Hi Phil,
It's good to see that some body is looking after and rebuilding some of the engines that were built by some of the great names in early flashsteam racing.
I have spent many hours in the Mitchell library in Glasgow reading over the many articles in the M.E. of the greats to mention but a few A.W. Martin,
E.Westbury, Prof Chaddock, Jim Bamford, A Cockman and Benson and Rayman not all in chronological order.
You are very privilaged to live amongst some of these guys who have done it and to throw ideas about to see if things would work.
Flashsteam high speed boats is an unknown thing in Scotland so it has been a long lonely road trying out things ,breaking and rebuilding but I think I got there in the end.
At present the boat is going a bit too fast and is becoming dangerous what with club members boating and the swans on the pond it's making me think again about the radio side of things, it only needs a glich on the stearing and you are in big trouble.
I had a happening about 3-weeks ago when at full bore the boat turned sharp left and had to be held on full right rudderto keep it straight, but not knowing what the trouble was I tried to straighten it up but it went full left and hit an ornamental light house in the pond and shot 4 ft in the air, landed and proceeded to keep going before the blow down valve servo answered and stop it.
It turned out that it was a length of cord attached to a 12 volt battery that had offset the rudder, as this is a public pond it was a mister nobody that had put the offending object in the water, super market trolleys have been fished out in the past so I have to be carefull.
Last question with your oscillating engine how do you feed the coil, electric pump or engine driven pump ? and at what speed ?
I am going to open another thread on an engine that I made in the style of A.W.Martin.
George.
