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Wondering if anyone built a swap boat/ air boat from scratch, I have seen so many of them for sale on ebay, with varying designs. wondering about weight distribution, motor size and prop size, prop angles. All that good stuff. I have no experience rc planes btw.

I built the Dumas Li'l swamp buggy kit back when I was a kid. It used a Cox .049 engine and I ran it in "free-float" mode - no RC. As best I recall, it was pretty simple to build - basic woodworking, painting and mounting the engine - but it wasn't all that fast either. I'd imagine if you were to built a larger/faster model, you'd need to know the more technical stuff to keep it from turning into an airplane or submarine.

me to I have the Dumas Li'l swamp buggy its a easy kit to build, I loved to buid so but needs a bigger motor. if I ever redo mine I will put s brussless in it

i had an aeroflyte platapus, .049 powered, rc or freefloat...I had a 1ch setup in it, steering only....was awesome and ive been trying to track down another one since

I started modelling one up in cad from memory (with a few improvments ) and on the lookout for a unique engine

Dumas still makes a bunch of airboats I love to build wood kits. if you dont like to build then these are not for you? heres the link.

http://www.dumasproducts.com/index.php?cPath=136_57

Swamp boat basics: Keep the motor or engine as low as possible. Use 3 or 4 blade prop to help with this. The faster it goes, the more important thrust angle will be. If the motor is mounted rearward, then a slight up thrust will help keep the front end down. If its mounted mid ship, then slight down thrust is used to keep the nose down. The faster it goes, the more it will be necessary to control both hydrodynamic and aerodynamic forces. The hull will want to plane up out of the water, and then the bow will will want to lift and flip backwards. A really fast one would probably need a moveable spoiler in front, adding more downward angle as throttle increases. A fixed thrust angle will only work for a limited speed range.

I had a home built (not by me) that was hugely overpowered when I was younger. I never ran it on the water but it went like crazy on our lawn. I had a lot of fun with it. It was the first nitro anything I had owned. Years later I scratch built one but never finished it. A friend bought it from me and ended up nearly severing his finger trying to start it. After the trip to the ER his wife took it away.

HAHA! I had a friend also that built 1 when we were kids. It had a fox .59 engine on it, no muffler. If we had gotten it going,, it would have killed or damaged something!