Vietnam war era patrol boat river

by Andre Girouard
(Phoenix, Az, USA)

This is a large scale RC river patrol boat that i "Kit bashed". Years ago, Vantex a Chinese RC model company sold a 1/6 scale river patrol boat. I missed out on it, so i decided to build my own. This is nowhere a scale or accurate model of the real thing, its merely an "approximation". It's 51" long, 17" wide and weighs 28 lbs. I picked up the hull and part of the charthouse off of the local classifieds. I built the Tamiya plastic kit, and used it as my reference. The twin .50 caliber i got off the internet, the .50 cal on the stern is courtesy of the 1/10 scale Rambo action figures that were released around the time of the films in the 1980's. The engine is a 2 cycle Homelite trimmer engine modified for marine use, water-cooled head, water-cooled exhaust manifold, engine mount, etc. Radio is 2 channel Spektrum. I'm looking at building another boat, perhaps the 1/16 PT boat powered by a 4 cycle trimmer engine.