Gascan, If you're looking for an I-boat BC consider Ralph Coles' superb Indefatigable Class hull. Its hull lines are more accurate than the old Swampy Invincible and I think it's Ralph's best hull. At just a tad longer and 2 lbs. heavier there's more internal space with virtually identical combat characteristics. Also at 26 sec. speed are my Warrior and Duke of Edinburgh Class armoured cruiser hulls, now sold by Strike Models. I've run an lengthened version of the hull as the 3.5 unit Defence Class vessel HMS Minotaur and had great fun with it. It's shorter than an I-boat and easily transported. Bob Pottle
Yesterday, I replaced the motors and props on my Tegetthoff. She had two RS-365SH motors directly driving three-blade 1.25" props. At 7.2V, I had to reduce throttle to 80% to achieve my allowed 25 knots (45 seconds). I replaced those with two Maxon A-Max motors directly driving four blade 1" props. At 80% throttle and 7.2V, she achieved a whopping 47 knots (24 seconds). I had to reduce throttle to 20% to achieve 25 knots. I forgot to do a full power run. I need to work on VU's propulsion a bit since she's way over-powered, but I think these motors will provide all the juice I need for my Invincible. Speaking of which, I'll be ordering that from Strike Models this week, and need to start thinking about weapons layout. What are some common Invincible layouts?
I've run 2 layouts: single sidemount port&stbd with a single stern gun in the stbd side amidships turret, and single sidemount with dual sterns. Our battles down south here seem to be closer-range rather than big open ocean affairs, and I went back to the 2 sidemount single stern arrangement after flirting with the other. Stefan (one of the junior members at age 14) runs an I-boat with two single sidemounts and a bow gun in one of the amidships turrets, and he's gotten quite good at sniping with the rifled bow gun. Side note, all the I-boats I've seen run the plain-Jane 12AH 6V lead acid battery that is so common in the hobby. You can run yours on whatever you like, but the plain old cheapie really does well in I-boats; You'll need one for the morning battle and one for the afternoon, but that should be around $30 all-up, not counting connectors. In the area your moving to, it seems to be a 50/50 mix of Deans and Powerpoles, take your pick. Also, I recommend 1.25" drive props. I used a pair of 400-size motors with those and got pretty much right on speed with 1.25" drag props on the outer shafts. If you use a pair of 550's, you might need to put drag discs on (or use an ESC) but under fast gun rules that'll let you use a 550-size motor on your pump, a good thing One 3.5 ounce CO2 bottle will be entirely adequate for the I-boat.
