Woodstuff 30 Tunnel Build

[Doug Smock]

Nice work SIR. lol

[Chilli]

Your a funny guy. Thanks for your help getting her to turn.

Dick told me Chris W. and Jimmie J. got his 30 Woodstuff running real good. Almost WOT in the turns. Hopefully I'll talk to them at the next race and see what they did. Those two are a class act. If you were running a paper sailboat and there was no wind, they would find a way to make it go faster. Their 17K mobile man cave aint bad either.

[Doug Smock]

Your a funny guy. Thanks for your help getting her to turn.

Dick told me Chris W. and Jimmie J. got his 30 Woodstuff running real good. Almost WOT in the turns. Hopefully I'll talk to them at the next race and see what they did. Those two are a class act. If you were running a paper sailboat and there was no wind, they would find a way to make it go faster. Their 17K mobile man cave aint bad either.

They are good people. I expect Chris to be charging LiPos anytime now.

[HOTWATER]

Thanks Chuck.

I know my eye bolts and crimps were killing Hotwater so I ran over to the hobby shop and got some Sullivan Pull-Pull gear and Great Planes steel clevis's. Soldering the 440 adapters to the cable was no harder than doing a 5.5 bullet. Pehaps easier. I must admit it looks cleaner. These pics are for you Kent.

I dont know if this is something you tunnel gurus do, but I turned up the exponential throttle on my transmitter so I would have finer control toward the full throttle setting. I figure there would be less chance of me dropping the nose too quickly going into a turn with this setting. I'll test it out next weekend.

Very nice Mike! Now, that is the way to go!! Way Mo betta!

[Chilli]

Very nice Mike! Now, that is the way to go!! Way Mo betta!

That little surprise you said you had for my tunnel wouldnt involve Mark Sholund would it?????

[HOTWATER]

Kent is not here right now but I will make sure he gets your message...

- The management

[Chilli]

It's been about a month and a half since my last post and I haven't been happy with my Woodstuff's handling. It was very touchy in the turns, either hooking bad or not turning at all. Playing with the strut height, angle and CG helped a bit but I still wasnt satisfied with the boat. People I talked to seem to think the recovery pads needed work. After reading some of Darin Jordan's posts I decided to chuck the tapered recovery pads that the boat came with and try some wedge shaped pads. The tapered pads were about 4 inches long and their leading edge was set back about 1-1/2" from the front of the tunnel. They curved sharply down to within 3/32" of the sponson bottoms and actually tapered back up slightly toward the tunnel bottom with the trailing edge at about 54%. The new pads are wedge shaped and 5.75" long, have about a 6 degree angle of attack and start at the leading edge of the tunnel. Trailing edge is about 1/4" farther back than the originial pads and they come down to with 3/16" of the bottom of the sponsons.

I did this mod about a month ago and finally got a chance to get a few runs in this afternoon. Wind was blowing from right to left on the race course with winds at 10-12 know with a few periods receding to 5 knots. On the first run I threw the boat in and immediately noticed the boat was much less sensitive to doing wheelies if I hit the throttle a little too hard at launch. The wind was in the 12-14 knot range at this time so I couldnt do more than 1/2 throttle into the wind but the boat went where ever I pointed it and turned nice. The nose was a little high even running down wind. I don't know if it was the waves or the strut angle. Even though I couldnt open it up I could already see an improvement. I dropped the strut down from a little positive to neutral on the second run. Wind was at 10-12 knots. The boat still handled well at 3/4 throttle but the nose may have still been a little too high. On the final run, the winds dropped to five knots and I dropped the strut angle down again to slightly negative. I was finally able to hammer the throttle. I thought the nose may be a little too low on the straights but my buddy Carl said it looked just right. As I mentioned before, the wind was blowing right to left on the course. Turning at buoys, 1-3 the boat carve nice turns at WOT throttle and she was rock solid into the wind on the back stretch. As I entered buoy 4 I tried to keep her wide open, but after the apex of the turn when the waves were broad side, she would not turn at all. I had to back way off the throttle to get her to turn. In subsequent laps, if I backed off to 3/4 throttle in the turns at buoy 4-6, she would carve a nice turn with just a tiny bit of hook as she turned onto the front straight with the wind and waves at her back.

So all in all I was pretty happy with the new recovery pads. I may not have found the optimum set up yet, but it was definately a 100% improvement over the pads that came with boat. I'm going to concentrate on learing how to drive it before I try any more mods. I welcome any comment and suggestions or theory on recovery pads. What effect could I expect if I set them back farther or make them a little longer?

[HOTWATER]

I like the new blocks you made...glad they seemed to help. I also had a feeling that your tunnel needed a little neg. on the lower end. I know Mike L. runs his lowers pretty much with no neg or pos, but no matter what, every boat will be dialed in differently and yours seems to be getting better the more you trial and error her...Nice!

I think I am moving away from the steering cables and using 4/40 rods instead on my tunnel build...that may be something for you to try as well. I used one 4/40 rod on my Aeromarine Predator tunnel a while back and it seemed to work just fine, so two rods (one on each arm) should be solid. I am also sticking with the double servo horn (aluminum)...I just don't like the way the round ones work...

[Chilli]

Dick likes a little negative, Mike likes a little positive. Like you said, you just have to find out what works for your boat. It's tough when you have never run a well set up tunnel. You dont have a base line to shoot for.

I didnt have a choice between rods and cables because my battery box wasnt tall enough. I may go that route for Johns VS1. I know Dick and Mike swear by them. But I notice many in the district and our visitors from D13 use cables. I don't know about aluminum horns. Something has to be the weak link if you wack something (or get wacked) and I don't want it to be the servo.