It's ashamed I can't mount a flux but wait till you see the ESC I'm working on. Brushed, 40A, full fwd & rev, no silly self calibration, $20.
The ESC will be a melding of two commercially available products. As far as shaming your work, I don't think so. You haven't seen me do a scratch build unlike yourself.
i too am envious of your modeling skills very nice work you do thank you for sharing it with us i learn a lot from your builds
Maybe so, but I sure would like to see you scratch build a boat. Question for you, how do you determine the shape you need for the internal ribs?
Caleb, Two methods I've used to get the lines off a hull are with a contour gauge or pressing a soft iron or copper wire into the hull. Not exactly warships but past scratch built projects. The pram I built in 8th grade woodshop and the kayaks to my own design 15 years and 40 pounds ago.
I'll look at LiPo, or more specifically LiFe when my local Harbor Freight starts selling packs for cheap!
True. Certainly as good as the Hobby King stuff for sure! It all comes from the famed People's Battery Factory #3 produced on quality American made and tested production machinery (said machinery being moved from Ohio to Shanghai to pad the quarterly income statement of 123 Systems and EverReady). Production is tightly controlled by the American owners of said production equipment, until that is the third shift when production continues and different logo stickers are loaded up. Of course production is no longer subject to foreign licencing fees (just look at the stickers) and it can be sold for a song to HF and HK and thus said production eventually finds it's way into Allied AND Axis boats!
Hardly any AXIS boats use Red Chinese equipment, the builders in the EU (Reich) would not be pleased. Only the finest German designed and assembled by Sicilians, Turks and Gypsy's
The water channeling starts to go in. Since this hull has a nice flat bottom I decided to build the channeling using layers of 1/4" ply. The plywood is "Sande" ply from Home Depot. It's a step up from Luan in that it passed the overnight soak test without delamination (Luan fell apart) and it's cheap. The frames are 1/4" hobby grade plywood (not cheap). A note to any new guys that may be reading this. The frames aren't necessarily required. I like to add them in my builds to keep the hull stiff after the windows have been cutout. To get the shape of the first layer I traced the flat section from the bottom of the hull. The first layer is being glued in with PL Premium urethane based construction adhesive. Many home boat builders swear by this stuff and in my testing it stuck pretty good to the fiberglass (once it was scuffed up). Urethane's are water cured so I wiped the wood down with a wet rag before applying. The black dots represent the contour of the next layer. Gaps between the ply and motor mounts will be filled with epoxy paste. On to the next layer....
I know everybody loves build pics so here's today's allotment. To scribe the second layer of channeling I used this custom gauge. The little bit of wood is the same thickness as the ply I'm using for the channeling layers. It worked pretty good but deviated in the aft section a bit so adjustments were in order. The second layer will have cutouts for the batteries so I had to determine the location. Had to add some putty in areas to ensure a good seal for the second layer. Second layer ready to go in. Note cutouts for pump, motor, batteries, and CO2 bottle. PL Premium applied to ensure good sealing around the edges. After cure. The glue expanded a bit which works for me. The third and last layer of channeling will be fitted more precisely. I didn't scribe from the bottom as before due to the small errors from the second layer. To get precise lines I used a bit of wood and a spacer piece. The wood was soaked with marker ink and I was able to draw the lines as shown. The lines will be traced onto the pattern paper. Found these gears at my local hobby shop. Should be a rudder mechanism in there somewhere. They're made in Germany so my apologies to Carl for using such high quality components in an allied boat. Till tomorrow......
What has quickly become a tedium filled process, my over the top water channeling scheme continues. Besides gluing down the channeling with it, I'm trying PL Premium as a waterproof coating. Coated areas get a tan color and a rubbery texture. After the channeling is done, I'll be painting the bilge with Kilz stain-block latex primer for additional sealing and a nice uniform white color. Between glue-ups I've started working on the controls. Here we see a $10 4A/5V Vex "Motor Controller 29" wired into a $10 43A/48V H-Bridge module. So far this setup looks promising and there will be a separate thread on this shortly.
