Sat here bored reading through old posts, I came across this thread and realised I'd never updated further!
So around the end of September (I think) my gf was going flying and I got her to drop me off at the lake with a selection of boats. One of which was this destroyer. The boat proved again to be underpowered, and still awful steering so definitely needs a mixer or independent control of the motors. However that was the least of my problems, the lake was suffering a bit from weed at the time, and the props on this model being so small, took no time to weed up and stop. Unfortunately the model was in the middle of the lake at the time and it was an unusually calm day so no breeze to bring my model back to the side. I had to put in my Flower Class Corvette to try and rescue the destroyer, the flower class having a 45mm 3 blade brass prop, doesn't get weeded up, tends to cut the weed to shreds. But the weed was so thick on the surface, that it made it incredibly difficult to push the destroyer back in. I eventually managed to get it back to the edge of the lake, after about 1 hour of nudging, smashing into and some swearing...
When I took the model out the lake a long string of weed about 18 inches long was attached to each prop, I cleared this off but unfortunately the motors must have been working hard for a few mins before being completely stopped, and had burned out. I was pretty annoyed and when I got home the model went on it's stand on the kitchen side, and has stayed there since, still with the nasty weedy mess stuck to the hull.
Starting to want to get it working again now though, so am on the lookout for some suitable motors, with a bit more power and speed in them, and possibly some bigger props, though I'm not sure they'll fit, and would need to be M2 shafts. Got a lot of boats on the go at the moment though so not sure when I'll get this done.