Jeff Hoy, American

Holy crap this thing is fast.  Notice I used italics to illustrate just how fast this thing is.  My dad went with me and helped me out by taking charge of my camera and snapping pictures of it while I tried my best to keep it under control and right side up.

This is my first hobby grade, high-performance boat and coming from a r/c car background I quickly learned that I have a lot to learn about boats.  Some people say that out of the box with the proper setup this boat is capable of nearly 40 mph.  I don’t think my boat reached that speed, and it didn’t need to, however fast it was going was more than fast enough for me.  One thing I learned very early on is that there’s no brakes!

I flipped it once and it sat upside-down in the water until I drove home, got my fishing pole, drove back to the park, and fished it out.  My dad stayed behind to keep an eye on it for the ten minutes or so I had to leave it.  So the lesson this time was next time I won’t forget my fishing pole.  Once I got it ashore I opened the hatch and inspected it to find only a few drops of water had entered the electronics box.  I put the hatch back on, gave the transmitter’s trigger a squeeze and the propeller roared.  So back in the water it went, with me being a little more careful about trying to cut tight turns.

I ditched the included AM 2 channel transmitter in favor of my new Futaba 4PK.  I replaced the stock receiver with a Futaba 2.4 Ghz R603FF and the servo and ESC plugged in and operated without any problems.  In the transmitters “Boat” settings I had to change the TRG-BRK option to Cut Off instead of Normal and with that one small change the entire electronics package worked flawlessly.

Overall I am extremely impressed with this boat and I had a blast running it for the first time.  My dad really seemed to get a kick out of it too even though he didn’t spend much time driving it.  I think I may convince him to buy one for himself for a little one on one racing.

Click on the little pictures below to see the big ones.  The next time I take it out I’ll grab some video with my Canon SX110.