Rick's Insane Mono 34

[srislash]

Looks good Rick. Sure looks easier to remove motor than mine.

[rickwess]

Thanks guys. Most of what I'm doing here is "best of breed" from what I've been reading here. A big thanks to Tony for all his build threads and emails.

Looks good Rick. Sure looks easier to remove motor than mine.

It will be fiddly once the server mount is installed on the one side and the receiver mount is install on the other side. Easy access to the screws just lots of half turns of the allen key.

[srislash]

I hear ya on the half turns. I ended up making opposite bends in a pair of keys just to get a full half turn for that one screw by the servo.
BTW, hand gonna be OK?

[rickwess]

BTW, hand gonna be OK?

At the time, I wasn't quite sure. But it's healing fine. It's been a week now and it's more of a PITA factor now than anything else. Just no more hand modeling.

I still have no idea how it happened. It's not your basic "I cut to far" accident. After 35+ years of using these type of tools this is my first incident.

[rickwess]

I found some time over the holidays to work on the boat. It was a little more challenging with the thumb the way it is, but I finished bonding and sealing the rails. In motor area, I reinforced the inboard side of the rails with CF cloth cut into a 1" wide strips. Along the entire outboard side of the rails, I have a large fillet of G/Flex that I coloured with black epoxy pigment. The used the same concoction to bond the stuffing tube support. The black G/Flex looks much nicer.

I put three notches in the battery tray for velcro straps. I should have a minimum of two straps holding down the batteries regardless of where the batteries are placed. There is a about 4" of fore/aft travel to play with the CoG.

I also added mounting blocks for the servo and receiver.

With all the different areas I needed to sand to get a proper bond, I then decided to sand everything down and get a consistent look with a final light coat of epoxy.

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The final weight of the hull, less hatch, but with the servo mount, stuffing tube and water inlets/outlets is 1,969 grams.

[rickwess]

Next was to start working on the ESC to battery connections.

I was going to go with the "Y" adaptors I had made, but I decided to eliminate a set of bullet connections and go with a hard connection back at the ESC. I used 22awg wire to bind the bundle of four wires (1 ESC, two battery, 1 cap) before I soldered it. It did take quite a bit of heat the get the solder to flow all the way into the mass of copper. I had a "canary" (i.e. short piece of heat shrink) on the ESC wires to gauge if those wires were getting too hot. No issues there.

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[srislash]

That is good thinking there Rick. Must be a PITA with one thumb short. I was have enough of a time doing my ESC connections today.

[Fella1340]

Happy new year. The boat looks really sharp and well planned out. Good luck with your thumb and I look forward to seeing more of the build!

[steveo]

Sweet buildn are u able to move your batterys to change your cog.

[rickwess]

Sweet buildn are u able to move your batterys to change your cog.

The battery tray is large enough that there is 4" of movement for the batteries.

[rickwess]

She done!!!!

Why didn't anyone tell be that rear motor monos are a pain to squeezed everything into? I think my next mono, if there is one, will have to be 50" long. That being said, it did come together fairly easily, but the planning phase is definitely critical.

I only had one stressful moment that was when I powered everything up and the ESC was acting strange. Strange as in intermittent and I couldn't perform the initial calibration consistently. I had programmed the ESC when I received it over a month ago so I decided I better check it once again. Turns out I had it set for 6s, not 4s..........oooops.

Once I work out the best position for the batteries, I can shorten some of the wires. With the batteries as far back as they can go, the CoG is 9.25" from the transom. All the way forward moves the CoG to 11".

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For those wondering how the hatch clears the ESC after I foamed the cavities for flotation,well, it didn't. I had to break out the dremel and perform some surgery.

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[flraptor07]

Very nice build, real clean and well thought out!

[srislash]

Turned out great Rick. Gonna test it or paint it? Always a dilemma for me.

[rickwess]

Can't test, all the water is frozen and covered in snow. It'll be a shelf queen until April.

Can't paint it, I have no artistic talent. I'm hoping monojeff can help me out with some nice graphics.

[Austin22]

Awesome work! Really like how the boat turned out.