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who is into RC boats?

6K views 27 replies 14 participants last post by  skife 
#1 ·
I saw some guys on the water the other day with some electric ones and they were pretty fast...wondering if anyone on here has any.
 
#7 ·
I bought my dad a Traxxas Spartan for Fathers Day, just something to play around with on our pond. It's pretty cool for an off the shelf boat, does around 35mph with the factory batteries. Upgrade to some LIPO's, and it will get into the 50's.

The only issues I have found is that it will fill full of water if you use reverse very much, and the battery life sucks. If you don't go full throttle, they last a lot longer...but where is the fun in that? I know the lipo batteries make it go much faster, but I doubt they will give it much extended run time.

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXBMRV**&P=ML
 
#11 ·
With a Brushless motor and a decent lipo battery i'm told you can get close to an hour of run time. With my brushed motor and lipo battery I get close to 45 min, In my stadium truck. I don't know about time lengths in boats though. I'd think they would be similar.
 
#14 ·
Haha, this is the first RC thing I have messed with since I was a kid, so I'm definitely behind the times with this stuff.

We haven't had it out in much rough water, just buzzing around the pond so far (about 4 acres). Some of the videos that I watched before ordering made it seem like it handled a little chop fairly well though.
 
#17 ·
Do not get a nitro anything. Those motors are very touchy, anything wrong and they will break or just stop running which is cool in the middle of a pond/lake. Nitro fuel is expensive too. Electric is the way to go for sure. I have a nitro sport 40 hydroplane which some guys are converting to electric now and they are still as fast
 
#18 ·
Plus, anymore Electric is just outright faster than Nitro. With how cheap brushless has become, and how readily avaiable LiPo is, there are fewer and fewer people running Nitro.

Even HPI see's the light, they released 'Flux' edition versions of both the Savage (which has been the badass on the block as far as Nitro monster trucks go for a long while) and even the Baja 5b (which is a 1/5th scale buggy, fricking huge).
 
#21 ·
And boats LOVE high C ratings. Strike that...boats NEED high C ratings.

I was never a battery snob and when you are only running things like 1/10th scale it really doesn't matter what battery you have(for the most part). But when you really start pushing things hard with boats you need good stuff or you are just going to puff packs every time you go out.

Boats put such a bigger draw on the electronics and batteries than cars do. Getting my cat up on plane would max out my 150A data logger, then settle down into the 80A range running.

Even my little mini boats were brutal on the cheap batteries. I puffed so many Turnigy/Zippy packs while I was doing boat stuff. :sonicjay: Yet my Hyperion packs lived through cars, boats, and sitting for well over a year without a charge.

Out of all of the RC I ever did racing stock Slashes at Larry's was the most fun and running boats was a close second.
 
#26 · (Edited)
If you really interested in rc boats get ahold of this guy. Keith really knows his stuff when it comes to boats. He will custom build you anything you want.

http://fightercat57.freeforums.org/keith-s-perpetual-build-thread-t662.html



C rating is how much you can pull from the lipo. The higher the C rating the higher the discharge rate. So if you have a 50C lipo you can pull 50 times the
capacity of the pack. Therefore giving you a higher burst .
 
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