Scratch built SDM MkII tug 1/48 scale.

Hull started out as polystyrene foam and plywood. Started July 29,2006 and in the water by Aug. 11th for sea trials. Detailed over the following 18 months.

The model is powered by 12vdc using Graupner Speed400-2.33:1 gear drive, and the small Graupner Schottel drives #1761. Separate ESC and Steering control for each drive.

The Lighting is 3mm LED cast into clear, or tinted, polyurethane lamps.

It sails the Pacific Northwest, USA, homeport Portland, Oregon.

W165 was built by Roger Forlines, he's a member of Shelton Scale Ship Modelers R/C boat club.

This boat took six months to build and is to Scale as laid down by model manufacture, the boat was weathered to depict a long voyage on the north seas.

Also, the Jim Wilder tug, this took four months to build and has been built to look like a turn of the century steam tug which worked the San Fransisco bay area.

The last picture it is dressed up for Christmas.

I rescued my PT Boat from EBAY in August 2005. it was owned by a young boy in Birmingham whose Dad had built if for him. it is an original Aerokits kit Fast Patrol Boat. When I bought the boat it had a sound hull with a few damaged fittings, which I removed. Since then I have made new guns, extended the front cabin to carry the life raft to make it look like a late World War II Elco PT Boat and added other new fittings.

I have made 6 working exhausts in brass tubing, have fitted a new open prop shaft running an Octura race prop and a Merco 61 glow engine. it still needs torpedos, guard rails around the machine gun turrets and a few other fittings. The number 349 is from an original Pacific Theatre 80' Elco PT Boat whose name in Bee Bee, which I hope to add at a later date.

I have also painted it in an original Pacific Theatre camouflage from a PT Boat book which I bought for reference and to make it look like a standoff scale model. This boat was also photographed by the local Burton Upon Trent newspaper at the Fireboat day in September 2006. I ran this boat at the Burton Model Boat Club's Fireboat day in September 2006 briefly until I broke the exhaust manifold and had to retire it early.

This model is a British "Hunt" Class destroyer.

It is a Sirmar limited edition (100) semI kit at 1/48 scale and some 6 feet in length. When he bought the model it was already constructed, but as a static model. So out came the jigsaw, Manual NOT powered.

The deck around the aft gun turret was cut to allow a good inspection of the inside of the hull. He tried to remove the bridge superstructure but this would have meant destroying it to remove. Out came the jigsaw again and cut an access hatch in the main deck.

The steering servo was fitted and attached ( by keyhole surgery ) and 2 x MFA 800 motors were fitted. Scale Prop Shop Props were fitted and the radio gear just jury rigged for her first trial. She was roughly ballasted with 2 x 12volt 7Ah batteries and she was ready for her first trials.

She sailed well with no water ingress to the hull, so the radio gear was installed properly with individual speed controllers to each motor. The results are as seen here.

"BOO BOO Kitty" is a scale model of a Crosby designed Cape Cod Cat Boat.[USA] it was built from scratch at a scale of 9.04" = 1"; the model being 26.5" oal.

The dimensions were taken from a book that highly detailed the building of a real Cat Boat.

The hull is plank-on-frame with epoxy and glass cloth as the final surface. A separate and detachable fin keel was used for sailing of the centerboard model.

Radio controls were a Hitec sail winch [HS-785HB] and one servo for the rudder with a 2 channel JR transmitter.

Copying the book plans, scaling them down, and construction took up the winter of 2006/2007. The model is sailing better than anticipated on a local lake in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

John called this model "Nancy Dancer". it started of with plans from 'Nexus Plans Service' for Vic Smeed's 'Vivacity'. John used the hull only plans and created everything else himself. it ended up LOA 49" with a beam of 17". With the 12VDC battery the weight came to 23 1/2#.

Because of his basic 'Sedan Cruiser' he designed all the mechanicals and electricals beneath the main cabin floor, including the battery. There was quite a bit of detail put into the main cabin - unfortunately not shown in the photos - including a galley, eating area, furniture and the helmsman's station. The scale is 1" = 1ft.

This hull is plank on frame using 1/8" pine planks. Below the waterline there's epoxy & glass and above there is just epoxy. All the brightwork, cabin housing & decks is natural Cherry with a clear urethane finish.

The power is a Dumas 12VDC motor with a mechanical speed control. The bottom photo shows that he added a 2:1 gearbox to the motor and ran it in reverse to increase the prop RPMs. He also included a constant running fan to cool the motor due to the confinement of the space.

The single propellor is 2" - 2 pitch - 3 bladed bronze. As on all his models he used a 2 channel JR XR2 75 mhz.

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.