Trial #1 Looking pretty stealthy. The boat sits very low in the water but no modification to the ballast was necessary. |  |
| The boat is very fast, a little too fast in fact. The boat uses two 550 motors which draw a good amount of current. I got two hours out of the batteries but that was with me running the boat at slow speed for most of that time. At full speed, battery life would be quite a bit less. Smaller motors with gear reduction would give more realistic speed and longer battery life. |  |
| This boat dives like crazy. It is very easy to dive the boat and get it to stand on it's nose! I don't think the automatic depth control system is working. There seems to be to much friction in the mechanism so I'll have to take a look at it back at the bat cave. |  |
| With the automatic depth control unit sticking, the front dive planes forced the front of the boat down causing the rear end to ride a little high as pictured here. Also when diving, once the front of the boat went under you immediately had to issue an up command to the rear dive planes to keep the boat from heading straight down. I think that a little adjustment is all that is required to get this boat working very well. |  |
| Even running at very low speed, the boat was easy to dive. |  |
| Surface cruising required that a little up command to the rear dive plane to keep the boat from diving while at speed. |  |
| At the end of the first day, I pulled the boat out to discover that one of the props had come off. I did not tighten them enough. I've ordered another one from my friends at Westbourne Modeling Centre and will resume testing when it arrives. | Trial #1 Results Some adjustments are needed but the boat appears to work well. Propellers should have some lock-tight applied and be tightened down firmly. The automatic depth control should move freely with no binding. Rear dive plane movement may need to be reduced to prevent out of control diving. |
Trial #2 Trial #2 was cut short due to excessive traffic on the water. A bunch of Thunder Tiger Victoria sailboat were racing and I didn't want to get in there way. For the time I was able to run my boat, it continued to exhibit diving problems in that the rear of the boat would rise so far up that the props would come out of the water! I tried adjusting the bow dive planes level but it did not make much difference. |  |
| I believe that I need to shift the ballast rearward. At speed on the surface, the front on the boat was a bit lower then the rear. | Trial #2 Results I managed to get the automatic depth control system working but I was not able to test it due to stern coming out of the water when initiating a dive. I need to move the ballast back slightly and try it again. During this trial, I gave up on trying to dive and just motored around on the surface. I got much more battery life then what other people have reported. I ran the boat about 30 to 45 minutes and still had some juice left when I brought it in. I'll time the battery life once I get it to dive properly. |
| More later... | |
