Pay-n-Pak rebuild

[cyberhoops]

I thought I would start a thread as I rebuild my 1/12th scale Pay-n-Pak.

The initial boat was built using the plans that are available out on the web. The boat raced for the first time last Saturday and about 5 feet after crossing the finish line the right sponson blew off the boat. I guess I had a hint of the problem when the boat hooked strangely on the back stretch of the last lap. Up to that point the boat ran quite nicely and I like the design - so a rebuild is in order.

Attached are pictures of the original boat and the damage.

I managed to preseve the tail and cowling so the plan is to rebuild the hull using the pink foam and plywood method and reuse the tail and cowling. The new version will have no balsa in anything remotely structural given that the balsa strip that forms the inside edge of the sponson seems to be where the failure occurred.

Hopefully this new version will be ready for the 3rd race date in late April.

[cyberhoops]

Framing

I have a start on the framing of the hull. The stringers are 1/8" plywood and the bulkheads and bottom are all 1/16" plywood. That should hold together.

Time to add foam.

[Edit] Crude pink form has been added to the sponsons.
[Edit] And shaped

[mhall]

Wow! The boat broke over the weekend and it's only Tuesday of the following week and you have already cut and glued all of that together in only a couple of days.

Now that's impressive!! It had to have been a little odd to pull the boat out of the water and look at the broken sponson!

It should be fun to watch the build and hear about how it eventually runs!

[cyberhoops]

The hull of the Pak replacement is complete. I did run into a small hitch - the old cowling will not work. When I moved the motor to help with the CG it is now up too high to fit under the old cowl.

So, for now I am just going to build a "fastback" style of cowl that will clear the motor. I might go back and create another Pay-n-Pak cowling later.

The completed hull weighs in at 1lb 14oz - basically it is all plywood except for the cowling which is fiberglass cloth over balsa. I expect the boat will be a bit over 4 lbs when ready to run, which is about 8 ounces more than the old boat - but it should be much stronger.

[cyberhoops]

I finished the initial paint for the boat and it (more or less) follows the design from the 1985/6 Miss 7-Eleven. Next up will be the decals, which will be inkjet printed water-slide decals followed by clear coat.

If all goes as planned the boat will be ready for testing this Saturday.

[RayR]

Jim,

I'm interested in how you do the color correction on the ink jet decals. Mine always look "washed out".

Thanks,

Ray

[cyberhoops]

I wish I could say I had a good method for color matching with the inkjet decals... but what I did was print a set of of just the 7-11 logo with different colors of blue and red and then pick the one that looked best. So, I had one "wasted" decal sheet.

They don't come out perfect, and they seem to reflect light differently which makes them look just about right at some angles and not dark enough at other angles.

Hopefully a clear coat will help to even it all out.

Here is what the boat looks like with the decals - as you can see they are not perfect, but close.

[egneg]

Once it is cleared I think it will look great but be careful with the decals. Did you use a fixative? I would spray the first coat quite dry followed by wet coats.

[cyberhoops]

I used the Testors "Decal Bonder" - and the clear coat will be the Duplicolor clear coat. I have had good luck so far with that bonder and clear coat. I have not had any runs or other strange effects while clear coating.

But, like you said the first coat is pretty dry just to be sure.

[JimClark]

For Waterslide decals the Color Laser paper turns out way better

[cyberhoops]

The new 7-11/Pay-n-Pak boat got out for a test run on Saturday - and ran without any major issues. It was a very nice day here for testing. There is a video posted on the RC Groups site of the test session for the 7-11 and also for the previous build - the twin wing American Spirit.

The link is here:

Test Session

The 7-11 is running with a UL1 motor and speed control that is driving the Grim Racer 42x58 3 bladed prop.

The American Spirit is also UL1 powered with a modified X645 prop. The modification include "detounging" and a Barr cut. That boat runs the best of any boat I have constructed.

[JBILLINGS]

that is a very nice boat ! i dont mean to ask an off question but i would like to hear more about makeing decals. like where and how to do it , i am building a boat and want to do a dairy queen scheem. how would one go about doing that ?

[cyberhoops]

Decals

For this boat I used water slide decals.

I started with a web search on google to find the 7-11 and Citgo logos - trying to find the highest resolution logos that I could track down. As it turns out the best I could find was about 300x300 pixels.

From there I used Paint Shop Pro to get the logo onto a white background and change the colors to match the boat. I attached a couple images of the original logo from the web and the modified logo on a white background.


From there it was several printouts on white paper to get the decals to the proper size. Paint Shop Pro has the ability to scale the output image up or down. I ended up scaling to 55% in order to get the size right for the boat.

At that point I had a test decal sheet with several copies of the 7-11 logo all using different colors of red and blue. The goal was to find one that would match the paint colors. As it turns out the actual water slide decals tend to be lighter in color than the paper printouts.

For the decal paper I just used the Testor's paper and decal bonder which you can get from a hobby shop. I followed the instructions with the Testor's paper for printing and sealing the decals.

Getting the decals on the boat is a bit tricky. I used Windex and a thin layer of soap on the boat so that the decal could be adjusted after laying it on the boat. However, it was very difficult to get the decal to move. It can be tweaked around a bit, but you do need to slide it off as close as possible to the final position. The larger the decal the more it sticks. The Citgo logos were pretty easy to move. The 7-11 logos would hardly move at all once they were down on the boat.

I did notice that there are other options for decals on the web... like 3mm self adhesive paper which might be a good option as well, but I have not tried that.

Transparent Vinyl

Once the decal was down and dry I clear coated over it with Duplicolor clear coat. My experience to this point is that the Duplicolor clear will not interact with the inkjet inks.

Overall it is not a very difficult process.

[JBILLINGS]

thanx jim , i will print these steps and try it out !
jimmy

[egneg]

I know this is after the fact but the website below has logos that are already in an EPS format.

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/sear...324/54660.html

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/sear...214/22380.html