aydingocer

Thanks for all the good wishes. My wrist has almost healed totally, I hope to proceed tomorrow at least a little bit, before I go for a long weekend vacation to France (to watch Euro 2016 Football Cup tournament of course)   .

Before I continue, allow me to share with you an excellent example of customer care, which is increasingly harder to find nowadays. I am talking about a model hobby shop with online sales, named Static Naval Models, based in Italy. Their website is http://www.snmodels.com. I found this website totally by luck while looking around to find more information about the upholstery kit of my Riva Aquarama. While surfing their website I noticed a chat service on the bottom of their page. I started chatting with an Alberto who was very helpful and the chat last about half an hour. He gave me long descriptions and what's more, took several detail photos of the kit and emailed me afterwards, and I was not even their customer (yet). Their shop is apparently located in the same town as Amati therefore they have access to all kinds of info, stock and resources about Amati products.

Several days later I ended up ordering this baseboard for my Riva from their page (http://www.snmodels.com/en/snshop/floor-stands-and-supports/baseboard-for-runabout-200x600). I also sent them an email afterwards about one part which arrived broken at shipment (I had shared this with you guys in one of my earlier posts). I hadn't even bought the kit from this shop, they replied me that they contacted to Amati about this piece and obtained it from them and are sending them to me with my baseboard for free and at no extra shipment cost. Plus, the shipment was extremely fast. Now that's a customer care or what?

Here is by the way the part in question:

Needless to say, now I am a big fan of this webshop and I cannot recommend them strongly enough. They don't have very big selection but if you are especially after Amati products I suggest you to check it first.

Hi Aydin.

I am getting withdrawal symptoms.

More updates please.

 

Regards Antony.

Not at all!! . I twisted my wrist somehow badly last Sunday and had to give a break. It was in wrist support until yesterday preventing me from even tying my own shoe laces. I can't wait to resume in 1-2 days (hoping to get effected as less as possible from Euro 2016 football cup)

Thanks for the good wishes and encouragement.

END BUILD DAY 13-14.

9:30 hours in two days.

50 hours into build in total.

This is the status after 50 hours of work. Thanks for watching.

Light boxes in place:

Planking can continue:

By the way I use this useful tool for my heat work (such as shrinking the tubes). It operates with cigarette lighter gas:

Wire on the LED end stripped and inserted through heatshrink tube:

Soldered to LED's legs:

Alright, enough maths.

I drilled holes on the bulkheads to pass the wires through to the electronic compartment:

Now for anyone who is interested, here is a short set of instructions of calculations for installing a LED:

1) First check the specifications of your LED. It should have 2 values: Voltage (V - usually called "forward voltage") and Current (I). I use an ultra white 3mm LED which has the V=3.2 volts and I=20mA (milliamperes).

So what does that mean? It means that the voltage above your LED and current passing through it must not exceed these values. Exceed them and you will damage the LED (the specs have certain amount of tolerance, though). With these values the LED will function in full brightness. As these values decrease, the LED will get dimmer. 

2) So, we want to have maximum V=3.2 volts, which will generate a current of  I= 20mA. My boat will use a 7.4 volt battery. This means I have to make some arrangements to my circuit so that the voltage drop over my LED will be 3.2 volts. To do this I will have to add a resistor in series with the LED, so that it will drain some of the energy and let deliver only 3.2 volts to my LED.

3) So I need to calculate the value of the resistor ® to use. If I have 7.4 volts coming from my battery and I want only 3.2 volts of it for my LED, then it means I want the resistor to consume 4.2 volts (which is 7.4 volts - 3.2 volts).  

From basic Ohm's law: V = I x R, which makes R = V / I = 4.2 / 0.020 = 210 Ohms. (Note that the current value in the specs is milliampere. i.e. 1/1000th of an ampere. That's why I used 0.02 instead of 20).

Now this means that I should use at least 210 ohms resistor in order to run my LED safely. The next matching value of commercially available resistor value is 220 ohms so you can go ahead and use it. I happen to have 560 ohms resistor at home, I think I will use them. The LEDs are already quite bright therefore I don't need full brightness. The photo above uses 560 Ohms resistor and it is already bright.

NOTE: There is also a calculation of power rating of the resistor but for small voltages like this one a regular 1/4 watt resistor will be fine.

IN BRIEF: Resistor value you need = (battery voltage - LED voltage) / Led current

Now that the light boxes are free, I decided to do the thing which I had attempted earlier but given up after a few tries only to find out that it would be too difficult to do while the boxes are in place: add some real light in them!

Here are the boxes with the holes I drilled for wires:

Painted to white:

Insert the LED for testing:

Test the LEDs: 

Proceeding with the planking on the sides, I found out that the front light boxes are not in line with the planks, which is an unpleasant surprise. There was no indication of that in the instructions and the "slots" which you are supposed to glue them looked quite precise. 

Luckily it was not hard to rip them off:

Then I filed the slots so that they can accommodate the light boxes in the same orientation with the planks:

BUILD DAY 13-14. PLANKING CONT'D. (and some electronic stuff, too)

The weekend came after a relatively busy week at work which did not give me much chance to dedicate to kit. Luckily I was able to make good progress during the weekend.

First I start with tidying up the excess plank extensions, using a saw.

BUILD DAY 12. PLANKING CONT'D.

2 hours today.

41:30 hours into build in total.

Continued with bottom section planking. Spent about 2 hours and the whole process went quite smoothly. Here are the final photos of the day:

END OF BUILD DAY 11.

4 hours today.

39:30 hours into build in total.

Most of today went to experimenting, thinking and planning, which was kind of nice, too. Thank you for watching.

Left freely, both rods stay a bit off-positon. Need to fix that.

Glued several strips to support the rods in the correct alignment:

Some epoxy here and there to fix them to the position:

Epoxy dried and the rods are now solid in correct position (Due to the camera angle they look like pointing offset the rudder holes, but in fact they point right at the rudder holes)

BUILD DAY 10. PLANKING CONT'D and R/C INSTALLED

Having figured out how tricky it is to insert the engine/rod component in the body even without any planking, I decided to take the risk and install it already. I know it will add more challenges especially in the second layer planking and sanding, but I cannot take the risk of being unable to install it. It takes a certain amount of fine tuning positioning the rods to get them lined up with each other as well as the rudders, and you need space to do it properly. So, here I go:

Below are the rudder components. The metal ones in the middle are for display-only option. They are all you need if you go for it: Just glue them in their dedicated holes and that's it. All the rest  (rods, washers, red plastic rudders, arms) are coming with the R/C kit, adding one more line to my shopping list: Buy proper brass rudders.

END OF BUILD DAY 10.

4:30 hours today.

35:30 hours into build in total.

This is the status at the end of DAY 10 .Thanks for watching.

Hi Aydin.

The kit one is the correct scale size.

The motor set one is the best proformance size.

Use both....Not at the same time

In a show fit the scale ones.

When on water use the proformance ones.

 

Very nice progress.

 

Regards Antony.

Thanks for the tip, Antony. It came in the right time as I was just about to order the brass propellers. In this case I will order the smaller size, since the main purpose of them will be for display pusposes.

First motor in place, after quite a bit of tricky turns and twists. It is topologically possible to insert, but you'll have to find the right movements  .

Some details on installing the wires: The instructions for the ESC (electronic speed control) show wiring for a single motor and it has indeed for 1 set of wires, so the wires should be extended for double wiring:

I show here for the black wires, same to be done for the red wires as well. Then each wire will be connected to the opposite poles of the engines (e.g. if red goes to the [+] of the first engine, then it goes to [-] of the other engine vice versa).

So, strip the both ends of the wires, with one end stripped longer than the other:

I use this wire stripper for this purpose. It is a bit on the higher end, but still not too expensive, good to have at home:

Keep around 1/3 of the strings and fold back the rest (to be trimmed later):

Merge the 2 wires by twisting the strings you have kept:

Trim the excess strings you have folded back:

Insert the twisted strings to the male connector and squeeze firmly using a pair of plies so that they won't come out (alternatively and for better, you can solder):

Insert the male connector to the female connector coming out of the ESC.

Now the other end (the end which goes to the engines):

Slide the strings into the connector.

The stripped length was still too long I had to trim them a bit:

Squeze firmly using pliers:

The photo below shows both [+] and [-] wiring in place (Now a pair of careful eyes will notice that there are still wires exposed in the connection points which will cause harm if they get water. I won't do anything to them at the moment, but when I do the final installation, I will cover them with heat shrink tube):

And the funny fact with propellers. On the left, the propellers which come with the standard kit. On the right, the propellers which come in the radio control extension kit. Now, what's this? Does it mean that if you build it as a display kit you should use smaller propellers? I already made up my mind with ordering nicer looking brass propellers but this kind of discrepancy should not be in a high class kit like this.

Now the bottom planking has reached the spot where the propellers and ruds will stick out, I resume assembly of the engine and rudder. I will fix them in their place so that the planking can continue. 

Assembling the rudders after the planks have been placed is not a big problem but since the propeller rod exits with an angle it would be extremely difficult to define the precise size, angle and the location of those hole after the planks have been glued. I can think of removing the engines once I've opened the hole.

The spacers in the first engine set (which I had shown in my earlier posts) had unequal spacers (16mm vs 17mm) . Now the second set has equal size spaces (both 16mm). This means I will have to unassemble the first one and file the longer spacer by 1mm in order to equalize. This kit calls itself challenging but this is not what I would call a "challenge". It is fighting against poor quality. Remind you that the radio control kit is not made by Amati. However Amati sells it under their collection therefore they should be responsible for the contents.

Having said that, I sent an email to Amati almost 2 weeks ago referencing this blog, asking how I can obtain a part which came broken in the package, but so far no response.

Anyway, here are the spacers of the second kit. Correct in size, but one of them with burrs and impurities. Have to file it with a metal file.

BUILD DAY 10. PLANKING CONT'D.

Continuing with the planking today. I spent approximately 3 hours to glue 6 planks (3 each side). After that I have to stop for a while to install the engines in place in order to be able to mark the exit points of the rods correctly before planking the next strips. Same will go for the rudders as well. It will also make it harder to install the engines later as the planks will start to close the space available to install them easily.

Aggressive curves begin to show:

Hi Aydin.

Very nice work. Yes to the wetting of the planks. But watch the shrinkage.

That's why I use a hot soldering iron with a purpose made adapter on.

Nice easy build log to follow with some really good hints and help.

 

Regards Antony.

Hi Antony,

Yes you have a point with shrinkage. I wait a little bit after bending it until the wood is somewhat dry, but it will sure still shrink further until it has been completely dried.

I think this is the tool you've mentioned. I have it home and I have used it so far only for the most challenging bending jobs. Would be wise to use it also only for drying the wood before gluing.

END OF BUILD DAY 9.

2:30 hours today.

31:00 hours into build in total.

Two more planks before I call it a day. According to the instructions planking should continue from the bottom center after the first planks have been installed on the side at the designated spot.

This is the status at the end of build day 9. Thanks for watching.