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Spindrift 3 Helicopter Landing Craft


Hirilonde

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Last fall a friend of mine, on behalf of his son asked if I would mentor his 8th grade class project. Henry is a great kid, and he wanted to build a boat, I'm sure you can all understand how hard this question was to answer :wink:

We got together and Henry showed me a drawing of the boat he wanted to build. It seems this was no ordinary toy boat. It had to be radio controlled and of sufficient size and stability to land a helicopter on. He knew the basic size and shape he wanted, but had no ideas as such about the details for laying out and constructing the hull. That was where I was to come in.

We talked for a bit about the numerous construction methods for building a wooden hull. One suggestion I made was to take the plans for a Spindrift 9 and simply divide all the measurements on the panel lay out pages by 3. Henry liked this idea except that he would loose his raised forward bulwark; a detail that was very important to him. So we figured out how to incorporate this detail while still using Graham's lay out drawings.

6 mm plywood was going to be way too stiff to bend for a 1/3 scale boat that is hard to bend to in the first place. So Henry agreed that door skin plywood would be fine. He was going to paint anyway, so looks wasn't important. The boat would be sealed completely in epoxy and live on a shelf in his room most of the time anyway.

Well, after 60 or so hours of construction and painting time Henry unveiled his ship "Bores" in front of a gathering of hundreds (well, ok, a lot anyway). Parents, relatives teachers and mentors all gathered to see the many projects of this class of creative kids, not the least of which was Henry.

post-1086-129497656797_thumb.jpg

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Guest Oyster

I hope that no one will consider you a "pusher" within 1,000 ft. of a school. :wink: :lol:

Thats neat and of course I like the stripes. The hull and helo pad is very simular to many of the CG cutters and ice breakers. Is there some related issues that assisted in this design? But I also noticed something in the background that carries a full scale model of another boat. Care to tell all, too?

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