Got both the RAF RTTL and the Crash Tender out today at the club open day. Should have some video later in the week.

This one was mainly completed a couple of weeks ago, finally got the last few fittings on today ahead of my club’s open day tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get some decent pictures/video of her on the water.

She has been out a couple of times, the first time was OK but the battery was too far forwards and was sailing bow down. I repositioned the battery, ESC and pumps and took her out last week, and she flew.

She still needs a little adjustment of the waterline but I’m quite happy with her now.

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks on holiday in and around the Norfolk Broads.

Now I’m home it is time to finish the Crash Tender.

All the windows went in OK and the decks are nearly there, just a final coat to apply. I’m happy with the cabin sides and cockpit, the deck needs one more coat.

I’ve moved the outlet from the water cooling to the transom as the side exit I had on the RTTL looked wrong (will be moving the RTTL exit later). Have all the plumbing in place for the water cooling and the monitors, have a water pump installed for each circuit.

The fittings are a combination from SLEC and from this site. The rear cockpit ladders needed shortening as I was limited by the original 1960s build for the position of the cockpit floor.

Have spent a while cleaning up the metal fittings and have sprayed them a brass colour, possibly not authentic but I like the way they look.

Have all the fittings painted, so next week I should get all the fittings on the boat.

I’ve been working on this one alongside the RTTL, it now needs the final coat of grey deck and cabin side paint.

The job I couldn’t put off was the dry fitting of the windows. This needed to be done before the last coat of grey paint as I knew I’d have to make some adjustments to the window apertures. One of the problems of working on an older boat is the lack of control over what the previous builder has done and what dimensions were used in the original kit.

All the window apertures were fine in terms of height but all needed extending by a 1mm - 2mm to take the windows I have for the boat


I’d bought the window kit from SLEC and sprayed the frames an aluminium colour and glued the acrylic windows onto the inside face of the frames. In theory the acrylic should fit into the aperture and the frame only sits proud of the cabin side.

So today has mostly been spent using a selection of small files to adjust all the apertures so they will accommodate the SLEC windows. Very fiddly but very satisfying when the window and frame slot in nicely into the aperture.

Today was very much a black paint day. Both the Crash Tender and the RTTL had the black hull paint cut back with 240 wet and dry and hopefully the last top coat applied. The Crash Tender is looking good, the RTTL might need another coat, will have to make my mind up in the morning.

I’ve been working on this one along side the RTTL, but keep forgetting to update the blog.

When the RTTL gets painted, the crash tender gets the same. Have done some other work though, the foreword port holes are cut, the bridge deck is in place and I’ve been sorting out the rear cockpit. This was slightly tricky as I’m working on an old hull so have to put the floor in where I can as the stringers were all ready in place, though I’ve levelled them up the best I can.

The hull now has the final coat of paint on the bottom of the hull, and the cabin roofs benefitted from the white painting session I had on the RTTL.

The next paint job is the final coats of black hull paint for this one and the RTTL

Now I have some time to look at the Crash Tender it’s noticeable that the superstructure isn’t square.

The front bridge roof was out by about 4mm so today has been spent getting the roofline sorted by adding some material on one side while removing excess on the other side. Also spent some time rebuilding and fairing in various edges than have worn over time.

Managed to find some ply to build the missing deck between the cabins, is a nice tight fit so is removable. Thanks to those replying to my question about this deck on the forum.

I’ve also removed all the hand rails and filled the holes left by taking out the fittings. I’ll fit new ones later as I want to fit the scramble nets.

Have several hours of fillings and fairing left to do before I tackle the false floor in the rear cockpit.

With the Perkasa nearly finished I'm able to dig out the Crash Tender again while the last few pieces of gluing and paintwork on the Perkasa dry off.

I have done a little of work on the Crash Tender a few weeks ago, but looks like I didn't take many photos.

While fitting the new motor and prop shaft I read about using red primer for below the waterline so sprayed the bottom of the boat before fitting the prop shaft, also fitted a new rudder shaft as the original one was held in by paint only.

One of the jobs that took an age on the Perkasa was finding and scribing the waterline. As Amazon were doing an Xmas deal on laser levels I spent £15 on a cheap laser, set it up on a tripod and had the waterline sorted in a couple of minutes. The hull then got its first coat of black paint.

I have spent a fair bit of time looking at photos of the full sized boat and other models, decided to add a toerail, so glued a strip of 1/16" obeche in place.

Today I knocked up a stand for the boat as it is now going to spend some time on the bench. Have to say it is lovely working on a smaller boat, the Perkasa got a bit unwieldy so it a delight to be able to easily pick this one up and move it about.

With the boat on the build stand I managed to get the decks sanded and primed, need to do a bit of fairing but there's not a lot to do to the hull and decks apart from paint.

Decided to spend some money with Slecuk. New prop shaft, motor, coupling and ESC arrived this morning. Assembled the motor mount yesterday, impressed that it all fits, but only just. The supplied flexi coupling is quite long, but is a narrow diameter so doesn’t interfere with anything. There isn’t space to fit an oiler forward of the bulkhead so that will have to go in the next section behind the bulkhead.

Just need to fit a pair of longitudinal bearers to secure the motor mount plate. Next to find suitable locations for the water cooled ESC and LiPo.

As I seem to be working on two models at the same time I thought I'd attempt the document the Crash Tender Restoration. It was the purchase of this one that led me to this site.

This one was also found by my wife, this time on FaceBook Marketplace for £35. so a quick trip to Paignton meant I'd bought another boat.

I suspect it is an old Aerokits 34" model, the panel pin heads are obvious in a few places. The hull was in decent condition, there was a dent each side soon disappeared with West + micro balloons.

I pulled the prop shaft out and found that is was a 3.67mm dimeter shaft with plastic bearings that had an O/D of 6.28mm, the outer tube had an O/D of 8mm. The plastic bearings had a lot of wear but rather than try to source replacements I thought I'd replace the outer tube and prop shaft. Thinking I'd have a major job to remove the tube it was a very pleasant surprise to find that I could just twist it with a pair of pliers and easily slide it out. The rudder tube also came out very easily.

I've painted the hull withe Hempel Multicoat just to get all a uniform colour to see of any fairing is required. Seems to be a decently built hull requiring little work, so hopefully I'll make some progress on it when I'm waiting for paint or glue to dry on the Perkasa build.