bought the bare hull off e-bay which was coverd in black spray paint yuk.

MY 34 inch and 46 inch Aerokits Fireboats are readied for the lake. The 46 inch is covered elsewhere in the gallery but the 34 inch was recovered a couple of years ago from a hulk and fitted with a 220 watt 1050 kv bruhless motor. With a 10.8 NiMH and 40mm 3 blade brass prop it looks great on the water.

This is a lighter version of my MK1 previously posted, lighter by some 80g, and having a slightly larger prop, I assumed it would be faster, the reality was that the X438 was too much, so will go back to an X435. it ran a bit wet as well, so now I have adjusted the angle of attack on the prop, which should sort things out. The 6 inches of boat tip in the pond was my Arowana 22.5" mono, it flipped and a hatch clip failed, and that was the end result, so I was trying to nudge it in, and I failed, luckily my brother is good with a fishing rod and recovered it.

HI to all you Fire Boaters,
I have decided to finally bring my Fireboat out of the closet and up for inspection.
This is the first of my many boats I am showing, I will probably show others in the future.
I started to build her back in 2006 after being off work and having a shoulder operation. She was not going to be a R/C boat, just a bit of something to do whilst on recovery.

I have a 34" still in the box unmade, purchased back in 1994 from Aerokits.
I drew round all the parts and then shrunk them on my scanner. She is 27" long I think that's
just fraction over 1/20th scale . She is almost all balsa except the 2 under skins that are balsa laminated with 1/64th ply. The hand rails are 1/4" balsa blocks I cut from a strip and the rail is ally tubing.
The mast is made from plastic strip from packets from the model shop.

When I returned to work she was put into the shed and left unfinished.
I stumbled across the Fireboat website and registered in 2009 when I was off work once again. This then made me think more about working on her again and I decide to turn her into an R/C model. So out she came and I fitted an Electomax Delta 480bb motor and a M3sonik esc.
I also purchased a couple of Robbe fire monitors, put them together shortening the nozzles and cutting the bottom of the base of to try to look a bit moreto scale. I know they are not the correct type but if I want to go down the road of getting them working then these ones will.

Then off I went to Wilkinson's and bought some paint. Then set out to paint her, as I brushed on the paint it seemed to be drying almost as quick as I was painting her. Dragging the paint I had just put on with next brush stroke. What a TOTAL DISASTER !!. I gave up on her and back into the shed she went.

2010 arrived I started again rubbed the paint down a bit and bought some Tamiya spray acrylic and started spraying, underside red, it seemed look all right. I used a nice new roll of low tack masking tape, taped up the underside and the decking and sprayed on the black on the sides. I thought that look all right. Took off the masking tape, which also took off the red paint and the dope from the decks. Another DISASTER. Back in the shed she went once again.

A couple of months went by and I was up in Norfolk on my own boat and watching the workers in the boatyard, ideas came to me and when we returned home, out she came and I repainted the sides
and then with red oxide paint I painted her undersides to make it look like antI foul paint. I used some white stripe to cover the join of the two different paint colours.
I had bought some roundels in Anglia Model Shop in Gorleston and some lettering in a shop in Norwich and after painting put these on.
Not looking fantastic but passable I was a little happier with her, but still not satisfied, back in the shed she went again.

Now after so much nagging from my brother out she has come, I've started again. He talked me into changing and trying a brushless motor and a smaller esc he had in his tool box from his helicopter he was shelving as its rota head was damaged beyond repair.
I have now fitted them and if they work I will change the esc to a forward/ reverse esc in the future at some point.

Sea trials are still away off more than likely in the spring, because the decking has yet to be painted. That will be the next job.

I think that's all for now, as I have probably bored you all to tears. I hope update as I progress further.
Just to let you know I'm Tom (alias BOATSHED).

I'm currently restoring a 34" Crash Tender and from finished pictures I've seen I was wondering how did people go about making those great hatches.

So I thought I'd have a go, I think it looks about right, well better than before anyway. I hope these pictures help anyone else wondering about rebuild of hatch covers.

Used a small amount of basswood and balsa.

1. The sorry state of the Hull on the Fire Boat. Purchased from Ebay about 6 months ago, only now just started working on refurbishing it, it was covered in car body filler.

2. After about 2 weeks of very hard work it looks much better. it is running on a Johnson 600 size motor and 6v Gel Battery for its first sail at the Cwmbran Model Society tomorrow, so I hope that is will be OK. it does not appear to be an Aeroits model as the cabins remove from the hull. Not just the Cabin tops. I will try and supply some action photo's later.

after it first outing to the Cwmbran model boat show last weekend ,I spent some time getting her to look right,and hopefully Iam nearly there,even made a weather cover for the back

This Sea Comander was another disaster, rescued from fleabay a couple of years ago as a 50s/60s bare shell. Whilst the hull was basically sound, the model needed considerable surgery. I resisted the temptation to cover it in modern fittings and have kept it original looking. Power is an electric 800 motor on 12 volts with 2 channel 27Mhz R/C. Performance is reasonable, particularly as I have lightened the original internal structure considerably. A big 7AH battery lasts for ages but for speed I use a small 2.5AH one. Owner sails at Warminster Model Boat Club, Wiltshire.

This is a video of my re-make of the Aerokits Sea Queen. Build commenced in the autumn of 2006 and it was to be a winter build project for when the weather was too bad to fly R/C elec planes. The boat was finished mid 2007 and was launched in May.

My closest water to sail on is Lake St Clair, but one slip up and the boat's next stop would be Canada. its seen here sailing in the confines on an ornamental pond in Wahby Park, St Clair Shores, Mi, USA. The music has been added to cover up the sound of fountain just out of picture to the right.

The supplied motor has been replaced with an MFA Torpedo 850 which has substantially more power and 3x the RPM.

A week before the video was taken I lost the prop and its seen here running on a temporary prop while I awaited a replacement. The performance on the video is a little more sedate than normal.

More info & pics in the photo gallery

My Amsterdam is done from an old Latina kit. it has the board on frame hull construction of the older kits. I've done some modifications from the kit such as, larger bridle winch, bridle assemblies, extra aft deck detail, lowered engine room cover, brass lifting boom, recessed anchor pockets, enlarged rudder and various miscelaneous detail changes.
John

These pictures are of a scale model of Captain Joshua Slocum's "Spray". it was sailed around the world, singlehanded between 1895-1898. Slocum re-built a Delaware oysterman hull in Fairhaven, MA and had been a gift to him.

After reading of his exploits in an original copy of his book, 'Sailing Alone Around The World' 1899 The Century Co., John copied the drawings that were in the book, established a scale for each and then converted those scales to just one - 1"=14.6" and proceeded to make a model of the famous boat. At that time [2003-2004] there was a commercial kit available but after much research John concluded that he had enough information from the book to build his own version. Actually the available kit contained some mis-information about the boat and that settled the matter.

The model was built plank-on-frame and then covered with epoxy/glass since it was intended for RC. He sailed her during the summer of 2004 and was quite pleased with her performance. An opportunity to sell the model came to him and he did so in January 2005.