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I built this new Rescue Boat lately after just happening across this on the interwebs. It’s an RC boat to collect leaves out of a swimming pool. It had a removable leaf catcher basket on the front. As pictured, it has two electric outboards on it that are static, they don’t turn. It came with a simple two joy stick control, to set the speed of each motor. You turn it similar to a tug boat or any two-screw boat. The control was not real intuitive and it only had a 100’ range, after all it was made for a pool! I put a cheap 2.4Ghz radio in it to give it useful range and found a dual ESC controller made for an Ant Bot to replace the original board. The new ESC has full channel mixing, so if you just pull the trigger, both motors spin forward and the boat goes straight. If you give it a turning input, it will slow the inboard motor down. Keep giving it more rudder and the inboard motor will slow to a stop, then start to reverse. The pic I’m posting shows it nested to my 34” hydro, and the arms grab it good. So far, I’ve only had to rescue my DF29 when the flex shaft broke, but this is so much fun to drive, I almost hope for some kind of failure... Almost!
The boat was only $70. All in, about $150 to complete it. Pretty cheap and effective!
The boat was only $70. All in, about $150 to complete it. Pretty cheap and effective!
My first thought was a retrieval boat when I first saw it!! I was looking for something from Leslies and happened across this little gem as well and I have an extra radio handy and now I may give the skimmer conversion a bit more thought!!
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