Originally Posted by
NativePaul
Strut height has nothing to do with the resting water line. It is a planing hull so when traveling at speed it will lift itself out of the water. Put the hull on a flat table and a good starting point is that the bottom of the struts should be flat on the table too. When testing and tuning you may want to go up a little from there, but likely not down, so if you have a limited range of height adjustability make that as low as it will go.
I wouldn't fit the drain plug, IMO it is just another water entry point that can fail, and thus it increases the chance that you get water in your hull (and you want it dry), if it would be very useful to you, you have bigger problems elsewhere.
There is no problem mounting a servo upside down, I have never done it in a boat myself though, Personally generally mount them on their sides, with a single horn sticking up and a pushrod to connect it to the rudder. While I have used pull pull control surfaces in the tails of planes to keep the CoG forwards, I see no benefit in it for an inboard boat, again it adds an extra hole in the boat that is a potential water entry point. Almost everyone uses a single pushrod for their rudder linkage, pushrod bellows are a tried and tested way to waterproof a servo linkage. (I recommend Tenshock bellows as they are made of silicone and don't perish, whereas all the other bellows are rubber and get brittle over the years when exposed to the UV in sunlight and eventually crack up (if you have the room and access, mounting bellows internally is neater looking IMO, and largely gets over the UV problem)).
You are luck to get a manual even in German I have 2 H&M hulls and neither came with one, just a disc with a few pics of bare hulls and completed boats for reference.
A Cat builds a cat - My First Boat Build
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As for the drain hole, when it comes to hulls thar can simply be held upside-down to drain the water, I completely understand, and would agree with, what you said. Unfortunately, the design of the deck, where the canopy sits down 'into' the hull, doesn't allow water to be drained so easily. Also, as much as I like your idea of installing the boots on the inside of the hull (I'm in agreement that it would give the boat a much cleaner look), as you can see by the photo below, in addition to the "upside-down water draining problem", there's also no room for the boots inside the hull, as space between the tunnel & canopy is almost non-existent between the transom & rear of the canopy.
As you can see, from the photo above, the deck has a considerably-deep 'lip' (almost 0.5"), which, should the boat take on water, would prevent a huge amount of the water from draining when holding the boat upside-down. This is why I considered a drain hole/plug. Of my current 7 boats, 4 came with drain holes/plugs already installed, 1 doesn't need one (the deck has a slight 'curve' towards where the canopy sits, and there's almost no 'lip' preventing water from departing the hull), 1 I dropped a hole in the deck, directly above the coupler (the hole serves as a drain, but also allows access to the coupler for maintenance), and 1 I still haven't decided where to place the drain hole (TFL Jet Boat).
Now, to see if I'm correctly understanding what you said, I'm posting a modified version of the first photo, with a red line drawn in, which would equate to the bottom of the hull. If I'm understanding you correctly...and, PLEASE, correct me if I'm wrong...the bottom of the hull should be perfectly flush with the bottom of the strut. As such, however much higher the center of the shaft hole is above the bottom of the strut, that should be the center of the holes drilled through the transom (ie. if the center of the shaft hole in the strut is 4mm above the bottom of the strut, then the center of the holes drilled through the transom should be 4mm up from the bottom of the left/right hulls).
Finally, regarding the build manual, I just assumed they included a manual (in German) with all hulls. Although, I can say, no disc was included. I'm actually enjoying doing the translation (even though it is time consuming). The hardest part...and what's taking the longest amount of time...involves the additional characters not found in the English alphabet. For example, the standard a, and special ?, look almost identical, replacing the intended ? with an a can change the entire word, or even the sentence. A stranger one is the s vs ?. To some, that ? might look like a capital B, but the pronunciation is actually a sharp-S. Too bad my paternal grandmother never taught me German (speaking, or reading).
As for the edge of the strut's mounting bracket that will be flush against the hull, the area where the stuffing enters the stinger strut's mount is 4mm above the mounting bracket. With the opening being 6mm in diameter, that places the center of the opening 7mm above the bottom of the mounting bracket. The bracket, itself, is 31mm tall, work the center of the top mounting hole being 25.75mm up from the bottom of the bracket. The left/right mounting holes are 13mm up from the bottom, and are (center-to-center) 15mm apart.
I hope to have more photos & measurements posted later today.
I say "appears" because it is possible I wasn't holding the strut perfectly (see third photo, below). It IS still possible that points #1 & #2 are at the exact same level, and I might have just been holding the strut slightly "off". If, however, I was holding it correctly, and point #1 is 1mm higher than point #2, then this raises an "interesting" question...which I'll get to at the end of the following post.
Moving to the measurements with the stinger in the full-up position, check the below two photos. In this position, the measurement is 6.58mm with the 4mm to 1/8" stepdown shaft. With a standard 4mm shaft, the measurement would be 6.1675mm. With either shaft, the center of the shaft sits 8.1675mm above the table.
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