Good afternoon fellow modellers, from a gloomy and overcast pond side, spitting and spotting, thought I was going to have to postpone the planned afternoons events. But grinned and bared it, got there in the end. The pond was about 300 mm higher than normal just lapping the docks top edge. I assembled the 2mm towing wires into the shark first and laid him in the water with the wires resting on the docks top edge, which with the water being this high made the coupling easy. Then I inserted the wires into the hull of the Orca and fastened the grub screws on the ends now protruding from the transom top, I then lifted the Orca into the pond and off they went. The sharks nose was a little low on the water and didn’t look right so I adjusted the angle of the bent wire as it entered the sharks belly. I had originally bent it at 90 deg but now was more like 80 deg. Try again and the nose was higher out of the water ,a lot more realistic. As can be seen in the video. The steering was terrible, well basically I could not control it. I came along the dock side and checked the movement of the rudder against the stick movement, all was ok. So I tried again, the pond was flat calm with no breeze at all, even less than last week with the IngaIV. Now at this point I had a flash back to a film I watched a while back, it was some fly boys trying to go faster than sound in a jet plane and they kept crashing until one of them moved the controls in the opposite direction and for some reason it worked and saved the day. Sorry for rambling, but I wasn’t going quite at the speed of sound with the Orca but found if I moved the rudder stick opposite to where I wanted to go the Orca turned that way. It would seem that the wash from the prop was interacting with the shark and steering opposite to my input????. Anyway once I got the hang of this I started to steer the Orca where I wanted to go. I’m sure someone will know the aqua dynamic reason for this. The other problem I had was the two fixed wires allowed the shark to swing to far to port and starboard in the turns, this caused one or the other wire to flick over the top side of the side fin. Thus stopping the shark from centering up once the Orca went straight ahead after turning.. I took about eight videos from a fixed position because I was alone at the pond, so had to place the iPad on the ground to be able to control the Orca. That is why I couldn’t pan the camera, sorry the two videos are short 10-15 seconds so I hope they give everyone the jist of what I’ve been playing with. Thanks everyone for your comments and interest. Roger. https://youtu.be/9DIsC4_xNO8?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/yq8SywNNr80?feature=shared
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Good afternoon fellow modellers, from a gloomy and overcast pond side, spitting and spotting, thought I was going to have to postpone the planned afternoons events. But grinned and bared it, got there in the end. The pond was about 300 mm higher than normal just lapping the docks top edge. I assembled the 2mm towing wires into the shark first and laid him in the water with the wires resting on the docks top edge, which with the water being this high made the coupling easy. Then I inserted the wires into the hull of the Orca and fastened the grub screws on the ends now protruding from the transom top, I then lifted the Orca into the pond and off they went. The sharks nose was a little low on the water and didn’t look right so I adjusted the angle of the bent wire as it entered the sharks belly. I had originally bent it at 90 deg but now was more like 80 deg. Try again and the nose was higher out of the water ,a lot more realistic. As can be seen in the video. The steering was terrible, well basically I could not control it. I came along the dock side and checked the movement of the rudder against the stick movement, all was ok. So I tried again, the pond was flat calm with no breeze at all, even less than last week with the IngaIV. Now at this point I had a flash back to a film I watched a while back, it was some fly boys trying to go faster than sound in a jet plane and they kept crashing until one of them moved the controls in the opposite direction and for some reason it worked and saved the day. Sorry for rambling, but I wasn’t going quite at the speed of sound with the Orca but found if I moved the rudder stick opposite to where I wanted to go the Orca turned that way. It would seem that the wash from the prop was interacting with the shark and steering opposite to my input????. Anyway once I got the hang of this I started to steer the Orca where I wanted to go. I’m sure someone will know the aqua dynamic reason for this. The other problem I had was the two fixed wires allowed the shark to swing to far to port and starboard in the turns, this caused one or the other wire to flick over the top side of the side fin. Thus stopping the shark from centering up once the Orca went straight ahead after turning.. I took about eight videos from a fixed position because I was alone at the pond, so had to place the iPad on the ground to be able to control the Orca. That is why I couldn’t pan the camera, sorry the two videos are short 10-15 seconds so I hope they give everyone the jist of what I’ve been playing with. Thanks everyone for your comments and interest. Roger.