Sorry to hear that you have been unwell. Take it easy and get back to things gradually. All the best

Ian

For smaller boats, I make mine from 35 or 50 micron Mylar available from Sailsetc or P J Sails.

With a rudder working in the relatively dense medium of water, I am not sure that I would rely on using a single Bowden cable. While you can get away with it on an aeroplane, on a boat I would go for twin cables , to each side of the rudder servo giving a pull/pull movement to the rudder rather than a push/pull effect of a single cable.

Just having a float around on the www. and found these on Ebay. The seller seems to have them in several sizes , and they are pretty close to those I have that came from Graupner.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/386391372184?hash=item59f6b87198:g:SMsAAOSww-9ldGgP&a

Just a quickie.

For those of you not using the original sails or buying a replacement set from Frank Parsons @ Nylet and intending to make your own, you may find the items here useful. I have been making both flat and panelled sails for yachts up to Inga size for a while and having the right stuff available is a godsend. Also great for small turnbuckles, wire etc on other bits of the site. As to turnbuckles, the most scale-like that I have found were made by Graupner. Not sure if they are still available or if there are similar around.

https://www.sailsetc2.com/index.php/products-by-category/sails/sail-making-mater

Just a few thought to all of you gents building Inga IV's regarding the rigging.

I realise that there is a great temptation to go as close to scale as possible, but let me offer a few thoughts which you may or may not find helpful.

1) Standing rigging: When you are coming up with a scheme for this, just consider that
a) you have to keep the boat somewhere when not sailing. Do you keep it fully rigged? Derigged, if so by how much?.
b) You have to get it to the lake to sail it. Will it go into your car ready to go or will you have to rig it at the lake.
c) If you have to rig it before sailing, how much time do you want to spend setting up before getting on to the water?
d) When something goes wrong at the lake (and it will) do you want to be able to fix it quickly or spend ages taking everything apart to get at something silly .

To me, the answer to the above gleaned from quite a few years sailing is to use the minimum of standing rigging, with strength where necessary. It has been a long time since I had my Inga but based on current experience my way would be;
i) Fishing trace wire (say 50lbs) as a forestay through a pocket on the front of the jib rising to an eye on the mast, with small hook on the wire . The sail uphaul itself being fishing braid from top of sail to the same point as the forestay, hook again but with bowsie to allow tension to be altered.
ii) Main mast stayed with one set of wire shrouds down to deck eyes either side and a spreader half way up mast. Again a hook at both ends of shrouds to allow them to be removed. The shrouds obviously use turnbuckles to apply tension.

iii) Trace wire from top of main to mizzen mast set to hold them at appropriate distance apart, then backstay from top of mizzen to deck to tension both main and mizzen. Personally I would make the backstays from braid with a hook to fit into deck eye and including a bowsie to allow adjustment.
iv) I would be tempted to keep the jib boom on the boat and hook on the sail before each session. Since the option being followed appears to be sails with a bolt rope in a mast channel, I would regard the main and mizzens with their sails on as one unit and keep them off the boat.

If possible, no wires or mast to pass through parts of the cabins that need to be removed to get at interior kit. Had a boat once where the mast went through the cabin roof and it was a pain in the proverbial.

Running rigging; As mentioned previously, I would use a lever arm arrangement, keeping runs as simple and straight as possible. I would obviously use braid for these. I would look for attachment points somewhere about 2/3 of the way from the front of each boom as it means you need less travel of the sheets to control the booms. I would put bowsies in these so the relationship of each sail can be varied to suit conditions. I am not sure if I would use a solid kicking strap on the main or not. Don't think the original plans show one. Probably get away with a braid one, again with with a bowsie to hold it down,

I am sure that you will all have you own ideas on what you want. I offer these thoughts in the hope that it might help you decide how best to tackle your boats. Or you can regard them as the ravings of some old nutter and carry on as you think best😂.

"Rogal118
Dont throw the original hardware away, the winch servo may be converted to operate an arm, worth a try I would think"

It is quite tricky to convert a multi turn drum servo to use an arm which only has about 90 degrees of travel required. The Futaba winch servo that you have is quite sought after, so you may well be able to sell it and offset the cost of an arm servo.

Purely as an aside, I have had two of the S110 servos in the past, both of which were sold to a concrete company in Perth , Australia. They had concrete testing machines in their lab which used this servo for some reason and the servos meant that they didn't have to scrap the machines and buy new ones!

"Tiggy- cat that makes a lot of sense. Just shows what another pair of eyes can see. I was only going down the drum servo route as it was with the hull. It can be seen in the photo. Will a strong servo be needed though, I would imagine a drum has more torque than an arm?"
▲
A reasonably strong one is advisable. I would go with a metal geared one from choice

Hi Guys,

Just a thought re the amount of sheet travel. If you use a servo with an arm on rather than a drum winch, you can vary the travel available by making the lengths of the arms assymetric. I would look at the jib and mainsail being controlled by one (longer) side of the arm and the mizzen off of a shorter side of the arm, giving less travel of the sheet for the same servo movement. Since the hull is reasonably wide, an arm winch should be quite feasible.

Hi Duncan,

Ezecote is thinned using water, and is very effective as a sealer. For inside the boat, I would use about a 50/50 mix of water and Ezecote.

Wow, Chris . That looks superb!

Amazing job, so far👍

If you bother to follow it, you will find that it works very well.

Flaxbybuck,

It refers to an earlier post mentioning the Claudio device and how to make panelled sails. This is one of the videos that post refers to.

You can use 6mm double sided tape to fix the luff tape down. Works very well. Available from most stationers or Amazon.

Wicksteed Park in Kettering has an active boating lake which still has the location of the old hydroplane bridle fixing point evident . Don't think it is still usable. The hydroplanes of yesteryear used spark ignition and glow engines too. The most lethal though were the flash steam setups!

Given up on powered boats. I stick to yachts nowadays,mainly due to lack of suitable water.

Just wondering if there is any interest out there? I have a fibre glass hull for the small size Crash Tender, produced originally by Kingston Mouldings (?) along with a detailed plan, a box of fittings and a set of decals for it. The hull is in pristine condition as are the other bits. It was advertised as being much more accurate to the prototype than the Aerokits kit was and the plan is certaily quite detailed compared to the original kit, which I have in the small and large wooden versions.

For my current yachts, which include an A Class, I ended up using this truck and a suitable little beastie being sold off cheap by a local garage.

I would be quite interested in taking this on. I live in Northampton. Will send you a PM

The wooden hull , currently dubbed Terra Incognito already has a part deck ready to fit. and the parts for a mast set aside. It is a work in progress with my other wooden 6 m which is a Revival design, again a refugee from Ebay

I recently visited the friend who moulded my Romanza as he churns out boats like no one's business. He offered to help me with an A class boat that I had bought incomplete via Ebay. Cut a long story short, he liked the hull I had and offered to swap it for a pretty ready to fit out A class Gunboat hull. Part of the deal was that he would provide a copy of the designers plan for it, which he has done. Looking at the lines, while I know the principle of getting from them to a hull, don't think I could do it on my own. Just as an aside, I attach some pics of the wooden 6 m hull that I took pity on from Ebay recently. No idea of the design, but it is beautifully planked. It will have to wait a while but will get finished.

I have a few pics of other Romanzas. This is the only one showing the stern clearly. Wood built boat that appeared on the 6m For Sale page a couple of years ago. Might be of some help? Going back to my clubmates who did the blog. there is mention of their concerns that they had got the stern right. The "cheeky twins" sailed well but the owners lost a bit of interest in the class so they got mothballed for a while. They have sailed again this year along with mine. The twosome have done some work on the original mould's stern area, but I can't see them making revised hulls. Too much work gone into the originals. The mould which mine came from is still around should the planked version not work out.

Have you had a look on the 6 metre web site? There is a blog of two of my club mates making a plug and ultimately 2 carbon hulls for a Romanza. I believe there is also a generic " how too plank hulls" feature of there. My Romanza, bought last year ( see pics), is carbon fibre moulded by a friend of mine and built by a friend of his!

http://sixmetresailing.weebly.com/

The Vic Smeed Starlet would be a reasonable place to start. The plans are available from Sarik and a part kit is available here

http://www.belairkits.com/detail.asp?id=873.

All the Veron plans are still available from the designers son at very reasonable prices


He can be contacted on (Email Removed - PM Only)

Simply buy a nice legal copy of a proven design

http://www.myhobbystore.co.uk/product/33952/swordsman-plan-mm2058

Old kit from the 1980's revamped for use this summer (Motor: Graupner 700BB) (ESC: Pilot ) (5/10)

HI Denny,

The Tarpon was part of a Veron kit with a f/g hull which as you say is available from Kingston.

Copies of the drawings for the kit are available fron the designers son Colin Smith. He can be contacted by email at (Email Removed - PM Only)

The plan was £8 postage at the start of 2014