Hello Fred

Show us some pictures.

I don’t know the model. What size is it?

I am also a Thames Barge fan.

Tim R

Hello Fred,

As Tim says she won’t sail without the ballast bulb keel fitted, the original HFM kits were supplied with a steel piece of steel bar for the ballast which even if painted eventually rusts and blows the the 2 halves apart 🙁 I know this from experience as I had the HFM 590 which was brilliant little yacht 🙂 in the back of the car whenever I saw a lake.

The Lea boards are only for show and hang on the sides hoisted up, If you refer to my first post on Thames Sailing Barge stuff you can see me building the 30″ 1/32nd scale Giralda, which with a bit of tweaking was a fast barge in her class.

The unusual feature of the HFM barge is the tiller extending right forwards over the rear cabin which is quite strange as that is where most barges hade the mizzen mast.

You will only need steering control servo and a means of adjusting the main sail via a servo with an extension arm, an example of which a can be found on my Lysander sailing cruiser photos the build thread is on this forum.

Anymore questions fire away 🙂 where are you based ??

Regards Ray

Hi Ray, approx. how much length of pull is required for Lysander and what is the effect of the sheet arrangement you have used, does it double the length of pull? There’s probably a technical term for this!

Chris

Hi Chris

Ray has answered your question.  You get twice the movement but half the torque so it works well with small boats where less power is required.  Galileo use the same system but it is marginal in a blow and sometimes I have to luff up to let the sail flap a bit to get the sails fully sheeted in.

The geometry important too but I think I would need a sketch to explain that.

Ray has scale sheeting arrangements on his boats where the sheet goes to the end of the boom.  This is ok if you are only controlling the main but causes problems if you ant to control the jib as well.  The between the point of attachment and the gooseneck or swivel needs to be roughly the same.

Small winches are so cheap now with a big choice of the number of turns.  I have winches in Wild Duck and Eventide.

Tim R

I assume you are referring to a high performance model, which a Thames barge most certainly isn’t.  I don’t think a Thames barge is going to suffer any of those kind of challenges when turning.

You are quite correct though when it comes to higher performance models.  I do Club 500 racing and reduce my rudder throw specifically to prevent it digging in if I push the stick too far over, particularly to port.  You can reduce the throw by either moving the rudder linkage at the servo end closer to the servo centre of rotation or moving the linkage further away from the rudder stock at the tiller arm end.  If you have an adjustment on the range of movement in your radio then you can adjust the range in the transmitter accordingly.  I prefer to set my range with the radio transmitter as it is much more convenient and has far more precise adjustment.  I think mine is set at around 85% range.  This depends on your own trial and error to find the sharpest turn possible while preventing the boat digging in.

Hi.

Sorry.  Thought just came to me while reading about servo arm travel.

By all means move it to a more suitable place.

Thanks Richard for your response.

Philip

That’s something new on me Chris.  Although, having said that, I use surface mounted point motors on my railway layout and they work linearly so it should have come as such a surprise to see the same idea as a servo.

I looked as well Colin and while it looked like it would allow me to move it, the Fairey Huntsman topic didn’t appear in the drop down list of available topics I could move it to!  Oh well!

Hi Chris,

With the extension arm as on Lysander the end of the arm moves 150mm giving me 300mm sheet travel 🙂 the Linear servo won’t have anywhere near enough travel 🙁 very pretty though !!

Regards Ray

Blimey Ray, that seems like a lot of travel, wasn’t expecting anything like that! Only an idea at the moment – needs more investigation.

Sorry for hijacking your thread Fred.

Chris

Hello Fred,

I was speaking to one of our Chantry MBC members, unfortunately I can’t recall his name ! who has been trying to contact you maybe on Facebook or another forum he has the same HFM barge which he sails, and has all the drawings and instructions which I think he’s willing to send to you 🙂

BTW we had a good morning racing with 14 Victoria’s and maybe 12 DF 65’s our last races before Christmas 🙂

Regards Ray