hunting knives and the like. I put my great grandpa's watch in the forward part of the hull, his coin collection in the midships, along with his zippo collection and my war medals from doing Rah Rah stuff in Trashcanistan. worked out pretty good. when the canadians ask me what is in the box, I'll be able to legit tell them "Booty".
Made it to Fast Eddy's in Tok for the Prime Rib Special. tell you what, the crate fits perfectly in my extended cab. it's basically pinned in there and cannot move between the folded up back seat and my front seats. didn't even have to tape on the lid. the lid is held on by the seats. Heading for Haines tomorrow to hang out until jumping on the ferry tuesday. Not really looking forward to dealing with the Canadians early in the morning--they're chipper in the morning and may make me unpack the whole truck. I don't blame them, if I were living next to a nest of degenerates, I'd search their cars too. But I really don't want to play Truck Tetris. *fingers crossed*
Made it to Park Falls and pestered Bob over at PPB. The Texas made it home with no damage at all. glad Dave helped me build that cradle. I'm going to buy a Taranis X7 radio etc today and start getting everything ready for that. the house is straightened up, but filled with beetles. like, to the brim. I don't care since I'm an entomologist, but it has been interesting spending so much time checking my food for beetles. Been spending all week cruising timber, and I think once I get cruiser certification done and start working as a harvest inspector, I'm going to do a deal with one of the loggers and buy some logs, then mill those suckers and build a boat from them. But that's WAYYYYY down the line. It'll be nice to have some input from PPB for these last few steps.
So. Just ordered the transmitter and receiver, BC Regulator, and since I'm in the lower 48 and can get good batteries now, a pair of those batteries that @Kevin P. suggested back on page two or three of the build thread. Hopefully I can inch a bit closer to completion before the end of May. Not like I have anything else to do at the moment.
Wow, this thread fell way down in the roster. looks like everybody is building and having a blast! I received the LiFePO batteries @Kevin P. suggested. only two right now though. things are a little nuts, so I'll get the suggested second set when money falls from the company tree. Taranis X7 and receiver have arrived too. Progress has been a little slow because I'm working like a dog to get some timber sales done, and the ranger district to the north of me needs help, so I'm spending some of my down time cruising timber for them too. And there's a girl in Minneapolis that I have a thing for. Anyways, so the new batteries clearly do not have the same space requirements as the old ones. I'm in the process of modifying the battery rack. looks like I have a huge amount of room and the boat is about six pounds lighter. sorry if the photos suck. So I have dry-placed the brackets to hold the batteries in place. but they, along with the batteries, are obstructing a lot of the bilge channel's central portion. the forward and rear ends are still wide open, but I would like to have more of the channel open for water for pretty obvious reasons. I know I'm going to be the butt of some Port Polar Bear Jokes, but I don't want to be the butt of all of them by having preventably deficient damage control. The question I pose to you all regards my following course of action: I am thinking of elevating the batteries by about 1/8 of an inch to allow the lateral passage of water under them and into the channel. again, the front of the channel is open, so water in the bow will do just fine, and the aft side is wide open. Regardless, I will be carving a bit out of the front brace in order to decrease impact to forward water flow. sort of an arch I am thinking this is prudent, as the faster the water from the midships damage moves to the channel, the faster it vacates my boat. However, this would raise the center of gravity just slightly. Considering it's only 1/8", I don't think this will be an issue, especially with such light batteries. Thoughts?
Keeping the Batts on the floor is better imho. It cheats the water into acting like your water channel is shallower than it is. Less water overall in the boat to prime the pump. I surface mount as many things as possible for this very reason.
they're intentional. If you look at the pictures of the crate on the previous page, I dismount B and D turrets to put it in the crate, and detach the barrels. I am not fantastic at gun mounting with down angles, and hope to learn by looking at other boats later this month when Port Polar Bear throws their memorial day shindig. for now, I just stuck with getting solid mounts and bent the barrels for down angle.
Finished up some soldering today and the running gear now functions! I'll probably have to set travel limits on the rudder for now, because I managed to take a decent chunk of the rudder out when it hit the prop. apparently I have a larger travel with Taranis QX7 and X8R than I did with my Airtronics stuff.
I did a water test today in the tub. Did a ten minute leak check with all of the decks removed, no leaks found, so I tested the motors, still no leaks. then I put the decks on to check load and balance the boat needs about three pounds in the bow to bring her to trim, stern looks good. the motors are throwing up quite an impressive roostertail. They had the deck a bit awash, but that was likely due to the tight confinement. (subdeck was dry, so no water came in the fantail even with all of that water roiling over the back) aside from that, the big thing I noted when I removed all of the decks afterward was that there was a fair amount of water in the hull. Why, I do not know. I pressed her down into the water to see if anything started coming in, but nothing. I removed the gear box covers, and they were bone dry. I ran the motors at full power for a minute straight and moved the rudder. I really do not know where it is coming from because there was no further infil during any of the stress tests. No leaking seams, no shaft infil, no nothing. But at least the water channel got a full test. oh. forgot to post pics of that. here they are: the cable ends are all still a mess inside the hull, so the next step will be to build a mount for the ESC, Battle board, and receiver that will be under B turret. then once I have them dialed in, I'll cut all of the solenoid lines to length and hook them up for testing. After all of that, the Pump. so. about this guy. can I just run wires from the motor to the battle board and have the pump running on a simple on/off switch on my Transmitter, or do I need to have an ESC to run it? how do you guys wire yours up? Barney-style detail would be welcome, as well as detailed pics.
depends on the rule set. I run a speed control sometimes for treaty so I can dial back the pump to legal limits, lol. For fastgun I run a relay off the pump board and short wire runs to the pump from the relay and from the relay to the power dist block. Now brushless is no brainer, lol.
I understood the first sentence. the rest...... not so much. could you translate the jargon out please? Or better yet, if you have pics or wiring diagrams, I could figure those out.
So.... CO2 tank, pressure test calve, and a set of 1" 4 blade 40 pitch props are on the way. After a while, I decided that the 1.75s were just too big to be reasonable, considering they are proud of the hull on the outside by about a quarter inch, and about 1/8" too wide in the way of the rudder. I could have gone with a 1.5 or a 1.25, but I am going to side with caution. besides, the amount of thrust I have with the 1.75 is comically large. I'll save the 1.75s for my Alaska project this winter. today was spent assembling an electronics cradle that will go under B turret, and hold the board, ESC, and receiver. I've no intent to make it waterproof as of yet. it'll just help organize all of the wires and electronics in a manner that keeps the boat from becoming a rat's nest. I hate rat nests. I still don't know how to pot or seal anything, so that will come later. Here are the photos of today's work. took a minute to get that sucker in place properly. Next step will be to trim and route the gun lines into the board, then trim and install the fuse on the motor lines. All of them are a little long, so it won't be a problem dialing them all in. the one thing I am thinking of doing for the batteries, since the board is hidden away, is cutting the line I recently built and installing some quick disconnects on them about halfway.
