[Attachment(s) from Rob Denney included below]
Part of the trouble was we only had 3 x 2 hour sessions to put them together. They went with what seemed easiest to build. As it happened, they were also the fastest, although there were no long skinny boats entered.
Cat and mono pics attached. Brown packaging tape is good stuff! They used it to hold the monohull and it's components together (very large torque on the motor made alignment difficult on the polystyrene hull) and also as a smooth finish on the bottom.
The tri fell apart during pool trials, one of the kids spent the night before the race making another one. I dropped in at 7 pm to see how it was going. He had started at 4 pm with half a cubic metre block of polystyrene, was sitting on his driveway with 3 small hulls held together with food skewers and surrounded by an enormous pile of offcuts and scraps.
I was too busy to take pics on the day so no pictures of it, but it looked a bit like a 1960's cruising tri.
Panels 300 sq cms, motors 2 amp 6V, props were 2 or 3 bladed 15mm dia. We originally had a crappy 40mm dia prop off a toy boat which was very fast, but as the boat got heavier, it was too big.
No batteries unless it was overcast.
Next year we will allow more time, do more experiments, make more solid boats and see how it goes.
rob
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:38 PM, heinrich_meurer <meurer@airborneminescan.com> wrote:
Great Rob
now must have have a very proud marine designer and electrical engineer as a doughter.
Next time you want them to build a sleek minimum displacement hull tell them that fat and short is the way to go. Can you tell us a little bit more like pics, what batteries if any and motors and solar cells?
Heinrich
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Attachment(s) from Rob Denney
2 of 2 Photo(s)
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