An r/c boat!
It's a 1988 Monteleone Shark plastic boat. It's electric, of course, and has an interesting layout.
It's 670mm long, 210mm wide, and weighs around 1200g fully loaded. The drive is a 2:1 plastic gear with a 40mm prop at the end of the 4mm stainless steel axle. The hull is made of what looks to be a thick lexan (may be ABS), and has proven to be very tough over the years. Mind you, I have two boats in my posession, the second one belonging to my friend Nick Sweet who's moved to NC, USA.
At first we ran it using the supplied mechanical speed control which was basically an on/off switch operated by a servo, thus we had to also carry four AA rechargeable batteries to power the on board electronics (Rx and 2 servos). Of course we put the Trinity Water cooling system to good use: A stainless steel coil around the motor and aluminum studs for cooling the brushes. The boat has a provision for watercooling, so it just needed some fuel tubing to connect all these together! The motor used for these runs was a Trinity Monster Marine stock motor, which, if memory serves me well, is a 22X1 wind, dated 1988, complete with bushings and non-opening endbell.
As you can see in the top pic, which was taken with the brushless system installed, we removed the fuel tubing, so all the water that was supposed to go to the watercooling, goes straight up in the air! Fascinating, indeed!
All the electronics. The waterproofing strip was bought from the local hardstore for 3 euros! It's rubberized and it's supposed to windproof your windows!
The receiver inside a kids' balloon!
The complete brushless system: Mtroniks Genesis Ride.
The underside: A deep-V which handles waves very nicely!
September 2005: The first running of the boat, using the Trinity stock motor. There's a small video, there, as well.
August 2006: Installing a brushless system!
August 2006: Running the boat for a week! And with videos!
And... why all this?! Because we could! We enjoyed it too much! I used the Mtronics brushless because it's waterproof, and all my NiMH and NiCd batteries. In fact whatever works in my 1/10 cars and buggies, as well as the 1/5th scale r/c bike! I never even bothered to consider "gearing", propellers, etc... In fact I ran the boat with what came in its kit, and whatever equipment I had available. After some 10 minutes of wave bashing, the ESC and the motor were hot to the touch, but not unbearably so. We just let everything cool down for at least half an hour in the shade before getting the boat in the water again.
One of the boats however developed a few small cracks due to weather and... negligence, but these will be rectified soon, with a little epoxy. What did I miss? A proper water cooling setup for the slim Mtroniks motor and the ESC. Right now, I'm working on it with a couple of friends who are good in steel tubing and aluminum sheet... Stay tuned!
Page last updated August 25, 2006
