The Clyde puffer is a small steamboat which provided provisions and trade link around the west coast and Hebrides islands of Scotland. These small cargo ships where made popular by the short stories about the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy.
More info and details, history etc. is Here (wikipedia)
Powered by 2 no. in parallel 6v lead acid gel batteries, 100 Amp forward and reverse speed controller and a brushed 540 motor.
Cooling for the motor and speed controller is from a battery powered pump run through a 30 Amp speed controller to give variable speed, water is draw from the bottom of the hull and passes through the speed controller, motor and exits the hull on the upper port side towards the stern.
A 4 channel FM receiver is used, Throttle, Rudder and Pump taking 3 channels.
The model weighs around 15kgs
Plans are available to download from Clydebank Model Boat Club Plans Page or from Here
A video of the Clyde Puffer that I made from the above RC Boat Plans is available Here (30Mb)
Click Here to download photo slideshow of the Clyde Puffer model - 900kb
The is a scratch build project that I have not finished, hull is complete and superstructure is in place - just needs detailing.
The ship is 1.4m long and is powered by a 6v lead acid gel battery and a 3 phase 750 rmp/v sensorless brushless motor with brushless 3 phase speed controller
Radio gear is a 2 channel AM receiver, Throttle and Rudder. The speed controller is a forward only and programmed to switch off brake and switch off soft start
The set up pull 16 Amps at full speed and the battery will last more than 30min with good throttle management.
The construction time up to now is appx 30hrs over a period of 3 months - I think the detailing will be another 30hours or more
The basic shape is taken from a paper model and scaled up to size.
Paper Ship plans for the General Artigas are available Here and the instructions Here
The scaled up Deck plan used for my model is available Here and the Hull plan Here
currently under construction -
The Hermes is a Deep Sea Salvage tug from the early 1900's
I used a CNC machine to cut out the hull formers for this project - a short video of the CNC machine in action is Here - pretty boring if you have seen a CNC machine before, pretty interesting if you have not.
The hull build has been fairly easy, but keeping everything in line has been difficult. As with previous model boats I have made, the plans where taken from a paper model ship, enlarged and adapted to make a rough set of plans to work from.
The Ship uses two 540 brushed motors with twin 220 Amp speed controllers with forward and reverse. A little bit of overkill but I would rather be looking AT extra Amp rating that looking FOR extra Amp rating.
The power is supplied by an 11 A/hour 6V lead acid gel battery which also doubles as part of the ballast to achieve a scale water line. The initial tests for floatation and balance where carried out on the hull with all drive and radio equipment fitted - a brief test of the propulsion system revealed a very powerful RC ship which is very fast in the water - I think I will have to make something for it to tow to be able to make use of the available power.
Radio gear is a 2 channel AM receiver using throttle and rudder.
The ship will be rigged with scale navigation lights and ship/deck lighting so the ship can be used at night
12 June 2007
Continued below
Click on the thumbnails for the RC ship plans for the Hermes Deep Sea Salvage Tug or Hochsee Bergungsschlepper. - scale as required
The history and other details are available Here (German Language only)
A video of the first powered launch to check the waterline and power train is Here (1.2Mb)
This was the difficult part - because there are no real plans the superstructure was build from what limited drawings and pictures I could find from the net. A bit of artistic licence has been used to get around a couple of problems and avoid remaking after making a couple of silly mistakes.
You can see from the pictures that there are twin speed controls, both rated at 220 Amps - I have decided not to use any water cooling on this ship as after repeated tests I can not get the motors or speed controls to get as hot as they do when used in my RC big foot pickup after a good run - I hope this the correct decision.
The steering servo has been sealed in place with low temp glue stick paste to stop any moisture ingress if the rudder shaft should leak.
The Deck is made from cheap 3mm ply - the planks drawn on with a pencil then scored over with a stylus. The nail holes are made with the stylus. After a couple of coats of stain, a selection of 'planks' are given extra coats to give individual coloring to enhance the planked affect.
Now the longest part of the project - fine detailing
20 June 07
To be continued
There are various schools of thought as to what class of sailing ship this is - having read through many articles I think the correct term of Hermaphrodite Brig is the correct one to use but I prefer Brigantine because the hermaphrodite bit reminds me of nights out in the wrong places in Bangkok
The build started with a foam core which was covered in fiberglas cloth and epoxy. The foam core was the hollowed out and the inside glassed - I got the ideas and techniques from watching a video on making a home made Composite Aircraft (The Europa)
You are left with a lightweight and very (I mean very) strong hull which you can stand on top of without causing damage if you so wished
To give a traditional built feel to the hull, the gunwale and buttocks (of the ship) where given a veneer of hardwood so it was hard to tell the the ship was not completely made from wood.
The deck was made from a cheap 3mm plywood which was scored and marked into planks and given a few coats of shellac dissolved in methanol (french polish stain) the score lines were lightly marked again with a black fine pointed pen before a final coat to highlight the individual plank effect
The extended keel is a 10mm x 75mm x 660mm piece of steel running the full length of the bottom of the hull - it weighs about 4 kg - this is enough ballast to enable the ship to remain upright with wind in the sails. As you can see in the photographs the steel plate also acts as an extended keel plate. The steel ballast is a compromise on the scale lines of the bottom of the hull but without the additional ballast the ship would have no chance of sailing and would turn over in the lightest of breeze due to the large amount of sail area.
Although the Sails and Hull can be scaled down, the water and wind remains full scale so the compromise has to be made unless you want to built a static model
The control system was a bit of a guess but it seems to have turned out alright - the foremast with the Square Rigged Sails is turned by a high torque JR servo donated by my helicopter - I decided to turn the whole mast as one to save on an enormous amount of rigging and control lines
The Main Mast is fore aft rigged and is controlled by a high torque servo and a winch
I added a 540 motor and speed control so avoid not being able to sail on windless days and to recover the ship if my sailing skills where not up to scratch
After the first outing I also recommend that you use high quality battery connections to save on embarrassing swims to recover a ship drifting away in the wind - see the video clips below
Channels used on my JR PCM 9x2 (9 channel)
Throttle - Main Sail winch
Aileron - Rudder
Left Lever - Speed control for motor
Right Level - Foremast left and right swing
Aux - winch
The sails where made from a nylon material which was cut and sewn to shape by a fierce lady and hand sewn into place by my totally unsuitable fat fingers - the fierce one had had enough and I thought it better not to ask her to help anymore.
A surprising amount of rope is needed for the rigging - I had to buy in more on two occasions to get the sails finished and support the two masts
As usual the most amount of time is spend on the small details - the main part is a highly simplified version of the rigging
Have a look at Jan's excellent site for more info on Square Rigged Ships
Here is a short clip of the first test in a lake and the video clip on the right is a lesson in using cheap battery connectors - 100m out and the controls go dead and when rescued the connector given the magic wiggle and all working. Range test ok - The connector had a loose fitting pin.
To avoid regular 200m round trip swims the battery connectors have been changed for high quality connectors and just for good measure a new JR PCM 7 channel receiver has been fitted
