Keps .21 Rigger.

[785boats]

I've had the plans for a while, so while I'm waiting for Mikes' RSX 310 kits to arrive down here in the colonies, I thought I'd knock up one of the Keps 21 boats.
Free drawings here if you want them.

http://www.ne-stuff.net/2016/02/keps-fe-4s-p-open-freebie.html

I've got nearly all the stuff needed to do it in the spares boxes, so it will be a cheap build. I've even got a TP 4060 2430kv motor lying around doing nothing.
So the other night I cut out all the parts from some scrap ply.
I had to make the tub 10mm wider & 5mm higher to fit the largest of the 4s batteries that I have.
I'll also have one long hatch instead of the three little hatches shown on the drawings. That just looks too messy for me.

The next day I glued the 3/16" stringers to the sides. Added the bulkheads. Then glued the box down to the bottom skin. using weights & clamps to hold it in place.
Then added the hatch trimmings & deck pieces.
Shaped up the nose block & epoxied that on.
Then fashioned up a motor mount from some 1/8" aluminium angle & eboxied that in with some ply doublers on the side walls to help secure it in position. Solid.

The motor & strut were temporarily intalled so I could form up the stuffing tube & get that epoxied in.

[785boats]

The sponsons.
The side skins of the sponsons were epoxied to the balsa cores and the edges trimmed wit ply also. Then the nose blocks were added.
I changed the shape of the champhered sides of the sponsons by tapering them. So after the champhers were planed off i glued on the 1/16" skin.
This left a thin 1/16" chine down the length of the sponson which I've decided to leave rather than sand it off flush with the side of the sponson. It looks cool.

[785boats]

The hatch.
Because the rear of the motor & the water cooling outlet of the jacket protrude above the tub, a hole had to be cut into the hatch & some sort of cowling needed to be manufactured to cover it.
With simplicity in mind, I decided that 4 triangles would be the most effective. A couple of short ones for the windscreen & a couple of long ones for the rest of the cowling. It ended up reminding me of the stealth bomber. Sort of.
Here's a few pics of this mornings effort.

[785boats]

This afternoon I cut & drilled all the spar inserts & epoxied them in place.
The tub was done first
I drew some lines on a set up board as guides to keep everything nice & square. Some packers under the ends of the spars kept them level. A couple of the holes in the tub had to be opened out a bit to allow everything to sit right.

Then the sponson inserts were attached to the spars & the sponsons were epoxied onto them, making sure everything was lined up square & even, & parallel.
It looks like a rigger now.

[Scott T]

Nice one Paul! What are the overall dimensions? That's a good sized motor.

[785boats]

Thanks Scott.
It's 740mm overall length & 490mm wide. The drawings had a written measurement of 520mm but only scaled out to 420mm on the drawing. I just made it the same width as the hybrid version I built a few months ago. That seems to handle ok.

[785boats]

Finally managed to get some paint on this one over the last few days.
Here are the colours. A windscreen & some decals will make it look a bit better.
Just need to make the turn fin & bracket & refit all the gear.

[785boats]

Still getting bits done on this one.
I made up the turn fin & bracket as per the plans. Epoxied some 30mm long pieces of 10mm dowel into the sonson, & screwed the bracket to the sponson.
There are plenty of adjustment holes in the bracket to get the fin in the right spot during testing.

In my haste to get it painted I forgot to cut in the safety loop block. So I had to do that & touch up the paint. Then the bullet connectors & wires were epoxied into the block.
The position where ther ESC has to go makes the motor wires too short, so I'll have to make up some short extensions for that.

The hardware is all re-fitted, & the drive shaft cut, sanded, & installed.

The booms & sponson sleeves are held in position using 2mm carbon fiber pins with a bit of hatch tape wrapped around the sleeves to make sure they don't work their way out.

It's a test day at the club next weekend, so I should clock up a few test runs on it, along with a few more with the ML Boatworks rigger too.


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[785boats]

I added a few decals to this one too.
"Here come the Judge".