Tether boat pics

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JoeWScott

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2004
Messages
391
Got a few pics finally of my Uncles boats. They were given to him by a fella named Stan Landell. He was an Engineer at GM way back when. I don't know a lot of the history of the boats... He has copies of the rules, the wire setup, all kinds of goodies in that wood box.

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Can you explain to me what you mean by tether line ? and how they operate ? i really have no idea i keep hearing tether boats but never seen one or know whats the concept..

Julian
 
Hi Julian, tether boats are just free running boats, tethered to a pylon in the center of the pond. Search on youtube. I know there are videos of tether cars. The cars are incredibly fast, over 200 mph.
 
Wow those r cool as heck.tethetline boats r boats with out controls and r attach to a metal line kind of like a leader u put on your fishing pole . And is attached to a pole in the middle of lake start boat and let go and they run in a circle on that line. They have video on youtube look them up sometime. Naybe someone else can explain this more then I can.

James
 
Those are very cool, what vintage? Late 40's early 50's? Or newer? I can imagine starting that twin standing waist deep in water wrapping a cord? around the flywheel and giving it a pull, then when the motor lights getting out of the way.. How long did they run for on a tank of fuel? a couple mins? The racing back then was for timed laps? Neat stuff. Josh-
 
Timed laps I was wornding how that work. I always thought it would be cool to run them seprate on different poles at opiste side of corse so they dont hit each other or faster lap or speed wins. But that kind of raceing I think is neat kinda paved the way for us boaters today. Ya I can imagine try to use a cord to start those moters still cool as heck man.

James
 
Detroit was the center of the control-line boat universe back in the day. At that time, flash steam boats were doing 100 MPH. Most if not all of these boats were completely hand-made from machining their own engines to the hulls and hardware. Along came a little outfit named Octura and helped them out a lot by making props and hardware.

I did see a CL boat the other night on American Pickers but the owner didn't want to sell it, i couldn't blame him.
 
I have the old tether boats props.Some have over 8 inches of pitch.

Dave Roach
 
There used to be tether boat events on Green Lake in Seattle. Some of the racers moved into the R/C ranks when R/C Unlimiteds formed in the early 70s. The late Ron Erickson was one of these, having several wins in both formats and was one of the people that I learned to build boats from.
 
There were some very good articles in a few of my old RC boat magazines about some history of tether boat racing and several of the top guys who ran them.....Ed Kalfus comes to mind as he made everything for his boats including the engines.....even when he got into R/C race boats...pretty amazing stuff...wish i could find those magazines.... im sure they are here in the house somewhere.........
 
appears to be a vintage ram jet engine in that wood, so one used on a tethered airplane, amazing speed, absolutely no speed control, light it and let it go!!
 
Hi Brian, yep, I think it's called a pulse jet. I asked Uncle Scotty if we could fire it up, he said NO! Apparently those things are just incredibly loud!!

Joe
 
OH THEY ARE!! I watched an A&P mechanic at an airport i worked at fire one up....i guess it takes the right amount of air/fuel and an ignition coil and then it goes WOOOOOOOOO! :rolleyes: :eek: :D VERY loud and a very strange pitch!
 
When i was over at Joe Weibelhuas house the one time he took me to the basement he had those boats there that was unbelieveable Robert
 
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