You can now see the pins in the inner legs, epoxy will grab these and the struts are not coming lose anytime soon. Lots of epoxy from the look of all that cutting!
Now that the props and rudders are in the boat, I need to protect them from the hull getting moved around while I continue to build. Time to build a nice pond side work board that she can sit on between battles and be carried in the car. I picked two locations on the hull, and traced the corresponding ribs on paper. This will be used to make the platform to keep the hull off the board, foam tape will be between the platform and the hull.
Inside shot, still need to trim the sub-deck. The epoxy will be ground down for the rudder servos to sit next to the tubes, but in you can see the shaft supports are in there solid.
Ship is on its side getting a finishing coat of epoxy to the inside bulge area. This will smooth the fiberglass as well a further lock the ribs to the hull.
Let it be known that Lou is the first battler EVER to use chocolate pudding to secure his rudder stuffing tubes! I would've gone for tapioca, myself, but Lou is an experienced cook and battler, so I trust his judgement
Continuing on with smoothing out the insides of the fiberglass hull. This requires only smoothing 3-4 panels at a time as the hull needs to be level.
Gears are in, I need to cut the sub-deck for easier maintenance. Also started cutting back the epoxy to install the servo holders.
Dual servos, took a while to figure out how to mount them, used a screw upside down on the front to hold it in place. Will add a nut just to be sure. Entire mount made out of fiberglass sheet.
I want to be able to play with rudder angles to see what more movement on one rudder does to the ship. This is more than a simple Y-connector, this is basically using the v-tail function. In the past we have accomplished this with a wire setup, but there is always a question on does it really work... I inquired on the MWC mail list if this was legal, the response back was "yes". If it is successful, I will post results.
I am absolutely positive that it's legal I didn't think of trying differential rudder positioning via radio mixes. Interesting...
Let me get one "option" out there I think is in violation of the "spirit" of the rules. I will NOT be moving the rudders to an angle when driving forward to increase drag, and then when in reverse have the rudders go to their normal position. This setup would have the "super reverse" effect, I do NOT condone that type of setup. This is to see how much angle to put on the inside rudder during a turn to see when the boat starts to "stall out", too much rudder is a bad thing. This will also be done with the "fish tailed" rudders to see what affect everything has on this ship. What I want to capture is if this type of setup drives a wedge between the dual and single rudder ships. If it is too much of an advantage, I will play with reducing the rudders by removing the 50% they are currently allowed. Much testing to be done!
While the epoxy has been curing on the boat, I have started the boat stand and transport board. Basic shapes have been created and the first coat of primer is on the wood.
