My Spartan Story so far

[Capt Dave]

I bought a Spartan as my first RC boat recently. I also picked up a couple 5000 35C lipos for it. I put it in the water and pulled the trigger. With no experience driving it I managed to hit my neighbor's seawall and flattened the nose. Pulled it out and put some tape on it and re-launched. Ran it about four minutes and the Castle stock ESC died. I sent it back to Castle and they said they would send me another if I sent the old one back along with a CCard in case I didn't send it. Because I thought I burned it up I decided to get a dual pick up rudder and set up the motor and ESC with separate cooling. Once I got it back together I took it out for a run. This is all in salt water of course. I take it out in my 20 ft boat to a calm area where I have room to run. I got about seven minutes of hard running out of it. The next time I used it I decided to let it cool off a little every few minutes and got about 20 minutes out of it before I hit a submerged pipe I couldn't see. The hull scraped along the pipe and the turning fin bent like a pretzel. By the time I got to it the interior was full of salt water. I poured out the salt and dumped my bottle of fresh water on everything. I figured it was dead but not quite. I took it apart, rinsed it in fresh water and dumped everything in a big bag of rice overnight to dry it out. The lipos had a little corrosion on the connectors but not bad. I charged them and had no problems. I put it back together and ran it today and it was great. Ran really fast and it was the best time I have had with it. I have to say, despite the initial problems, the Spartan has been a tough boat that has handled the abuse I gave it. I believe I will have some problems in the future because of the salt water but so far so good. I definitely am hooked on monohull RC. My question is, now that I have some experience, what is a good second boat that is an upgrade to the Spartan but with higher quality equipment. Thanks.

[backbayboy]

I'd do a little research on flushing the cooling system thoroughly after every run, other than that I would go with the Proboat Mystic Cat. I have both boats and you'll like the quality of the Proboat, I just upgraded the prop to a 642 and put in a T180 ESC and never have to worry about heat. You should be able to hit mid 40's with the Mystic and it stays bone dry.

[Capt Dave]

Thanks. I have never run a cat but I think because I run on the ocean I'd be better off with a deep v mono hull. It isn't always calm here and I like the way the monos run in the chop. By the way, where did you get that T-180? I guess they are kind of hard to come by. Thanks,

[backbayboy]

You could go with the proboat Impulse 31 as a deep V, I have that too, for the ESC I ment the Sea king 180 link here I always upgrade to the 180 just to be safe. http://www.offshoreelectrics.com/pro...er-seaking-180