New crew member on board yesterday - caught him having a sit down!

A nice still shot of the Tug on the lake today, towing a small barge with sand

Here's the photos of the cord coming through the middle of the crane, connected to the sail winch on the bottom end. The bracket to get it to go round 90 degrees had to be modified as it started jamming with no weight on the hook, now a piece of bent tube cut in half as a channel.

Crane story part 3! Now that the jib raised and lowered, I had to tackle rotating the turret. I canibilsed a radar setup I'd made (again from helicopter parts after a crash!) to rotate the turret. Video of the radar motor in operation shown.

Crane story continued.. once the swash plate was connected via servo arms to the jib, I had to develop an arm to control them from a servo - pics attached. Once the bracket was attached to the servo, it allowed the jib to move up and down, whilst the turret rotated. I then had to work out how to rotate the turret! More photos to follow..

So, the crane story. Here are pics of the crane in it's original guise - essentially the jib raised and lowered and the turret rotated. I decided to add extensions to the jib internally, and then use servo arms to send them through the deck (inside the turret) such that a servo could raise and lower them from below deck. The issue was trying to get a mechanism that would allow the arm to raise/lower, whilst being able to rotate from inboard to outboard! Solution - a helicopter swash plate from a crashed Blade! The connection joints had to be moved around the swash plate (refixed with superglue) to make it symetrical. More photos to follow..

Here's a video of the crane in operation on the lake

Here's a video of the inner workings of the crane - video of operation on the water to follow...

Here's a heavily modified Seaport Workboat - Toby. Videos to follow - the crane now works in three axis, and it has sound courtesy of a Technobots sound module. The searchlight works, as do the radar, running lights and nav lights.

This is a video of my little Toby Tug (a seaport workboat in a previous life) very generously given to me by Bob Hutton from Stourbridge Model Boat club. it's shown at Bournville Tug Day yesterday (5th June 2016) on a Tug Tow of a 10 ft tanker - two small tugs giving it a try, when calamity - the front Tug got swamped by another (not very well-behaved) passerby and capsized - leaving Toby to pull both boats back to shore.. Enjoy!