Built out of house guttering to a scale equivalent to model railways HO the layout is approx. 4 x 3 ft. Mounted in a wooden frame and provided with a protective see through cover it fits into the car and can go anywhere. it has been an on-going project to build RC boats to suit. Those used at present are commercial products (loa 5" (125mm)) with simple two channel two prop drives - not proportional but with forward and reverse and by operating one or both props plus reverse steering is OK. Battery life limited to 6-8 minutes with similar recharge time. Built largely from scrap and odds and ends the project cost well under £80. The idea is/was to have several units and link them together to make a large layout!

RTR minI electric speed boat with proportional 2CH RC. 280mm loa (11")

Good boat and fast. Watercooled brushed motor. Normal problem with commercial mini-boats is lack of proportional RC but this is fine. Battery life about ten minutes - low freeboard and takes on water but electrics/RC have proven resistant to regular swamping!

Based on a footy length scow this 6" hull (ie half footy!) has 2CH RC (rudder and mainsail). 140gms (

Standard wood drills (as in this photograph) work well for cutting neat, point centralised plastic-card port holes, as good as they do for wood or MFD etc. (instead of high-speed steel drills, which can end up a mess).

For clear plastic glazing to match these ports. I use circular punch's which cut neat clear round plastic glazing to fit, also for cutting round plastic-card for circular objects etc. I have found that it works better if punched with a hard hammer tap onto a flat hard-wood backing.

Photo examples and tools. These tools are both available on-line in sets between 3mm and 8mm.

I have found that a parallel ribbon cable from an old desktop computer (80 way type) are ideal for mast lights or working Radar etc. and can be glued down neatly.

The end connectors are easily removed without damaging the cable. it is possible to separate two or three insulated wires or however many wires or pairs you need to run to different areas of the hull or the superstructure.

For mast lights or radar etc, I found that wires in pairs are the best way to feed multiple pairs of wires up a mast tube etc. (It helps to feed wires through tubes with a dab of talcum powder to ease the wires through). I was able to run 4 pairs of these fine cables up a 3mm mast tube.

The wires are single strand insulated and easy to solder onto led's or bulbs with very fine heatshrink tubing to insulate. Because these wires are very fine the lights or radar supply should be fused at a low amperage rate. 250mA in my Tug.

a few of my boats I have

my apache 56 ready to race this yr Im running a zen 7 at the moment

Using a 3.7g micro-servo. it is possible to install this small unit within many of the existing model Radar parts or scratch built models to create a working model Radar setup.

Here is an example of one fitted to my RNLI Trent lifeboat. I am using the bottom of the servo housing to clamp this unit to the underside of the base of the kits Radar platform, this helped to reduce the overall height and to maintain the scale size.

These servos are available on eBay at £1.89 including postage from China or Hong Kong.

I found this easy to mount and I have kept the servo electronics, connecting this servo to a spare channel on the receiver. This enables the radar to rotated in both directs at adjustable speeds or just stopped. I usually have it adjust at slow : scale speed, setting this with the trim on the transmitter.

Photograph of working Radar installed into Trent RNLI model.

Built for the MMI Solar Boat Challenge a number of years ago and includes the winner (Amber Sol-air !) that had to complete as many circuits as possible of a canal system constructed out of household guttering in a fixed time. (the gutter naturally limited the size - loa, beam and draft). All built out of depron from my own head - with enough left over to build several more ?!

There are a number of ideas for propulsion - all powered by solar panels, no batteries. The pool is 12 feet diameter and great for boats of this size.

Originally designed and prepared as a fun entry to the MMI Solar Boat Challenge.

Scratch designed and built of depron to run in standard house guttering - size and construction details on the video. There are a number of 'solar' boats on another video of several including the eventual winner of the challenge. inexpensive, fun and unsinkable!

Here is a Graupner Bremen 9 converted to represent a UK Police boat. She is called DEVA which is the Roman name for the county capital of Cheshire - Chester.

If the Cheshire Constabulary owned a vessel of the size of the original Bremen 9, I am reliably informed that the 'Battenburg' and transom diagonal stripes would be correct. The 'BA 07' lettering on the superstructure is also the correct national and regional code for the Cheshire Constabulary. The constabulary crest on the cabin doors however has now been superseded by a more modern constabulary logo that looks sh1te.
The RIB provided with the kit is too small and in my opinion not to scale; I will replace it at some point. The light bar and all other blue and navigation lights work off 9v batteries.
Chris M

Super little kit making a great model. Essentially styrene with added mixed fittings then super detailed and weathered.

Video rather shaky as operating camera with one hand and RC with the other - will Improve and add soon.