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2 days ago

**Alton Radio Controlled Sailing Club**. Yesterday some of the members of our club took a small trip to the Dovercourt boating lake. Unfortunately with the recent good spell of weather, a lot of weed has started to appear at our home base. It plays havoc wrapping itself around the keels so during the summer months when this problem occurs we use Dovercourt as an alternative venue as it is sea water filled. We were again lucky to have had some cracking weather which I am sure most of you have shared. After the winter lock down and gloomy start to the year it has been great to be able to sail in the recent glorious conditions. With the successful vaccination campaign I think we are all feeling a little more comfortable getting together and hope our number will steadily increase as time goes on. Our standing invitation for anyone to come and join us is still in place and hope we might get to meet some new and old faces again soon. If you fancy giving us a look please come and say hello on our Facebook page.

www.facebook.com/groups/arcsc ...

1 week ago

**Alton Radio Controlled Sailing Club. **Yesterday we held our normal Saturday meeting in what turned out to be a glorious day after a dull start following Fridays heavy rain. The wind was a little light and variable at times which made for some tricky and challenging sailing and raced both DF65 & 95's. I am pleased to say that the club now has a buoy deployment boat in the shape of a converted R/C tug. It now allows us to accurately place and move buoys in varying conditions and gives us endless course setting possibilities.

We also had a visit from Shaun Priestley and son who is working at the Royal Hospital School that backs onto Alton reservoir where they have a sailing academy. I believe Shaun is a member of Fleetwood Model Yacht Club and hope that he will be able to join us whenever his work commitments allow.

Now that it appears Summer is showing its face and as we slowly come out of lockdown restrictions. We hope that some of our long term isolating members will soon be able to come and join us again. As always we have an open invite to anyone who would like to come and sail with us or even give it a go if new to the sport. We take pride in that our club is friendly, fun place to be where people can come and get out of it whatever they want. ...

1 week ago

There has been some interest in our new buoy deployment tug used at Alton Water to deploy buoys at a distance longer than we can throw.
We bought an existing model tug and removed the superstructure to provide a clean deck. We then lay the buoy on the deck and transport to the desired position where we tug the rope to pull the buoy off the back. A simple solution that works.

Our buoys have a free running fishing weight along with weights in the tube making it self cocking.

Our tug was chosen as a less detailed model and therefore possibly half the cost of most models out there at £140, private sale. It has something like a 550 motor and rudder servo on a simple two channel radio set.

To waterproof I stuck 2mm thick plastic strips to the outside of the existing openings and then made plastic covers sealed with tape.

The main attributes is that it has a very strong GRP hull and plenty of lead ballast which means it sits solidly in the water with little bouncing around. I haven’t weighed it but it’s a few kilos. It’s not fast and the steering is limited but it works.

I intend to develop the concept by updating the radio gear to Flysky to add channels facilitating a camera so the the tug can film at interesting points of view. ...