Hi y’all. I maidened the Harbor Tug 2 weekends ago, and she performed well above my expectations. Ran dry, power looked good, everything worked as advertised and looked good on the water. So I’ve spent a few days changing her livery to the Taucher O.Wulf 8. This is the first step to her conversion to a stand off sport scale model.
Now, a heads up. The lettering isn’t perfect, but it looks good. My first try was to use 1/4 inch die cut Chartpak lettering that I had to paint black. I’ll post a pic of that. It looked good, but the font on the real boat is much thinner. A new member of the NTMS, Richard Johnston, has a vinyl cutter, and he produced a much nicer font that’s much closer to the font on the O Wulf, and I looks really good! Only problem we had is the lettering is so small and thin, it did not want to release from the backing paper. So, I just used a piece of 6mm Tamiya masking tape over the letters, carefully peeled and prodded a bit with the very tip of an Xacto knife and once they released, it was a simple job to burnish in place.
The “W” on the funnel is standard Chartpak in black. The font isn’t as thick as the real thing, but looks the part so I’m satisfied. Only issue I had was getting the adhesive off the funnel, as the remover I had just wasn’t cutting it, so I carefully used lacquer thinner. I rubbed a bit too hard on the starboard side and rubbed thru the paint!! So, I had to clean that up, masked it, painted with Tamiya base white, sanded then semigloss over that. Unless you look really close you can’t tell what happened. Dodged a bullet there yall.
The real boat has the Cuxhaven crest on the front of the superstructure, and the port of Rostock is on the aft bulwarks both sides. I used the stick on letters for that, lining them up on wax paper then using a thin piece of tape to lift off and then apply to the boat like a decal.
The rails on this boat are all painted white. On the real boat, and some models I’ve seen, the hand rails either side of both companionways are painted black, the abruptly change to white at the top of the lower superstructure. I don’t know why but that’s the way it is. I carefully painted them with a small brush and acrylic paint, as I knew I was going to make a mistake and acrylic is easier to clean up than lacquer or enamel. Also, the rails on this boat are on forever, so I had to paint in situ. So much fun!! Anyway, first coat is on but I need to get a better brush to touch up.
Next up is the fun stuff. The real boat has several railings this model doesn’t have, a zodiac boat on a mount aft of the superstructure, some life raft containers, and quite a few other details. I’m not doing them all, but enough to make her recognizable as the O Wulf 8. That’s my goal.
Next couple of posts will be what details I’m doing and how I’m accomplishing them.
Cash

Hi y’all. I turned 65 last month, and in preparation for celebrating making it this far without getting myself seriously injured or spending time in jail I sold a few boats and cashed out some excess pto so I could do something I normally don’t do…spend more than usual for my birthday.
So, I had a budget, and my goal was to use as much as possible from my savings from boat sales without disturbing the family Kitty much if at all. I was successful, came in under budget, my wife got me two kits and I picked up this-the Horizon Harbor Tug.
Now, I’m not usually a RTR or RTF kind of person. The few times I’ve purchased a hobby grade ready to run or fly model I’m usually disappointed. But…this boat has been praised by modelers of all stripes, and Horizon has kept it in production for 4 years, which I think is some sort of record, as usually Horizons scale offerings last maybe a year, 2 years tops. Also, we have 2 members who are dedicated builders of tugs and submarines that love them to death. So here goes…
I was not allowed to touch my birthday presents until my birthday, so I had time to figure out what I wanted to do with the Harbor. Once I got her on the bench, I gutted her like a fish.🤣
The Harbor Tug comes with a barely hobby grade pistol grip radio capable of 4 channels, a combo brushed esc/receiver, an esc for the fire monitor pump, and a radio controlled electronic on off switch for the led lights. Power is a 700 size motor, this is all supposed to be powered by 3 cells. It does NOT come with the water pump, that’s 60 dollars more, and from what I’ve seen it’s not as strong as I like.
So, I had to make a mount for my preferred motor, the Zippkits 650 brushless outrunner, that’s coupled to the shaft with a good solid coupler. Esc is a HobbyWing 16BL30 30 amp unit. I had to do some modifications to mount my preferred Amazon sourced pump, which included drilling out the molded in water pickup and epoxying in a brass pickup, and changing the mounting location of the pump. Pump is powered by a 10 amp brushed aircraft esc-the original that came with the boat works well, but is set up for 3 cells, and doesn’t give me enough voltage at the pump. Originally I was going to use a FrSky 7 channel receiver, but I wanted to try my hand at telemetry. So I used a FrSky X8R so I could run the FrSky FAS40 module, which gives my real Tim battery voltage and current draw. I also added ballast to bring her up to 12 pounds, as the stock weight of 9.5 or so is seriously under ballasted.
Now, the first production runs of this boat had some issues, leaks near the stern and along the bulwarks were common. It seems to me that Horizon did what Joysway did with the DF65, and listened to feedback, as my boat ran dry. There was a bit of water in the hull before the maiden as I was checking ballast and leaks the day before, and there was no appreciable water in the hull after. All systems worked well, and the boat exceeded my expectations.
Now, y’all know me. You’ve seen my build logs. Probably wondering why I’m loving a boat that I don’t have much time at the bench with. You see, the story doesn’t stop here, oh no, I have more work to do. The real boat this was modeled after is the Taucher O Wulf 8. Horizon put just enough detail to please the average boat modeler, and decaled it with an H on the funnel. My goal is to get her recognizable as the Taucher. I have to do some detail work, add some things that’s missing, do some lettering, etc. The end game is a stand off scale model of the Taucher. So stay tuned, we’re going for a ride!
Cash

https://youtu.be/DIf4v8KvfSk?si=9Ya4HaEL1Sq_q__J