Model Boat Mayhem
The Shipyard ( Dry Dock ): Builds & Questions => Pleasure boats, Sports, Race, Power and Leisure Boats: => Topic started by: promocean on March 11, 2009, 04:41:19 pm
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I always was interested in offshore racing and Atlantic challenger boats.
So I constructed several models when their originals were in the newspapers and boat magazines.
One of my first modeldesigns some of you will have in their collections. It was the "Virgin Atlantic Challenger I", a small catmodel made from balsawood. The article and free plan was published in Boat Modeller 1986 or 87. Long time ago.
The next model I did, was the "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II". Plans of this model are based on a Portofino-hull from Graupner, one year later. This model was mentioned only with a b/w pic in Model Boats, edited by John Cundell. If someone is interested, I have the plan here.
This model of Sir Richard Branson's Atlantic racer had semiscale Levi-drives and was very fast. The superstructure was made from balsawood and most of the decals were made with an Edding pen by hand.
After the great success, other people planned to run over the atlantic, to get the blue ribbon back...
One of these people was Sir Richard Noble, who designed the "Atlantic Sprinter". There were a first and a second design within short time in the german magazines. I decided to do the first AS. The prototyp was built very fast, and my model was running with a simple 600 motor and 8 Nicads 2400mA. My designed plan you can get till today at german Neckar Verlag (SchiffsModell).
Next subject was the french designed "Jet Ruban Bleu". Here I did a prototype model and this was later produced at Kehrer Jet Drive. Also driven by Kehrer KaMeWa-jets were my proposed yachtmodel of the Gentry Eagle. The design of Andrew Winch from UK, could be seen in a international yacht magazines. I started with a promotion model from USA and got my Blue Gentry in 1/30 scale.
After this model I had some other objects in my workshop. But my last bigger project was the "Bohinc FB80 RECORD", the very fast boat designed by famous Fabio Buzzi. My model was a conversion on a Graupner Azimut Atlantic Challenger-hull, powered by 2 bigger motors of 800 type with 16 NiMHs each.
My "Record" was built in 1/20 scale.
Enclosed are some older pics of the above mentioned models...
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And here are some more pics...
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Now laid-up in Gibraltar;
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What an excellent collection of models! :-))
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nice models! whats powering the "record" model, it looks like its got some serous power. and is that your private motor yacht in the last pic?
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These pictures bring back some memories, I do have a couple of photographs in the house somewhere of Virgin Atlantic Challenger I being towed out of Southampton by a fishing boat presumably for sea trials. I was also lucky enough to visit Brighton Mariner years ago and Virgin Atlantic Challenger II was moored there and the public, including myself and SWMBO were able to go on board to have a good look around. Unfortunately we had only gone there on the off chance and did not have a camera with us.
Alan
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Here are some more pitures of the models under construction...
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One pic of the FB80-conversion from the side...