The idea of building the push tug Faithful came from seeing photos of the truckable tug named Baby T that I found online. The Baby T (photos below) seemed different with its tall push knees and the elevated walkway to access higher barges, etc. and that inspired me to build a similar RC model. I decided to use a Zippkits tugster twin screw as the starting point since it is a cost effective and easy way to start the build. I quickly figured I could not make an actual scale build of Baby T for a few reasons. Most notably the narrow cabins would not give enough access to the twin motors of the model. Therefore, I had to make the cabins wider but still not so wide that the push knees would have to be placed wider than the boat. With templates drawn and placed on the hull I reached a compromise that left me just enough room to access the motors and still have some deck space and allow the push knees to be a little wider apart than on a springer but yet leave a little space between them and the sides of the boat. The next thing that had me head scratching for some time was whether to have the push knees jointed to come apart and be part of the removable cabin and walkway. Or just have the walkway fit between the knees but attached to the cabin for removal. I probably over thought this for quite a long time but ultimately decided it would be fiddly to reattach the cabin and line up the knees when accessing the batteries etc. My fear with doing the walkway attached to the cabin was that it might be a little flimsy and easily breakable. I noticed on the Baby T that the side and front walkway was a little raised above the deck behind the upper cabin so that gave me the idea of how to attack the walkway with some rigidity. I used some shaped styrene I-beam strips that I had in my stash and where they went atop the lower cabin, notched them so the top rail went on the cabin top and the notched part of the beam fit against the cabin side giving support both vertically and horizontally. So far this seems to work well and the cabin (I used balsa) with walkway is easily removed and replaced. With the push knees I wanted them to be secure enough to support the boat when launching with slings. In the past, with my other tugsters, I have had it slip the bow from the sling because of the extreme upturn of the bottom. To solve this, I have the knees project down below the bow level. I also secured the knees with both glue and two ¼” dowels drilled though the face of the each knee and the plywood bow. As for other specs of 'Faithful', she has 2 Axial 55turn 540 size brushed motors and a HobbyWing 880 ESC that comes wired for 2 motors. I chose this ESC rather that have a separate ESC for each motor. I have 2 Amstron 6v 4.0ah SLA batteries wired in parallel in her and currently a Spectrum 3 channel receiver. The props for now, are the push on plastics that come from Zippkits. I will see how this setup works and change props and batteries if need be. The hull is pained with Rust-Oleum 2X flat red primer on the bottom and their Midnight Blue satin finish top side. The deck, lower cabin sides etc. are painted with Tamiya flat blue acrylic, brushed on. The white on the cabins is brushed on Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover.
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