Trial #5 I started this trial with high hopes of lots of speed after the successful previous trial. I changed out the old 19 turn motor with a stronger 13 turn one. |  |
| The new motor I selected is a 13 turn double SpeedGem Pro from Trinity. It is a machine wound motor that has many top of the line features. Click on the picture to the right to see a chart of both motors. Notice how much more RPM's the Trinity produces per given current. |  |
| Earlier test showed that I had a small leak in the hull. To find where the water was coming from, I stock a rubber tube in the drain hole opening and immersed the hull under water. I pressurized the hull slightly and found a few leaks along the upper and lower hull seams. The biggest one was at the rear of the boat. A few drops of thin CA glue sealed up all of the leaks. |  |
| The first run was much slower then it should be. The front of the hull was running extremely wet. I immediately brought the boat back in and adjusted the angle of the outboard back to lift the front of the hull. |  |
| Adjusting the outboard did the trick, the boat took off like a rocket leaving behind a nice rooster tail. The front of the boat was well out of the water. |  |
| I noticed that my homemade speed control was very hard to regulate. Either it was full on or completely off. The increased current of the motor must affect the usable range, I will need to modify it for this boat as it is very hard to bring the boat in slowly. |  |
| I also noticed that the steering was very touchy. It was way too sensitive. Turning the wheel more than 1/4 of an inch would cause the boat to spin out at speed. |  |
| The boat really churns up the water. |  |
| Once I got the hang of the control quirks, I found that the boat handled very well and was very fast. |  |
| You have to be careful when starting off from a dead stop. The boat will lift itself out of the water if you jam the throttle wide open! |  |
| Once it planes, the boat will handle all of the power available. |  |
| Although the steering is overly sensitive and needs to be adjusted down, the boat turns very quickly and remains flat. |  |
| The rear of the boat seems to ride a little low in the water. There may be some speed to be found in fixing that. |  |
Trial #5 - A Success I am very please with the speed of the boat, it really boogies. It is turning into a real race boat. Like any race boat there are trade offs. The battery life is short, the maintenance is high and there is always more that can be done to make it better. The thrill of high speed running makes it worth it. The boat still needs a few adjustments. I need to reduce the sensitivity of the steering, modify or replace the speed control to allow slow speed running and look at ways to bring the back of the hull out of the water more. Also, I will look at using some better batteries. Recent testing of my current "good" packs show that they are averaging only 5.7 volts at a 30 amp load for a 6 cell pack Ah, there is always something to tweak but that is what makes it fun. |  |
