Trial #1 This is the first time in the water after rescuing this boat from the closet. The initial run will be powered by a pair of 6 cell 1700 ma sport batteries. I noticed that with the batteries as far forward as they will go, the center of gravity is about 3 inches behind the front sponson. I think that this is a little to far to the rear but I can't fix it for this test. I have the drive shaft prop pushed all the way forward to help lift the rear of the boat to try and counteract the rear weight bias. The batteries are kind of hard to get in and out due to the limited access. Once in, they need to be positioned inside of the hull which is also a little tough to do. |  |
| The speed controller has two speeds, the first speed runs the batteries in parallel providing the motors with 7.2 volts. High speed runs the batteries in series providing 14.4 volts. The boat must be started at the slow speed or the prop will cavitate and the boat will just sit there. At max throttle, the boat is fast but not as fast as I thought it should be. It runs at about the same speed as my modified Super Hawaii. I don't think anything is wrong with the boat, I just think this is the result of using the stock plastic prop. |  |
| If the rudder is turned to hard at speed, the prop will slip in the water and start cavitating and the boat seems to stop like someone threw out the anchor. Care must be given when doing laps to get a good run. The battery packs started dumping pretty quickly. The boat ran at full speed for about two minutes. I'm guessing that the motors are pulling around 45 amps. The really odd thing is that the batteries were not all that hot, neither were the motors. I would expect them to be scorching at that kind of amp draw. Something is not adding up. Maybe the batteries are not up to snuff. |  |
| On the second run, using a pair of 1500 ma batteries, I changed the prop strut to near vertical. The front of the boat was elevated in the air a bit more then the first run but the boat speed was the same. The packs started dumping again after two minutes and did not get very hot. I discovered that one of the motor gears came off during the run. I think this happened near the end of the run but maybe this explains the lack of speed. I put the gear back on and made sure all was tightened. |  |
| The third and last run was done on a pair of 7 cell 1500 sport packs. I used 7 cells this time to see if the boat would go faster. It didn't. That tells me that the motors are producing more power then can be delivered to the water. I'll be looking for a new prop before running this boat again. When the packs started dumping, again after around 2 minutes, I managed to hit a duck.....no, not a real duck but a submerged decoy duck that was anchored by a piece of fishing line. |  |
| The collision with the decoy duck ripped the turn fin from the sponson but did not do any permanent damage. |  |
| The collision also caused the rudder to be pushed back as designed. Wouldn't you know that I would end up testing the safety features. |  |
Trial #1 This boat needs a better prop because it is just too slow. Until that is done, it's not worth trying to dial in the boat. The run times are sooooooo short. For me, this distracts from the fun factor greatly. This one may be returned to the closet if I can't improve on the run times. | |
