CapeTown73
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2007
- Messages
- 180
Our club management decided to lay on a year-end fun day last Saturday and the main event of the day would be a 2-hour endurance race for all and any gas boats. Eventually there were 8 pilots entered who felt brave enough to tackle the 2-hours of hard work! Four cats, and four ‘V’-bottom monos.
The race would be run around our standard ‘M’ shaped ‘off-shore’ course which meant that any gas riggers would automatically be excluded because we know riggers can’t turn left at speed,................... or can they ???
I decided to do a small mod to my gas JAE by adding a straight, smaller than normal, fin to the inside of the left sponson, with the hope that I might just be able to do a sweeping left turn around the inside of buoy 3 even if I had to come off the throttle slightly to do so.
During the practice half-hour before the race I was allowed to do some laps with the rest of the entrants to determine if my boat could negotiate the left turn section of the course in an acceptable manner. Well, to my absolute surprise, it turned left very well, even at fair speed ! So I decided to enter the race but that I would just run an occasional (maybe just 2 or 3) tanks of fuel with the other boats during the 2 hours and that I would stay out of their way and run wide wherever I could.
Now I was about as badly prepared for this race as one could be! I had no idea how many laps, or how long my boat could run on a tank. I also did not have a ‘pit-mac’ to help me so I would have to rely of getting any one of the other pilot’s pit-macs to assist me with starting up and launching my boat.
To cut a long story short, with the help of my good friend Neil (who was pit-mac for one of the favourites to win), I eventually got on the water a good few laps after everyone else. Well the excitement of racing this excellent boat and finding it’s great handling to continually surprise me as I pushed ‘the envelope’ more and more, I ran the full race with the exception of a few problems that probably had me off the water a few times for about half an hour total. I ran out of fuel a few times (fortunately we had a dead-boat rescue service during the race), I hit buoy-1 at full speed once, and hit a submerged rock near the bank on the other side of the pond, so I had a fair amount of repairs to the prop and rudder during the race.
We had a fairly strong wind blowing across the pond towards us so the main straight was wild! I eventually ended in 4th place and the attached photos show my rigger in various stages of ‘flight’. This boat handled the rough water as well if not better than most of the V’s and cats and I was eventually lapping the entire field about every 5 or 6 laps.
This was absolutely the most exciting and enjoyable RC boat race of my life and I can’t compliment the designers of this excellent rigger enough. Roll on 2011 !!!
The race would be run around our standard ‘M’ shaped ‘off-shore’ course which meant that any gas riggers would automatically be excluded because we know riggers can’t turn left at speed,................... or can they ???
I decided to do a small mod to my gas JAE by adding a straight, smaller than normal, fin to the inside of the left sponson, with the hope that I might just be able to do a sweeping left turn around the inside of buoy 3 even if I had to come off the throttle slightly to do so.
During the practice half-hour before the race I was allowed to do some laps with the rest of the entrants to determine if my boat could negotiate the left turn section of the course in an acceptable manner. Well, to my absolute surprise, it turned left very well, even at fair speed ! So I decided to enter the race but that I would just run an occasional (maybe just 2 or 3) tanks of fuel with the other boats during the 2 hours and that I would stay out of their way and run wide wherever I could.
Now I was about as badly prepared for this race as one could be! I had no idea how many laps, or how long my boat could run on a tank. I also did not have a ‘pit-mac’ to help me so I would have to rely of getting any one of the other pilot’s pit-macs to assist me with starting up and launching my boat.
To cut a long story short, with the help of my good friend Neil (who was pit-mac for one of the favourites to win), I eventually got on the water a good few laps after everyone else. Well the excitement of racing this excellent boat and finding it’s great handling to continually surprise me as I pushed ‘the envelope’ more and more, I ran the full race with the exception of a few problems that probably had me off the water a few times for about half an hour total. I ran out of fuel a few times (fortunately we had a dead-boat rescue service during the race), I hit buoy-1 at full speed once, and hit a submerged rock near the bank on the other side of the pond, so I had a fair amount of repairs to the prop and rudder during the race.
We had a fairly strong wind blowing across the pond towards us so the main straight was wild! I eventually ended in 4th place and the attached photos show my rigger in various stages of ‘flight’. This boat handled the rough water as well if not better than most of the V’s and cats and I was eventually lapping the entire field about every 5 or 6 laps.
This was absolutely the most exciting and enjoyable RC boat race of my life and I can’t compliment the designers of this excellent rigger enough. Roll on 2011 !!!
