It is with great sadness that i have to inform you the passing of a great freind and mentor. Bill passed away peacefully at his son's home on the 19th of April. Bill will be sorely missed. The pictures below are of our final sail with him. My wife received a boat from Bill named after her. Bob, Charlie, John, Steve, Mike and myself, met with Bill and his family at the end of March at Bowne Park pond. It was a beautiful day to spend time with Bill and knowing that it might be our last time shared with him was bittersweet. Bill is now sitting at the big pond with John (our commodore who passed away last week from covid), sailing their models and enjoying calm seas and a warm sun beating down upon them.
Rest in peace my brothers. They will live on in our memories and hearts. Until we meet again at the pond and pray for their families and friends .
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On Saturday April 10th, we lost John (PT Man) Basta, the Commodore of ESMM. He was another victim of the coronavirus. He was a great guy, a friend and an avid scale model boater beyond compare. On the days the club sailed at Bowne Park, he was first to arrive and last to leave.
John loved to talk about PT boats, LCM's and PBR's. He owned a wide ranging collection of rc boats, but lately he had fallen in love with the LNVT, he built 3 of the 4 he owned and gave his latest build its maiden run, just 3 Saturdays ago. On the lighter side, he was known to bring out the hammer, if a build wasn't going right. A few kits were spared the hammer and passed on to other members. John was one of the driving forces behind the recent annual regattas. He reached out to vendors for raffle prizes, printed flyers and tee-shirts, and much more. On regatta day, he was one of the first at the park, did registration, sold and drew raffle tickets, and cleaned up after the event. He was also pushing the club’s expansion and membership growth forward. He was a member of the club for the past 20 plus years and will be sadly missed. The members of ESMM extend their sympathy and prayers to his family. We wish you a smooth voyage to the other side of the pond, Farewell John This Lobster boat, is another work of art built by Steve. It's about 38'' long. He started with a fiber glass hull and the deck, wheelhouse etc. are scratch built. Power comes from a 800 series brushed motor. Every light works! The wheelhouse fully equipped, radio, radar screens, throttles etc. The details on deck speaks themselves, from the brooms to the handmade rods. Some of pieces are hand made, others repurposed and some found in craft stores. Today I introduce you to Steve, one of the more prolific builders in our club. He is a former train modeler who ‘converted’ to rc boats many years ago and never looked back. He is very detail-oriented and his boats reflect this when completed. The amount of workmanship and finding the parts, or making the parts and having them look scale is very impressive. He has never owned a boat that he did not put his twist on.
Today I share with you his conversion of the Bancroft LCM3 landing craft (sold by Action RC), to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers work vessel/buoy tender. Aside from the obvious, it has scratch built buoys and crane, it also has working lights and working radar. Feel free to leave a comment. The Lord Nelson Victory Tug
Recently, while having a conversation with a fellow club member, I was asked about my recent passion for the LNVT, why after buying one did I decide to build another, and then a third? What did I learn between builds and what did I change in my thought process for assembly? Did I do anything differently between the two? Before I get into that answer, a little background might be handy if you are thinking of the LNVT as a possible project. I have had 200 boats in my fleet at one point or another. Many have been traded, sold, or donated! All have been an integral part in my "quest”! When I think of that quest I think many RC Boat enthusiasts probably share that quest. That "quest" has been to find that perfect boat. For me what makes that perfect boat is a boat that is maneuverable in the house (stored), not too much of a burden carrying it to the car and getting it down to the pond and launching. I want it to have a strong presence on the water, look good, be stable in wind, chop, and wakes and not need ballast. Run time on a single battery is important as well. Such a craft was consistently seen from another builder and when the chance came around to buy it I jumped at the opportunity! I consider this individual a master craftsman and I am truly honored to own several of his builds especially the LNVT! Instantly my "quest" was realized! No ballast, perfect LOA and beam for stability, presence on the water, and awesome run time. Never dreaming of making a change to this boat after months of run time on the pond I thought what this boat would look like in a different color. My love of blue gave me the urge to build the LNVT in a new color scheme, hence my first plank on frame build and the production of "Oshana". Oshana is Hawaiian for family and that is what I feel my entire fellow club members are! The Dumas kit is extremely fun to build. Directions are very thorough and are accompanied by detailed drawings that show each instruction in picture form. Follow the directions step by step and voila, awesome boat! Again the desire for a color change and a thought that I can do better led to my second build and the construction of "Trinity". What did I do differently between the two builds? Not much. I made the same mistakes on both and that still eats at my thoughts ....there may be another build in my future! In summary, my quest has been fulfilled, and if you pay attention you will see me quite often at the pond running one of my LNVT's. I found my perfect boat and I hope you find yours too. Maybe it will be a LNVT! John B. it's been a long time since my last post. I hope you are well, also your families. We have all been affected in some way by the virus and with what's been going, I was not in the frame of mind to post anything. Now with NY and other states very slowly returning to some normalcy, we still have to be very careful.
As you know by now, the regatta was canceled and we're doubtful if the NYC Parks will be issuing permits for events, before the end of the summer. With that said, some modelers took advantage of the lockdown to build, modify or finish projects. I'm sure we're all itching to get back on the water with necessary precautions taken. A couple guys were able to get in a few runs recently at Bowne Park. One of them being Ivan, who couldn't wait to try out his newest acquisition, a Dumas Carol Moran and Aquacraft Rescue 17. See you soon at the pond! Last year I picked up a Robbe Paula 3, (a steal of a deal), it was mostly complete, only the buoy crane was missing. I’ve wanted a boat that represents the NYPD Marine Div. and thought this was a good candidate for a conversation. This is what the kit version looks like. So, I contacted master builder Paul, and he agreed to do the build. We went over some photos of NY police boats, discussed what I wanted and what was possible. The first thing he did was to replace the deck so it was now flush with the top of the hull and constructed steps for boarding other craft. A layer of anti-slip was also laid on the deck. Next, he started working his magic with on the wheelhouse/cabin, using Sintra. While similar to the original, it is longer and has more windows and a sliding door. The Stern has an extended diving platform. A Dinghy and maybe a crane will be added.
Next up will be the NYPD paint job, as soon as the weather permits. Decals will be done by Callie Graphics. More to come on completion. So scofflaws be warned, this boat will be patrolling Turtle Bay from early summer of 2020. Got my radar on you! She's 45" L with a 14" beam, and when done she will have twin screws. I basically scratched built it after a couple of pics I saw on-line, of a southern fishing boat. I plan on installing two 800 motors. All the frame work is brass, the hull is fiberglass and the cabin and deck are 1/8" plywood, the rest is 1/8" styrene. I cut down at least 2" on the hull sides to shape it like a fishing boat, I will also be adding a cap rail. The two rear winches work but they will be static, because the gears are plastic so I don't believe that they would last long running all the time. The out riggers open, I am using two 1/4 scale aluminum steering arms from a car I had and the outriggers are two parts from fishing poles. There are two working winches which I picked up at a bait store, located in the hull under the removable cabin, one for the net and the other one is for the outriggers. Everything runs on 12v. The hull will be black and the rest will get a rusty undercoating with a coat
of white paint. This boat will be for sale on completion. The weather prediction for Saturday 11th January, was for 63 deg! So a few club members, Bill, Bob and John, took the opportunity for a January sail. Bill's newest build, 'Faithful', had a successful maiden run, sailed beautifully. Bob sailed his scratch built 1964 Pacemaker Express Sport Fisherman and John, the the ever popular Atlantic Tug. The weather people were a bit off with their predictions, but the guys got about 2 hours of run time, then called it a day when the wind picked up and temps dropped.
RC boating in January, in NYC, who would have thought that possible. 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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