Christmas presents

It floats. A C cell in the nose helps to maintain an even kiel.

Nice planking roddie, looks full scale authentic. Foam underneath is necessary and a nice touch. If I make a display, count on it being included.

Nice looking little boat Bob, Looks like it could be a contemporary of “Surf Skimmer”….
Maybe some K & O hardware too….A plus that it came with the little outboard…. I think those electric outboards are are their own trail to follow if one desired too…. Looks great with your gas outboard on it though

rdw777 wrote:Nice looking little boat Bob, Looks like it could be a contemporary of “Surf Skimmer”….
Maybe some K & O hardware too….A plus that it came with the little outboard…. I think those electric outboards are are their own trail to follow if one desired too…. Looks great with your gas outboard on it though

The Silver Skipper came with an electric outboard marked Evinrude. The outboard shown above has one of my K&B Allyn motors.  It looks like it was meant for an electric outboard motor powered by two D cells.  Not quite as graceful as the Skimmer, but very close in size.  Just added a Wen/Atwood.  I will have to build a boat rest X three.  

Nice boats. Cute labor fee shingle.

I told my wife I took care of her present to me. I'm undecided regarding an engine. I am sold on trying a three line throttle set-up with the typical old J Roberts handle and bellcrank assembly. I need to check my engine inventory, but likely candidates are all .25 engines; OS-LA (if it still has a carb), Thunder Tiger .25, or NorVel Big Mig .25.

I really need to check the mounting footprint of all three engines. This one may use aluminum plates and clamps on engine bearers rather than hard fixing the engine bearers for only one engine.

The kit is complete except for wheels, engine, tank. The canopy is so large I may don a skullcap and goggles for a selfie to make a mini-me pilot.



For now, it goes in the retirement stash.

By the looks of what I see in that kit for wood, it appears like they should change the name to flying battering ram. All kidding aside, I believe all of the hole patterns of the .25's you mention are the same. The bearer to bearer width is probably the same as well. As for power, they're all pretty close as well depending on vintage of Thunder Tiger. Some of the early Thunder Tigers were pretty anemic. Later versions actually are better quality then the OS LA's due to having real chrome liners. The LA uses nickel and some can and will peel. The difference however is that you can still obtain most of the parts for the LA today even though it's discontinued.

I'm not certain as to why you feel the need to use a clamp system. It's a profile and the hole pattern can be quickly remedied in minutes unlike a full body which you can't access. I personally have never seen a clamp system that's worth a crap. They loosen, they cause engine vibration and I've witnessed the engine come off during flight. Unless your engineering the parts, the varieties I've seen commercially available were made of aluminum. First thing is that aluminum doesn't get along well when vibrations are introduced. It wears, it bends and it cracks. When the clamp system is tightened down, the aluminum bar that crosses the lugs bows off and away from the lug essentially pinning the engine at the corners of the lug. This not only puts a lot of stress on that portion of the lug, it quickly wears away from vibration leaving the engine loose making it vibrate.