Tested the new gear yesterday and it all went well till I was playing with the throttle trims and end points and had an unexpected full power no stop situation which ripped the coupling. Went like a fire hose till it did though, and took a lot of power to break it. I had not cable tied the tube onto the ends which were just pushed in, so it did pretty well to hold up like that. One end still had the spline marks, but the other had skidded then ripped the tube down the middle. Good anti stall safety feature for the motor I think.

Probably withstood around 1/2hp at 25000rpm for about 6 seconds before breaking, so a big improvement on the Mk 2 version. The new motor has a ton of torque and with the new 40/90c 3s 2700mah Hyperion battery is about double the power of the MK2 setup, - 3s 25c 2200mah zippy compact which was a bit tired after 10 yrs for any heavy stuff.

I had trouble with the sound unit not syncing with the throttle, which required allsorts of trimming to get it almost right. I'm using a one way aircraft ESC, but the sound unit works like a fwd-rev ESC and using a fwd- rev ESC, and needs a center point. I think I have got round it now by switching the siamesed throttle lead (with ESC lead) to the Aux hover pitch rotary on the 9X TX. seems to work just as well, but allows the throttle to be returned to full down-full up mode, and the sound controlled separately, which is good, as you can rev the 'motor' without the boat taking off.

Some vids of playing with the setup at idle power, and views of the jet mods in case anyone is wanting to do the same to the cheap jets without a reverse bucket.

JB

After ripping the new coupling silicone tube a couple of times due to harsh starts from the ESC, (lot of torque going into it suddenly with the new 3650 2550kv inrunner ) I've replaced it again and added a couple of small cable ties to clamp the tube tighter on the splines. Also managed to get it starting a bit smoother with a bit of TX tickling, although not perfect (cheaper aircraft ESC on soft start but still a bit rough,- with an aeroplane it wouldn't matter)

Hopefully it will be stronger this time. Might have to find an ESC with heli start (like the 'Mystery' blue series HK used to sell if this doesn't work)

A few screen grabs from 2 cameras from Saturdays attempt at a launch and retrieval video in the Waiwera River a few creeks north of my place. A number of things didn't quite go according to plan (trying to use 2 cameras, driving a boat and a vehicle using 2 TXs all at once by myself,- a bit like a one armed paper hanger😁) Got a couple of vids, but the main one is in QT MOV which I don't have an editor for yet, so I'll do that later. Nice day out despite the problems. Big sea fog till about 11am, and still a bit hazy during the day.

As you can see, the new camera is quite an improvement on the older one.
As I was using the boat ramp, I had to contend with the 100% boats a few times. Luckily it's quite secluded and not too busy. Funny bringing a model home and having to treat it like a full sized boat,- flushing it out and washing it 😁