This thing is really cool but the original builder did a less than stellar job.


 I found a guy on CL who was moving and wanted to part out his sailboat fleet, he also mentioned a fireboat and said I could look at it when I came out and make an offer.

The boats consisted of a Thunder Tiger victoria, a pair of heavy home made sail boats with a huge 7' mast and sails, and this lil gem, A ROBBE Dusseldorf Fireboat built Circa 1994 build date. Everything considered I think I did well @ $250 for the lot with the Vic and Dus being the gems, the one sailboat will be rebuilt and the other used for parts, their not so pretty but overall I think I did good.

First some beauty shots. 46" aol.




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Now, this guy being a doctor did really well with the exterior details and for the most part the assemble.


He was however no electrician, hence the need for a refit and the low prices.


The beauty shots were the good even if a bit dusty, heres the bad.



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Now, you can see what Im up against. Its been wired, rewired, has wires that dead end for no apparent reason, wiring that it undersized, oversize, random bits of lamp cord thrown in the mix and to top it off, Molex connectors transmitting servo signals.


I have tested some functions and have found the propulsion system, radio, water pump and some lights to work along with a siren that kinda groans which is probably due to low voltage coming from the two lantern batteries that were powering this whole shebang.



Now, what I will need mostly is sourcing the modern equivalent of some of the ships systems such as a modern sound unit, Diesel, sirens etc, and also some type of electronic switching system that can be activated by radio vs the switches that were originally installed. I also would like to have independent forward/reverse control for each screw.

More coming when I have time.

pics no workey.

Thread no goodey. Try again OP

I was really looking forward to the pics.  I am disappoint.

looks like you fixd the pics. Good lookin boat.

Anybody else having trouble?

Im linking from another board.

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OK, now that I got the pics sorted.


Got my ESCs in the mail and installed. Two quickrun 1060s. Nice lil ESCs and you cant bet the $20 price tag.

You can also see the tiny copper water coolers I made. I scrounged a pump out of an swiffer and will use that for the water cooling on the engines for two reasons, 1 I can have a realistic water dump out of the side of the boat and 2 it will cool the motors even when only maneuvering at low speeds where traditional cooling setups will not work unless you are underway.


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I also programmed my radio in order to get differential thrust so I can basically spin it within its own length without adding a bow thruster, which is another area where the cooling pump will help. 

To set this up you need to use mode 1 on the radio and set it for V tail mixing meant for sailplanes with V tails. With these settings I have traditional fwd/rev on the left stick and steering on the right, but if I move the left stick side to side it turns the motors different directions to spin the boot.

It can be used for turning while underway, but this boat has 4 rudders so there should be no turning issues.

Ahhhh, much better. Don't forget to post up when she's on the water!

Pretty cool!  That looks like one has to be both an electrician and a plumber to work on that!  

I have nothing except it would be fun to take it around the park and spray kids with it or people making out on park benches.  

It looks great!  It looks much better than I expected.  I am no longer disappoint.  

Very cool project.

Thats awesome! Coming along nicely

Yeah, it has a few different systems.

8 servos.

5 ESCs.

1 10A UBEC for lights and radio.

A small geared motor for the Radar.

Water pump for the fire monitors.

Water pump for cooling.

Bilge pump as there is no flotation

Two Receivers.

Several electronic switches for the different lighting systems.

Two 7AH gell cell batteries to run it.

And a running weight of just under 20lbs.


The pump for the monitors will be on its own ESC so I can sneak up on the kids and start the pumps at 50%, then when they think their out of range I can hit them like a supersoaker.

That's awesome!

OK, got back to work on this recently.

I was having issues with the random amalgam of return springs for the fire monitors as with the different springs they would all react differently to my stick inputs. That plus the fact that what was in this when I bought it looked like ass made me want something nicer.

In this pic you can see one of the original asstastic return springs and the teeny tiny silver screw I installed for a neater stiffer return spring.

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And here is the finished return spring in place.

Much mo better looking.

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Bump to keep it from the archive.

very cool

Just a brief update, sorry, no pics.

I got many of the assorted systems sorted out and working including:

Cooling water pump. this will cool both motors (Not really needed) and the two lines will terminate through the port hull using different sized outlets to have one pump water clear of the hull and the other to dribble down the side like an old man peeing down his leg in the dark for added aesthetics.

I got the two speed controls mixed properly to allow full FWD/REV and also to rotate in opposed directions to give differential thrust. This will allow me to turn with rudders (Normal) with varying inputs to the two screws while underway (Slight left/right corrections) or to turn about its axis while stationary.

And last I got the bilge pump and radar functional as well as getting the fire monitor speeds scaled down proportionally and the up/down/left/right assigned to channels.

I need to be careful assigning things as I only have 24 channels on this radio.

Next up will be mounting the batteries and weighting it front/back to get the waterline right then it will be sea trials.

   OR VIDEO!

Those Molex connectors are not reliable.  Check out Anderson Powerpoles.  Many hobby shops have these
for electric powered models.

http://k9zw.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/

Standing by for updates.