This is a build of a HA-Kits Flying Christine II which is a model of the St. John's Ambulance service boat which is used to take patients from the Isle of Guernsey (UK) for treatment elsewhere - probably with more facilities! I'm getting my nearly twelve year old grandson to build it with just guidance from myself and I assisted with cutting of the tabs off the laser cut parts on the thicker plywood. We need to get the younger generation interested in our great hobby!

The box contains all the plywood laser cut parts on varying thicknesses of plywood. In addition there is a bag of plastic window frames and plastic window inserts. There is no propeller shaft, rudder or other bits to complete the model.

Construction so far seems to be fairly straight forward and it is something that my grandson is enjoying doing. It is the first model of any kind that he has built.

As he doesn't live near us he is here for just 10 days and we hope to get it completed by the time he goes home. The kit says use thick and thin cyno or Aliphatic glue. I have chose to use Aliphatic so we don't get little fingers stuck together! It will be slower but hope to speed up the process by starting building the cabin whilst the hull is fully curing before adding the skins - the order laid out in the instruction.

BEWARE when initially gluing both halves of the deck together it says you may strengthen the joint by gluing some scrap on the back of the joint. We unfortunately chose a piece about 2mm too long so later in the build it came into contact with one of the bulkheads - so we had to trim it back!

The only other thing was the instructions didn't clearly mention gluing two of the cabin bulkheads together to make one. After a bit of thought and looking at the cabin layout it became obvious that C2 and C3 needed to be first glued together. Having said that when attaching to the cabin frame C3 follows C1 (as one part) and C2 is then before C4!
Make sure you use plenty of masking tape to ensure that the cabin structure doesn't get glued onto the deck! See photos

So this is where we are at the end of Day 2 - more to follow!

Apologies in that the photos are not in the correct sequence!

Today the cabin front was glued in place after chamfering the edges to get a reasonable fit. We made a temporary cradle to hold the hull upright which we made from some leftover ply cut outs from the Riva Aquarama kit.
The bottom skins were glued in place. This was rather tricky with the bending to shape, so I helped my grandson with this task. We resorted to using some brass nails and wide masking tape to hold the skins in place. The brass nails will be removed once the glue has dried.
Final job tonight was to glue the two halves of the side skins together and these will be left to dry overnight. The same procedure was done last night with the bottom skins.
Also my grandson assembled the rear cockpit well which will be glued to the rest of the cabin structure tomorrow.

Not the most productive day! One problem after another! I found my extra length 6mm drill bit for the prop shaft wasn't long enough. So I have now ordered a 300mm length 6.5 mm drill bit from Amazon and hoping this will do the job. I think before fitting the prop shaft strengthening pieces I should have marked exactly where the prop shaft started to enter the hull. I had marked the exit fortunately but trying to get the correct angle wasn't easy to calculate. I also found that 6mm hole for the 6mm shaft was too tight a fit hence 6.5mm. We also made up the engine boxes as per the instructions as a separate entity. When we came to fit them the tabs wouldn't line up. Fortunately the Aliphatic glue hadn't fully set so we were able to pull them apart. We then fitted one of the boxes in situ which I think will be a better way for anyone else building this kit in the future. We managed to get the front cabin roofs in place and will now have to wait until tomorrow to do the rear cabin roofs. We lost the morning today because I had to fill in at the last minute on a Guide Dog Fund Raising event with our Guide Dog Puppy. Then this afternoon we had a field booked for a free run for the puppy!
Hopefully tomorrow we will make more progress but time seems to be evaporating quickly to get it finished for next Wednesday!! 😀

Put the roof on the rear cabin. Had a lot of difficulty doing the prop shaft. There must be a better way! I thought the drill would follow the grove but not the case! First of all the drill I had was too short so I ordered a 300 x 6.5 mm drill. It ended up slightly too high so I had to make a new motor mount. Also made a cradle for the rudder servo. It is a small servo with the hope if I need to replace it I could get it out! I was told to do the servo installation before putting the transom because of difficulty access. We put the prop shaft in using Epoxy putty - sets really hard and is easy to mould to any shape - only £1 from the local 'cheap shop'! Just unwrap and mould the two components together - great. Got a grey and black one. Has anyone velcroed a rudder servo mount in place? I'm just thinking about easy removal in the future if necessary. I'm hoping the servo will be strong enough to do the job!😊

This was a bit of a challenge. I don't know where we went wrong but we couldn't get the bow sides to meet when trying to make sure the side skins also went upto the transom sides. In the end we put a tapered fillet into the bow and then finished with epoxy putty. We used temporary brass pins to secure and had to resort to using a bit of cyno glue on places. Once the glue was dry we coated inside the hull with epoxy resin. We put 2 coats of sanding sealer on the outside of the hull sides.

We started by fitting the rudder, rudder servo. Since access is very poor we did this before fitting the transom. We had to cut away some of the servo platform to enable the rudders supporting nut to fit flush when tightened down. For those building I would suggest this is oval hole on the bulkhead is cut out so the nut doesn't touch the bottom part of the oval cutout. It was more difficult at this stage of the build but this problem might depend on which rudder you have purchased. After resting rudder operation we fitted the transom. It was only then that I thought I should have done this with the rudder tightening screw facing inwards just in case we need to change a damaged rudder. As it's now, we will have to remove the transom if this situation occured! Ugh! My Grandson fitted the plastic window frames having sprayed them metallic. Then inserted the plastic windows which was easier said than done. I was then busy doing a temporary fitting the electrics and applied the final undercoat just before 11.15pm !! Time was a problem to do a complete job as tomorrow is our Grandsons last day before going home and he wanted to do a test sail 😀😀

We made it just!! Launching the boat before our grandson goes home. It is not completely finished but sufficient to do a test sail. We will have another week at October half term to finish it off. (Gosh talking about Autumn already!!) So far only got 2 coats of undercoat on and the plan is to paint the decks blue. More filling and sanding needed to make it super smooth and also the fitting of the doorway. Electrics need a tidy up and we need a more suitable propeller. Our grandson is very happy with the results. Hope you enjoyed this blog and picked up some tips if you decide to build one yourselves. Once edited I will make a short video available.

Half term arrived and my Grandson worked on finishing Flying Christine with granddad's guidance. I think my 12 year old grandson has done a fantastic job and we are very pleased with the final finish. As time goes buy I'm sure he will buy more fittings with his pocket money such as radar scanner and search light etc. We are planning to sail the boat on Wednesday morning before he and his sister travel back home which will be exciting. Hopefully I will be able to put some more photos of the boat on the water. Fingers crossed the weather will be kind for us!

It was a beautiful sunny Autumn day on Wednesday for the 1st voyage of the completed HA Kits Flying Christine II. This kit was built by our 12 year old grandson with guidance and a bit of help from grandad.
We now realise that we need a bigger motor! The current one is a brushed 400 Torpedo and it was run with both an 8.4volt and 7.2volt Nicam battery using a 35mm 3 bladed prop. I think we will swap the motor for a 1000kv brushless which will hopefully make the bow rise a bit!😊We plan to in due course add a searchlight, radar scanner, bow roller and a nurse sitting in the back cockpit.
Hope you enjoy watching the short video of it cruising along!😊