| I would imagine the first trials with a boat are slightly less nerve racking than with an aircraft, presumably so long as the model doesn’t sink there’s not a lot that can go wrong that would be terminal.
Having said that I remember my brother and myself converting a model cabin cruiser to radio control when we were lads. It was the old single channel radio gear with a rubber-powered escarpment, no servos in those days!
Everything worked fine in the bath so it was off to Abbey Park pond. We sent the model straight out from the bank, press and hold the button and the model turned right, release and straight ahead. So far so good, another press and a left turn started, release the button, the model continued to turn left and proceeded to complete left hand circles gradually getting further and further from the bank.
Luckily not far away was the paddling pool with several kids in bathing trunks; a bit of bribery soon got one the lads to agree to a trip in the big pond to recover the model. He waded out and got hold of the model but on the return leg to the bank he decided it would be easier to swim, the problem was he did a very rough version of the crawl! Our shouts were to no avail and the model was duly returned full of water.
Surprisingly enough we took the circuit board out from the case, put it in the oven on a low heat and it was soon back working as good as it ever did, which isn’t saying a lot!
After that we went back onto aircraft. Although the models usually crashed, they were relatively cheap, it was the radio gear that was expensive, we thought we were very lucky to get away with one thorough soaking and didn’t want to repeat the experience. |