Miss Geico Maiden Voyage

[Darin Jordan]

Jeff may be right might be a tunnel isssue. Will test more this weekend weather permitting.

Before you blame the tunnel design (possible, but I'm thinking not)... get your ride-pads FLAT. If they have concavity and aren't dead flat, they will act like suction cups.

If you want to try something to test the tunnel theory, put an airdam in the tunnel and kill the aerolift. See if that changes the ride at all.

My bet is on the blueprinting of the ride-pads...

[Jeff Wohlt]

Darin has a good point. Look at your sponsons first. I am surprised the weight did not settle it down for you. Once you do the bottoms then just paint the steps a flat black...might look cool and keeps the shine off.

I will check mine soon. It is waiting on me to go pick up...probably on Sat.

[blackcat26]

OK Darin I didn't want to but I will re-do the bottoms.
Jeff I had 2 broken 3/4 carbide endmill shanks for weight and they did absolutely nothing!
One kinda cool thing is I made a makeshift damn under the tunnel and it caused some strange ride characteristics and blew over and landed upside down. Tried my fishing rod to get her back with no luck, was out of range. Decided to try the prop as an "airboat" and brought her back upside down with fully functioning turns via rudder. Was pretty cool I thought. Btw after being upside down untaped boat was completely dry! Good job Darin!

[Fluid]

Every run I have seen looks like everyone is trying to run it like it has no steps....on the very last bit of the hull...which will make it teeter. The boat should ride more flat and touching the second step.

If this hull had real steps then I'd agree, but it does not. The sponson bottoms are dead flat front to rear with gaps, not steps - for all practical purposes it does not have steps. No problem with this, many of the hulls I've designed and built had no steps yet they performed very well. On most of them I was able to run on the last few inches of the sponsons, flying the bow without porpoising.

Every cat design is a bit different and some need more care in setup than others. I'm sure that we will eventually get the Miss Geico sorted out like we did the UL-1 and the BlackJack so that everyone's MG will run well.


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[ron1950]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqY7N...eature=related

watch this vid he has moved his battery back so the cg is back and it works great....

[Diesel6401]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqY7N...eature=related

watch this vid he has moved his battery back so the cg is back and it works great....

He also lowered the strut, which is what made the biggest difference. He just didn't mention that in the description. I shoot him a pm on youtube as I was curious to what he did. So yes he moved the batts back, reason it seems (and just my thoughts, i may be completly wrong) he did so is that he dropped the strut so low that the transom would want to run high and the boat would run to wet. So he lowered the strut to sovle the bounce issue, then moved the batts back very far so the boat didn't run wet. Seems the combo worked, I will give a try. On 5s of course

[blackcat26]

Good investigative work Diesel! His is running best of what I've seen so far.

[Jeff Wohlt]

I will go pick up my hull today. Jay is probably right...not really steps but more like inducing air....steps.

I think it will be some easy set up changes and not some hot trick on the hull like dams, wedges,etc.

Corning is still awesome and bounce is hard on the ESC and cable but will cut speed as well.

Just more of a challenge but that is what makes this fun. Maybe the CG does need to come back and the strut dropped. Keeping the blades planted.

Bad video link...won't open for me.

[Fluid]

Guys, I feel kinda silly for not mentioning something in my post above. When I was testing the prototype AquaCraft cat I noticed that it ran smoothly (although not quite as fast) with the prop centerline even with the sponson bottoms. This was the first commercial cat I'd worked with which preferred such a deep strut setting, perhaps the ProBoat cat does too. More testing needed here.

Moving the CG back on a cat will help the prop carry the bow but can promote blow offs. Without enough speed a too far forward CG will let the bow rise and fall. From the video this does not look like the case, but that's all I've seen of the stock boat running.



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[blackcat26]

Jeff, it won't open now. Kinda strange. He may have taken it off.

[Jeff Wohlt]

It was a common set up on the 3.5 tunnels/nitro to run the prop shaft center even with the sponsons. Jay may have it pretty close.

Hope to have mine put together in a week or two and get out there.

[Diesel6401]

Good investigative work Diesel! His is running best of what I've seen so far.

Thanks.

Good find on the video ron and posting it for us to throughly look at.

[blackcat26]

Ride pads will be finished tomorrow. Check out the Geico section for pics. It's like watching paint dry. Oh wait it is.

[ron1950]

i wont open for me any more either ....must have taken it down

[nomobux]

By the way... on my wedge rudders, I don't "round" them... I simple use my bench-top disk sander and "V" the bottom of the rudder... Kills any lift that might be cause by the flat rudder bottom pitching. Easy to get even also.

Could you put up a picture of that mod please. I'm having trouble visualizing it.