Traxxas Nitro Vee - any good?

[PCC]

Does anyone have any experience or understanding of this boat? How does it perform?

The nitro with electric return to shore interests me - seems quite facinating.....

[Vifo]

Traxxas Nitro V

Hi,
This Nitro cum Electric Boat is very complete to Own.
It is a Good first Boat and logically easy to operate.

Problem, is that you need someone who is experience to tune and
trim it properly, otherwise she may not cut the water well and it has a
tandency to be moving in water with her front pointing upwards.
(which is not graceful and slow)

[PCC]

hmmm.... thanx..... Looks like most of the negatives is in terms of how to get it right and its moving form. sigh.....

[Mad Armour]

Does anyone have any experience or understanding of this boat? How does it perform?

The nitro with electric return to shore interests me - seems quite facinating.....

Traxxas makes good quality boats. I've the Villain EX and it's wonderful. In SG, you have a problem of where to play it.

[PCC]

hey - I thought we have quite a few places to play these boats right? Do you play at Punggol Park?

[Mad Armour]

hey - I thought we have quite a few places to play these boats right? Do you play at Punggol Park?

We have quite a few places to play electric boats, not nitro boats.

Went there once nia. Hope to go there again sometime.

[alex_bong]

is a good buy i think, complete 'RTS', if engine off just drive back with the
included 'ReturnToShore' system. Wonderful!!

anyway can play it at East cospak! in Sea Water! and standby ur lifejacket and prepair for some swimming on the way, hahaha... , i myself always standby my inflatable
boat!! when play with members.

[Doraemon]

I ran my Nitro Vee once at Marina South - was using a very rich mixture because I was breaking-in the engine. Even then, the boat would get up on a plane quite easily. The only problem I had was cavitation when doing sharp turns. Boats like this take a bit of tuning and trimming, and there are plenty of articles on web to help do this. Once properly set up (with trim plates, octura props, etc), the lake in MS is simply too small for the speed this boat is capable of.

Anyway, I have not run this boat for a while because I'm focusing on electrics. Took my Bluestreak to MS last Sunday for a first run... had problems with cavitation and porpoising ... and I though these were nitro boat problems!! Going to get some trim plates to see if I can sort these problems out

[CCx4]

Hi Doraemon,

From memory when I was more active with RC boats... Check the angle of your prop and weight distribution of batteries/electronics to reduce porpoising.

I used to run the Kyosho Jetstream with 2 x Reedy Twister motors with 2x1200 mAh SCR packs... .also at Marina South. If the prop is not trimmed correctly, when running at full throttle, the bow of the boat will even go underwater, and the boat will just slow down due to the sudden extra drag. But once the 'balance' is found from trimming both prop angle and weight distribution, the boat just stays on plane, and 'flies' from crest to crest.

Cavitation can mostly be solved by limiting the max angle of turn the surface drive can turn. Turn too much, and the boat cavitates and does a fishtail slide, and the boat stops all forward motion. Alternatively, you can ease back on your throttle when turning, but what fun is that, right?

Hope what I can remember helps.

Cheers

[CCx4]

I used to run the Kyosho Jetstream with 2 x Reedy Twister motors with 2x1200 mAh SCR packs... .also at Marina South.

The above should read as "I used to run the Kyosho Jetstream with 2 x Reedy or Twister motors with 2x1200 mAh SCR packs... .also at Marina South. "

Cheers

[stuka]

Hi guys,

That sounds more like prop ventilation problem then cavitation. Do RC boaters use these terms interchangeably? Just to share with you, in full scale boats, when prop blade passes through water at an increasing speed, the pressure that holds the water to the sides of the blades is lowered. If the water is sufficiently warm, and the boat is in high enough speed, boiling can occur, producing bubbles which then immediately collapse, releasing energy that can cause a burn on the prop blades. So if the prop can actually break away if it was made of inferior material.

Prop ventilation on the other hand is caused by air from the surface being drawn into the rotating prop blades, resulting in the prop slipping more than usual due to the reduced water load on the blades. This normally occurs when you try to turn the boat at high planing speeds or if the outboard or sterndrive is trimmed out too high. The obvious symptoms are a sudden increase in RPM with loud high pitch sound and a loss of speed.

I think your situation is less likely to be cavitation as the water we sailed in is not usually warm enough to cause boiling.

[Doraemon]

Guys, thanks for the tips.

I'll try CCx4's suggestion first and shift the balance around before going down the route of trim plates. I might have upset the factory balance point on the boat by using a 7 cell battery pack and a slightly modified 540 motor, which may have also produced a little extra power to upset the situation even more. I did try the full range of thrust angles on the outdrive when I was at MS last weekend, but was not able to solve the problem of porpoising. So, this narrows my options down to moving the battery pack around the hull to adjust the CG (the most cost effective option), but there isn't much leeway between the radio box and the motor gear box for this experiment

As for Stuka's comments, my prop is definitely drawing in air (and not boiling the water around it!)... and yes, it seems rc boaters do use the word 'cavitation' to describe this

One last question, will a smaller diameter prop with a higher pitch help with this ventilation problem (e.g. an octura x437 3 blade)?

[stuka]

One last question, will a smaller diameter prop with a higher pitch help with this ventilation problem (e.g. an octura x437 3 blade)?

In my opinion, it probably wont help much as a smaller prop is really not much smaller in size, the prop is sucking air from surface because during a sharp turn, it is forced to work closer to the water surface, reducing throttle may help. Also I think trim the CG backward a little can reduce the tendency for the stern to rise.

You can do a simple experiment at home to observe how ventilation occur. Hold the boat in a sink or bathtub of water and throttle up, then gradually tilt the prop closer and closer to the water surface, notice at a certain depth, water well starts to form around the prop, starting to suck air into the prop.

[CCx4]

Thanks, Stuka, for correcting the terminology usage error. Again, this was the term used a few years ago to describe the problem. Guess it stayed in use in the circuit, huh? Haha.

As for prop breakages, likely it is due to fish or tortoise hit while running as almost all of our bodies of water in SG have both creatures living in them.

Hi Doraemon... normally a combination of prop trim and weight shift should saolve the problem. Worst case, add a ball of plastercine at the tip of the bow from the inside. This will help bring the bow down a bit. Too much down trim on prop will also result in porpoising as now it is the prop trying to force the bow down, but the water is opposing it. Will take a few batteries to get it all squared away as it did some years ago too... unless there is a shortcut method now. kekeke.

Cheers, and most importantly, enjoy!!

[Doraemon]

Thanks again for the suggestion Stuka... seems like powering down for tight turns is the answer I will denfinitely try this approach when I next run the Nitro Vee. The problem with the Bluestreak is that the kit only comes with a microswitch so the motor is either on or off...

Can you recommend an ESC which can be used with up to eight cells and a 23 turn motor for a reasonable price? I am totally lost when it comes to ESCs because there are so many of them in the shops and different shops push different brands

Thanks for casting your mind on these questions