squiffythewombat

just to update this thread a little:

Bought a Ripmax speed boat for spares so have combined the two. Put a new 22T motor in it and replaced the servo controlled speed controller with a tamiya ESC rated to 9.6v. Removed anything that has any weight to it and changed the rudder postioning so full left on tx means the rudder will right angle itself.

Tested last night and she actually ran really well perfectly until the battery died, much to the surprise of my friends and i. The most fun was whatching the front rise a good couple of inches as you got the power down.

Only bad point was a heavy reverse will send a sunami over the rear swapping the delicate insides, im going to waterproof them completely tonight.

Pics and onto 12v coming soon!......

Bunkerbarge

You need to set the speed controller up if possible so that it cannot give full power on reverse. It depends on the ESC itself as to how and whether this can be done but the danger is that should you loose control, such as radio batteries die etc, and it goes into full reverse the boat will swamp and sink.

squiffythewombat

ARHHHH how obvious! nice one!

yeah you can actually fully adjust the amount of power going through reverse or turn it off completely. Im very impressed with these nbew Tamiya ESC's!

We took the old girl down to the quay yesterday, beautiful day and i was rather worried about sailing it in the river where theres a strong currants and waves etc. Bloody great, it took off over a couple of waves and there was quickly a crowd of youngsters whatching!

All was going well until i started a full right rudder full power turn, did three of these in quick sucession and then lost ALL rudder control, it was stuck full right (or should i say port?) so i had to use the currants and some nifty forwards/backwards motions to get her back!

On inspection i found i had full ESC control but channel2 and the servo were not moving. I unplugged the battery pack from the rx and plugged it back in and everything was fine! I thought maybe this could be that the batteries were running out? they are the rechargable type?

Or maybe because i was laying full power down and full right servo the rx got confused? (it is a rather crappy basically futba/ripmax thing...)

Once i get my cam back i'll get some photos

Bunkerbarge

Right Rudder is Starboard but I get the idea!!!

if you have power for propulsion you should have power available for the steering servo.

I would very carefully check all connections, particularly with second hand gear where the contact faces on plugs etc may not be in the best condition.

squiffythewombat

The power for the servo comes off a seperate battery pack (4aa's in a holder) and the power for the motor from the 9.6 jobby. I will check all the connections now. Although i think im going to change the rx and tx to see if that makes any difference as the ones im using are shocking!

new to trains

you may also have found that if the rudder was hard over it jammed the servo (especially if older and second hand) , the servo as you probably know contains a tiny motor and gears, you may have been forcing the motor and geears to remain jammed (it would have been under motor stall conditions)
this could have drained the 4 x AA battery pack quickly or actually forced the servo to ' lock up' , by releasing the power by reomving the lpug things then ' free up' and everything is normal again,

__________________
just gotta keep building !

squiffythewombat

Time to update this thread a little...

Well ive now stripped the ripmax boat after having quite a bit of fun with it, got it to a good 25mph+ on the 9.6v bat with a 22T motor and 2 bladed prop.

The new boat im informed will be quicker as it has 2X motors powering 2X two bladed surface skimmer props. I have added a rudder with bearing just behind them so i will give this ago. Although after my research i noticed all powerboats had their rudders behind the props...ops live and learn.

The other thing im looking into at the moment is the fact the motors are crappy little 380's which dont run too smoothly, let alone with the 7 celled bats so im thinking some nice 540s or 600s would be good.

Alas, as everyone said the two bladed props dont half drain the batteries, can anybody remmbered some good sites to order single cells from as i prefer to solder my own up rather than pay a premuium for ready made?

As i keep promising i will get some pics up shortly, just been very busy at the moment!