December 2006
Wow, I did not realize how long it had been since I updated these RC
Sailing pages. Over the past two years I have been sailing with
the club, though this fall I had to take a hiatus to shoot the Miracle
League baseball kids and the Mats Wilander Celebrity Golf and Tennis
event at Westchester C.C. in Rye, New York. I am still
sailing my EC-12 (#1555) as my primary boat. The Nirvana has been
relegated to the garage as I never completely finished the updated under
deck rigging, but I have plans to get that project completed this
winter. The Sanibel I picked up at cost from the local hobby shop
about a year ago is showing it's shortcomings from a design stand point.
The extended keel is cracked between the sandwiched layers on the upper
portion and needs to be glued. There is some nasty brown looking
gunk coming out of the top of the keel bulb. It's probably rust
from the mounting hardware. So the whole keel needs some work.
The forward jib boom mount tends to eat through the line holding it in
place. The two part mast needs to have some internal support added
in the form of a wood dowel to keep the mast straight. And finally
the hatch cover hold down is not very secure. I guess I should
have put all this on the Sanibel page. The sad part is the
Sanibel has only been in the water a half dozen times for all of this
take place. The other project for this winter includes building a
Victoria. Not going with stock sails, but I am going to use
original kit booms and mast with help our club's master model builder
Jim Utley. Without the Nirvana, I have not had a boat I could toss
in the car and get in some quick sailing, so it would be nice to get it
going again. Virtual Skipper has version 4 out now. I might
put that on the Christmas list. A friend from church loaned me the
Real Flight G3 and controller to try and learn how to fly my Gentle Lady
glider I built some 10+ years ago. It will be interesting to see
if the G3 controller will work to control the boats inside of the
Virtual Skipper game. It will be really cool if it does.
November 2004
Thanks to Jim Utley I have a new servo mount for the cut open radio
box in the Nirvana. I tried to use the original servo arm, but the
plastic was a little weak for the stronger servo and the control horn
socket stripped. Today I cut the socket portion off of the original arm
and mounted it on a servo horn that came with the new servo. I
used metal screws, but would like to use nylon at some point to give the
arm a chance to break away if needed. Here are some photos of the
parts and final assembly.
My next project is the Sanibel and testing the Nirvana on the water.
September 2004
I have a couple of new projects going that hopefully I can track here
on the web site. The first project is to take the Nirvana and cut
out the radio compartment below deck and fit the boat with a huge sail
servo. The second project will be to take a Pro Boat Sanibel and
see what it takes to make it a transportable boat. You can read my
previous dry dock review by following the link on the left. I
would not have the Sanibel, but the local hobby shop sat on one for
several months and finally offered to me at cost since I am about the
only RC sailor that frequents the store. The rudder was broken during
shipping and the store had already had ordered and received the
replacement. Now I need to install the new rudder and figure out a
way to allow the sails to be removed easily for transport.
Finally, I am planning to build a Victor Soling 1M. There is
another local club that sails this boat and it looks like a good kit to
learn boat assembly on. Also this class limits what you can do to
the boat to remain in the class. Other than radio and servos, you
can't really spend a lot more on sails or rigging as they are limited to
what come with the kit from what I understand. My EC-12 sailing
has improved over the summer despite missing about six weeks of sailing
with vacations and a summer cold. I generally don't finish last
any more and I usually get a first or second each day we race. It
will be interesting to see where I finish in the club rankings at the
end of the year. I am still playing Virtual Skipper 3, but not as
much as last Winter. I keep waiting on the US release which was
slated for last month by Enlight, but other than a few pages on their
website it remains vaporware in the U.S.
January 2004
I have always wanted to get
into RC Sailing, but wasn't into building models or spending a large
amount of money to get into the hobby. In 2003, Megatech
introduced the Nirvana. The Nirvana is a ready-to-run (RTR)
sailboat that is 32" long.
The Nirvana is a fun boat. The ease of rigging gets you sailing in
about five minutes after showing up at the lake and it holds its own
with other boats its size. See the Nirvana page for details on
some required enhancements.
I was going to get a ProBoat Sanibel 36/600 RC
Yacht for Christmas, but returned it after looking it over. Check
out the Sanibel page for details and a short
dry dock review. While waiting to make sure I was credited for
the returned Sanibel, I decided to bite bullet and go with an
East
Coast-12 RC yacht. While the cost for a used EC-12 was a little
harder to justify, I believe it is in my best interest to go with the
class boat sailed at the
local model
yacht club. I will be using on a Hitec Laser 6 for the EC-12 and
hope to be sailing it when club sails start back up in February.
Check out the EC-12 photo page
to see some other club member's yachts. Check out the
East Coast-12 page for my web log on the
new boat.
In addition to getting bit by the RC Sailing
bug, I have become a fan of sailing simulators. Check out the
sailing simulators page for
details.
Local RC Sailing (Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina, USA):
You may have seen the post below on a local hobby shop bulletin board.
These are the local clubs and sailing spots I know about. If you
know of another one, please let me know. The informal Sunday
afternoon fun sails are where I hang out and I go to Lake Johnson on
Saturdays. The reason for including "fun" in
with the Apex Community Park sailing is to make the outing less
intimidating for new sailors and not worry so much about competition and
points. If a few folks want to have a race, great; but the whole
purpose is to have fun. If you have a boat, all of the
groups are very welcoming to newcomers and will offer you help on tuning
in your boat and sails. If you show up on Sundays, I am the guy
with old hair on a young head. This year there is a regional EC-12
regatta on April 17 - 18 at Lake Johnson.
.
