Salina |
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Manufacturer: Graupner
Specification:
Overall length approx. 700 mm
Beam approx. 230 mm
Height approx. 300 mm
Draught approx. 45 mm
All-up weight incl.
R/C system approx. 2000 g
Speed approx. 10 km/h
Scale approx. 1:20
Manufacturers comments:
The SALINA is a motor yacht in the modern style, designed to a scale of 1:20. The model is
very simple to build, since difficult components such as hull, superstructure, cabin,
cabin superstructure and others are supplied as ABS vacuum molding.
Two SPEED 400 electric
motors provide an excellent performance. With a low-cost 6 V/3 Ah lead/acid battery or two
7.2 V/1.7 Ah NC packs wired in parallel the boat will run for about 15 minutes.
My comments:
This was my first RC model boat which I purchased in late 1999, unfortunately I did not own a digital
camera at that time nor did I have access to one so I don't have any photos of the building process.
As I had no previous experience building model boats, the final result was far from ideal i.e.
some of the joining edge where not smoothed correctly and some of the cut edge where not perfectly
straight.
Although the kit comes with a complete step by step instruction book I would not recommend this kit
for beginners but for more medium skilled modelers with some previous experience.
The kit is entirely of ABS plastic the only wood used is for the motor and radio equipment mount.
I would also recommend that you have a good set of modeling tools and a Dremel (or equivalent) as it will save a lot of time.
Building tools used:
Assortment of modelers knives and files
Curved edge scissors for cutting the plastic
Universal Epoxy, Super Glue, Metal Epoxy.
Revell silver paint for rails,
Marine varnish to cover internal wooden parts
Running Equipment used:
Motors: 2 Speed 400 (as recommended)
Radio: Hitec Lynx AM 2 Channel pistol Grip
Servo: Hitec H303 for Rudder Control
Speed Controller: Hitec SP520+
Battery: Graupner 6NH - 3000 CS (6 Cell, 7.2V, 3.0 Ah)
Performance:
I ran the boat on low speed for the first couple of runs and all seemed ok.
Then I started to run the boat full speed for a short period and noticed that the motors start
to get hot after running the boat for 6-8 minutes when I inspected the inside I notice the
labels on the electric motor had peeled off.
Next time I ran the boat for about 15 minutes (20 is the max I can get out of the battery) when
I opened the to hatch smoked bellowed out and it smelt horrible, the smoke and smell were the
result of the motors getting so hot they were burning the lacquer coated wood mount, in fact
the motors got so hot that if you spit on finger and touched the motor it would frizzle it into vapor.
I decide I had to incorporate some sort of cooling system or only run it at slow speed which was
not much fun.
As I could not find any suitable cooling system in the local hobby shops I decided to build
my own.
See the Salina gallery
for pictures and some explanations on making a cooling system for the boat.
(once again sorry for the quality of these images)
Links:
Here are two links to other websites belonging to people whom have also built the
Salina. (both sites are in German)