I can`t upload a short video of the boat steaming in the test tank. It should be possible to show the video in my facebook account. See: Thomas Hillenbrand, Maler und Journalist at facebook.

Thomas

Weather still is very bad - rain, snow, temperature in night below 0° C. It was not possible to make a trip with "ARGO".

But I wanted to use my time, so I `ve build a new boiler for my old Regner 12/36 stationary engine. The old boiler I planned to use for the "ARGO", but it was leaking, only the shell was usable. Now I made a smaller boiler for the engine with materials in stock. Here some pictures of the yet improved steamplant.

Thomas

Dear friends and neighbors,

at thursday and yesterday my wife and I made two test trips with "ARGO". Last weeks very strong snow- and rainfall has arised small plain lakes at the meadows of the Swabian Alb, not far from our home - ideal for testing a steamboat. In spite of temperatures of 6° C boiler reaches 3 bar pressure in short time. Presentation of the boat first was wonderful. Unfortunately a support of the servo for engine steering after 20 minutes broke - fortunately I had my boots on and there was no problem, to solve the boat.

At the second trip yesterday all was ok. The boat reaches a speed of about 1,8 m/sec = 6,5 km/h or 4 miles/h. The steam plume was impressive. No boiler feed pump is necessary, boiler water suffices for 40 minutes.

The little motor yacht I build as a boy in the late 1960-tis. I restored this boat in the days around chrismas time - it`s a nice toy now.

Thomas

This is a really beautiful boat, the lines colours of the wood against the red and green paint. It's beautiful!!
Has it had many more sailings since it's first launch?
Regards
Jon

Hi Jon,

yes, there were a few sailings in summer, also the boat was on display at "Faszination Modellbau" in November at Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance.
She is a reliable and fast model. Thanks for your kindly post!

Thomas

You have built a very elegant boat. How is the speed under full steam?

I measured a distance of 20 m at the shore. At full steam the boat reaches a little more than 2 m per second, this is about 7,2 km/h or 3,9 nautical miles. This seems not so much, compared with my electric driven speedboat model "Baby Bootlegger", a historic runabout of 1924.

But "Argo" has a displacement hull with power of steamengine of perhaps 40 watt.

The brushless electric motor of "B.B." has power of 700 watt, speed can reach 37 km/h.

Thomas