I'm trying to decide whether to install a flood chamber or not how many times is it likely to flip over and is fitting the flood chamber a 100% success of it turning back over. I know that Jan is in favour of the flood ?
Hi Grant,
How often your boat is likely to flip, depends on how powerfull you're going to make it, how fast it'll run and in which conditions you're going to run it.
If you've seen the video of me running my Arowana in the canal, you can see I start on calm water.
As the run progresses, 'racewater' starts to form.
I even manage to flip the boat in these conditions..., granted, this is mainly due to poor handling on my part, being distracted by the camera on my cap, but still.
Often I am asked by an onlooker if he (or she) can have a go.
Depending on how fast the boat is I'm running at that time, the answers is usually no, if the person in question has never tried to steer a fast electric.
If he, or she, has ran boats before and there's room on the water to allow mishaps, I sometimes hand over the transmitter.
The careful ones tend to run partial throttle too much, heating up both ESC and motor, so I have to push them to run flat out on the straights, the more bold ones usually flip the boat at the first turn due to lack of experience.
This has happened to me on several occasions, both on rivers and ponds; on a river, having a working floodchamber is critical, if you don't want to have to swim after your boat, once it's upside down...
On a pond, a flipped boat without a floodchamber is a bit easier to retreive.
Having a haphazard working floodchamber isn't an option; it is extra work to build it and it has to work 100% after every flip, as long as the boat isn't damaged in the tumble and the battery doesn't get dislodged (something to consider in every fast electric).
The floodchamber in every boat I've build, work. Period. Otherwise it's a waste of time and effort.
Big(ish) hulls like the Wasabi 900 tend to be quite stable runners, but will flip when pushed both in speed and handling.
The more time I spend running a boat, the less it'll flip, because you learn to read it's behaviour and reactions to your input.
Not flipping during a race is more important than having the fastest boat of the pack (and ending up upside down without a floodchamber...).
Regards, Jan.