Building Wooden RC Scale Hydroplanes

Lots of progress this weekend on the 1956/57 Miss Wahoo U-77 1/8th scale RC hydroplane. Got all the frames installed, and a few of the stringers. Will finish with the stringers later this week. Also got the two bottom panels installed. Some of the frames needed a little persuasion to stay put, so push-pins came in handy. Here you can see some of the forward stringers on the bottom. These are the ones that will be epoxied to the bottom panel. Here is the aft bottom panel roughed out. Use packaging tape where you might have some epoxy squeeze-out. Epoxy doesn't stick to the tape. Made lots of progress this weekend! I'm using my rubber-band clamping system on this boat. It was used extensively on my RC sailboats for the frames and especially for the planking. Here is is used to keep downward pressure on the frames, and inward pressure on the outer side panels. It's very adaptable so be creative!  The main add-on to ma...

The strongback was built. I made mine out a 3/4" x 2' x 4' sheet of MDF. It was ripped on the table saw to 9 7/8" wide for the top and 4" wide for the sides I had already laminated together the few doubled-up frames and transom. Today I started to epoxy the end sponson frames to the side frames. In the picture below, you can see how a pin was used to keep part of the side frame aligned with the sponson frame. The pin won't stick to epoxy and will come right out when cured.  Do whatever you need to do to keep the frames perpendicular to each other. Here are two 90 degree angles being used to keep the frame straight. More to come! Aloha!

Had a great day yesterday watching the Unlimiteds Northwest RC Hydroplane group race their 1/7th scale hydro's up in Monroe, WA at Tye Lake. Great weather and water. I took the opportunity to take loads of notes and to ask anyone who would talk to me about FE (Fast Electric) hydroplanes. It was extremely helpful to chat to people instead of constantly trying to email people. Quicker too. So now I believe I have a very good idea of all of the electronic and mechanical parts that I have to order. It's going to be expensive though! I'm not done with my orders, but I'm already approaching $1,000. I'm also just starting the process of roughing out a new RC Hydroplane Construction Manual that I will write while making this manual. Hopefully it will be helpful to any new to the sport. It has been VERY confusing and frustrating to get any sort of start in this, and I'm actively trying to learn. If someone just wanted to know about the sport, there really doesn...

Well after several years of building , and writing about building, RC (radio control) sailboats, I'm finally ready to try my hand at an RC hydroplane! I now know enough about RC sailboats to know that I know very little... but I can still make a pretty decent sailboat. But I really know nothing about RC hydroplanes, so this will be a very steep learning curve. I'm looking forward to it! The boat I will be building will be either the 1/8th scale Miss Thriftway or the Miss Wahoo. Either way, the kit is from ML Boatworks .Specifically I'm making his 1/8th scale hull kit 105-A. However, I am so new to this that I am trying to figure out how the various hull numbers and designs work. My intention was to build the Miss Wahoo, and the hulls appear very similar, but the numbers are not the same so now I'm confused. So I'm either making this: Or this: Regardless, I've started construction on hull kit 105, and when I get an official ruling from either Newto...