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A real beauty. Now Don't let Luke, Wedge or Biggs crash her onto a deserted rock.

I bought a pair of Mtroniks Viper 15 Marine ESCs, one of their W-tail Marine Mixers, plus another Flysky 6-channel set to electrify this ... on paper the W-tail mixer should do exactly what I want - increase the speed of the "outer" motor & reduce the speed of the "inner" motor in any turns, but on the bench the results are bizzare, the motors should act in unison without any rudder input, but doesn't - one is way behind the other in reaction time & RPM. With rudder input at moderate throttle, one will speed up (expected, though less dramatically would be better), the other, given enough rudder, will go into full reverse.

It's not much better with servos standing in for the ESCs - one is still slow in reacting & doesn't turn as far, though it did give me a bit of insight into how the speed increase/decrease (seen as angle increase/decrease on servo horns) should/could work. I may try it with a pair of "less smart" ESCs (i.e. ones that need setting up, rather than being plug & play, but I cant see the delay in reaction time of the second ESC, and lower RPM ever really working out...

Using a y-lead instead of the mixer showed the motors both behaved the same - so It's not the motors, and not the ESCs either... in this configuration I tried it in the bath - with the weight of the battery right in the bows it sits fairly level & doesn't lean, it sits quite a lot higher than the marked waterline but TBH I always felt that looked wrong - for a model boat anyway.

I'm pretty sure both props (one left handed, one right) are both providing thrust in the right direction, it certainly seems to move a lot of water (yellow & blue wires on one ESC go to red & black motor leads on one side, black & red on the other). ... Crew members seem to be struggling to hold on + the bows lift & stern squats down under power.

My Vosper RTTL looks powerful in the bath too - then needed a substantial motor upgrade to get up on the plane on open water, but this is supposed to be a bit slower so I'd guess it's about right

Amazing! Maybe for your servo you have emc perturbations? Try to arm wires or separate each servo wires and put motor wires on a boat side and servos wires on the other side. And put a capacity on motors.
I had some problems like these at work on ZOE.

I'm so looking forward to see a video of this on a lake or something!

larbut wrote:

I'm so looking forward to see a video of this on a lake or something!

100% +1

Got this down to give it a bit of a clean - between dust, cat fur & more dust it was pretty grim. 


I repaired a couple of thing that got broken the last time I moved it including one of the grab line stanchions at the back - I drilled out the broken ends & used part of a paperclip to reinforce the inevitable epoxy.


I also found an 8.4v NiMH pack that I'd assumed lost - thought I must have left it in one of my vintage Bigwigs when I sold them

I can see bleaching on the labels on two of of the cells, plus corrosion on the contacts for the sticky-out extra cell, plus the card insulation disks so I'm going to assume it's no more good. I've never had an NiMH cell detonate, and I'm not about to chance it. 

Bit irritating as if I'd put it away properly it would have got included in my occasional battery maintenance / use & would probably have still been ok.



 

I had similar experience many years ago with a battery I had forgot. Back then batteries with low mah capacity was cheap enough, not so much today...
One of my cells did almost fry as it got really hot while the others was lunk. From that point it ended it's life in the skip. Not worth getting it blowing up in the face.

Nice to see updates on old projects