Showing off my RC model boats

Ken_NJ

Ken_NJ

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Feb 13, 2023
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I was asked over in the Intro forum to post pictures of my RC model boats. I have a few models to cover what I have built and what I am building. I'll post pictures of and tell you something about each of them one at a time.

The first one is a party boat, fishing boat, that was located in the marina in Belmar New Jersey. The boat is 110 feet long and 32 feet wide. She was sold and relocated to someplace in Mexico in the 90's. The model scale is 1/24 or 1/2 inch to the foot. So a 6 foot tall person would be 3 inches on the model. The model is 55 inches long and 16 inches wide. It runs on four 12v motors with 2 rudders. The two port motors are controlled by one speed control and as are the starboard motors. This allows me to rotate the model in a circle in its own length. There are over 60 lights (LED's) on the boat. The two radar sets on top of the pilot house spin. The gear train on the radars is setup so that one gear has one less tooth so the radars spin at different speeds. I have a picture of the boat interior but I cannot find it right now. When I find it I'll post it. The model is 100% scratch built from the plans of the original boat. Some day when I get the skills I'll put some crew and fishermen on board.


Miss Belmar.jpg

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Beautiful model. Would love to see some pics of the insides too. Makes me want to get back into RC but my wife would probably have my head if I add yet another hobby.
 
That's truly amazing!

Did you scale it manually, or somehow have CAD do it for you from the plans for the original boat?

Also how long did it take you to build it - and did you take photos during the build stage that you can share?
 
I enjoy drafting the old school way. All of the design work for this model is from the original builder plans that I have that one of the captains gave me. This real boat was built in Louisiana at a company called Gulf Craft. So it was scaled manually to the size I wanted. I have pictures of the real boat being built. I first built this model in the 70's as a plank on frame method. At some point I made another hull (a plug), from that I made a fiberglass mold. The model as pictured, the hull, is the only hull that I made from the mold. I still have the mold. Around 2008 I started rebuilding the model, discarded the first plank on frame hull and used the fiberglass hull from the mold. The cabin and pilot house from the plank on frame hull was saved, modified and updated, and put on the new hull. So as pictured, the hull is about 20 years old, the cabin-pilot house combo is 40ish years old. The rebuild with the new hull took me about a year and a half.

I do have pictures of building the old version and the new versions of the SS Miss Belmar model. Have lots of pictures so will have to go through them to post here.

I am building another boat, that no loner exists, from the 70-80's time from the Belmar Marina. Building that one now only from pictures that I have, no plans. That one was also designed/built without CAD. The next party boat I build will be a combination of manually and CAD. I want to use a 2D CAD program to draw out the frames of the boat.

And BTW, the profile picture I have is the same boat. I cannot find those pictures on my computer for some reason! Driving me nuts looking for them.
 
The ESCs look old-school. I like it. Nice clean layout inside. Beauty inside and out.
 
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