Party (fishing) boats

[Ken_NJ]

Notice the t-nuts to the left in the picture. The four machine screws from the toggle panel screw into those t-nuts holding the panel in place. The two sets of wires come thru this opening. One goes through to the magnetic pogo pin connector. The other gets soldered to all of the copper foil tape. I need a strain relief so the movement of the wires does not pull off the copper tape. Started with a piece of hardwood with a predrilled hole epoxied in place.



Every see these cable ties? I cut one down to size and drilled a hole in it.



It goes here like so.



And the wires get wrapped so they will not move around.



And then the individual wires get soldered to the appropriate circuit. The wires are color coded from the switch to the correct circuit. The two wires sticking up are not needed and will be tucked away.

[Ken_NJ]

In the boat, and connected to the transmitter, to turn on and off all of those circuits mentioned above, I ordered on/off RC switches from eBay. I ordered 10 so they were about $2.50 each plus shipping. I tested one out and it works fine, well it should. Only issues, you need to order or have JST cables to connect to the input and output unless you do your own type of connection. And for me, I'll have to switch the input and output JST's for how I will be wiring them up. The output of these devices will have to be soldered to one of the magnetic pogo pin connectors. The electronic switch is available in two flavors, 2amp and 20amp. I bought the 20amp. This same electronic switch is available on Amazon for $9 and comes with the JST pigtails. Big difference for 10 devices. $25 vs $90. The Amazon one is only 4amp and 8amp. All sufficient for LED lighting.

On eBay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394409238461?var=662949938818

On Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FLVGTXQ/?coliid=I2TGS3DPX8DT3R&colid=ZDTIJ0ROHGMC&psc=1&re f_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it


There are other switches that do not have the input and output and they use power through the receiver.



Dimension Engineering also has interesting on-off controllers. I have a Pico switch in my Marlin for controlling lights.

https://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/battleswitch

[Ken_NJ]

I used GRP and cut and drilled out this panel which on-off-on toggle switch will be mounted to.



On the bottom of the panel I notched in holes which align with the washer which holds the switch from spinning as the nut is tightened.



The center lug will go off to each of the light circuits done with the copper foil tape. The lower lug in this picture has a brass bar connecting all of lower lugs. These will be connected to 12v. The upper lugs will be from the previously mentioned pogo pins. Each of those pogo pins will come from an on/off device controlled via the transmitter to turn each circuit on and off.

So with the toggle centered, nothing will come on.
Toggle up, I can manually turn lights on and off without using the transmitter.
Toggle down, I can turn lights on and off with the transmitter while the boat is in the water.





Here is the finished product mounted on the upper deck. The whole panel will be covered and hidden by a box that will be for life jacket storage.

CL = Cabin lights
DL = Deck lights
FL = Flood lights
NL = Navigation lights
AL = Anchor light
SL = Spot light
RD = Radar unit

[Ken_NJ]

To continue on the subject of lighting.

Sometime around 2008 when I was rebuilding a party boat that I built around 1980, this is the SS Miss Belmar, I used pogo pins between the hull and the main cabin so that I did not have to contend with wires as I removed and replaced the cabin on the hull. The pogo pins I had at the time were as you see here, they were about an inch long and the spring part has about 1/4" of travel. I etched a PCB that the pogo pins were soldered to and mounted this in the hull under the deck. Wires were soldered to the back side of this PCB, you can see some on the left of the picture. The four sets of screws allow me to adjust the pogo pins in & out and up & down to align with the cabin PCB. These have been working fine for the last 15 years, never had to touch them.



The receiving part of the pogo pins is this PCB which I etched. It is mounted on the underside of the cabin. When the cabin is placed in position, contact is made and power is supplied to the lighting in the cabin.



Now back to 2024, there are many type of pogo pin devices today. For the Big Marie S, I will be attempting to use a 10 pin magnet pogo pin setup. The idea is one side will be mounted in the hull, the other side will be mounted on the underside of the cabin. Like above, when the cabin is placed on the hull, the magnets will attract each other and create the connection. The ends of the cable you see below will have to be soldered to the tiny tiny tiny pins on one side of the magnetic device. This is going to be a real challenge. The other challenge will be to mount both sides in the hull and cabin so they line up with each other to make contact. If I can't line them up then I can leave the cabin side loose and manually snap them together as I place the cabin on the boat. But that will require more than two hands unless I get more creative. The white connector on the cable will connect to a cable on a panel with toggle switches. That will be in the next post.

[RCSubGuy]

Awesome work, Ken! Love it.

[Das Boot]

I traded with Bob for a Dumas USS Crocket which incorporates the same principle for all the electrical circuits. The top section comes off completely with no wires, only copper contacts. Very ingenious. Yours is looking great. Nice job on the rowboat too.

[Bob Gato]

Ken, brilliant idea - that copper tape is, as you said, for assembling stained glass... Stained glass is an art... And your use here is producing truly a piece of art. I have always said that the RC hobby occasionally comes up with a crossover from other hobbies, like model trains or model airplanes. This is an exciting new crossover that I will have to try in the future. Thanks for posting this -BG

[rwtdiver]

WOW Ken!

Your wiring engineering is really outstanding! I have never seen wiring done like that before. The design and layout are amazing to say the least. Great photos, and thank you for sharing and showing a new way of doing complex wiring...

Rob
"Firemen can stand the heat."

[Ken_NJ]

Doing some electrical work. Specifically running copper foil tape for the lighting on the Big Marie S. What is copper foil tape you might ask? It is conductive, solderable, sticky sided copper foil. Primary use might be putting it on stained glass edges so that the pieces of glass can be soldered together to make a colorful mosaic piece of art. It comes in many widths. The smallest I can find is 7/32 but I use 1/8. I also cut the 1/8 tape in half giving me 1/16" strips. It can also be used for electrical circuits. I am basically running six circuits on the underside of the upper deck. Circuits will be cabin lighting, deck lighting, flood lights, navigation lights, spot light, anchor light and radar. How do you use it? Peel and stick. I'm essentially making a large circuit board. Once the strips are run I can change the direction or cross over circuits. To cross over a circuit I put a thin piece of styrene over the lower strip and that keeps the runs from shorting to each other. I found that if you place one piece over another, even though the glue is there, it makes connectivity between the pieces. So that is why you need something to isolate them if they are different circuits. So to get all the wiring I need done, I eliminate the possible mess I would have if I had to use wire. Although this is time consuming laying out the circuits, you will not see any wires and you will not see how all of the LED's are connected. Even though there was connectivity when two pieces cross each other, for those joints that I need connectivity, I add a bit of solder to the joint so there is no question about connectivity. AND, VERY IMPORTANT, as you do this, use your voltmeter to check connectivity when connecting pieces and also check you don't have connectivity between cross over pieces.

Copper foil tape on Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/ys5ndjsr

The underside of the cabin deck. Took a few days to get this done, and lots of thinking. The components and some of the copper tape will be masked and the rest will be spray painted white. I started by running the ground wire. Then the other circuits.



Here you can see styrene over cross over points. And some soldered connections. Also, I started to not use current limiting resistors. In place of the resistor I use CL2N3 current limiting transistors. The input voltage is 5v-90v and the current output is a constant 20ma which is what most LED's require. As the battery voltage drops from say a 12v battery, the LED's will get the constant 20ma current they need to stay the same brightness. With a resistor, as the voltage drops, the brightness will drop. The little black things you see are the CL2N3's which each LED gets one. I bought mine from Digikey.



You can see how the copper tape transitions over obstacles. You can also run the tape before you glue a bulkhead or a dividing wall. That way you get power where you need it invisibly. You can also paint over the copper tape.



When you solder, the glue liquifies, But when it cools it still sticks. After soldering I just push down on it to make sure it stays where it should.



Here you can see pieces that where cut in half to make runs to where the LED's will be.



This is where power will come up through the hull to these connections. More work is needed here.



These are the cabin LED's powered on.

[Ken_NJ]

One final picture. Now on to another part of this project.

[Ken_NJ]

And here it is sitting inverted on the upper deck of the Big Marie S. The rowboat has a magnet under each seat. Those magnets connect to magnets mounted in the mounting blocks the rowboat sits on. Scale rope was CA'd to magnets which connect to magnets that where put on the end of the mounting blocks. So the tie down ropes can be easily be removed to remove the rowboat and show it off.

[Ken_NJ]

It was spray painted with few coats of Rustoleun 2x white primer. Sanded, then spray with a few coats of Rustoluem white satin. A brass eye pin was cut short and placed in the stem. Some imperfections are noticeable in the pictures. Dare I say that?? But if you look at a real rowboat that is sitting upside down, constantly exposed to the weather, there will be imperfections in it as well. The boat crew just needs to do a little maintenance on it, maintenance that all boats need. Not building something like this before, and building something so small, it came out perfect for the Big Marie S.

[Ken_NJ]

Here you can see the styrene frames and other details added. Ready for paint.



Symmetry looks good. Some minor imperfections.

[Ken_NJ]

Thank you David, much appreciated!

Before breaking away from the board, some touch up was done with Nitro Stan. Pliers were then used to snap the frames away from the board.



Here the frames were slid out from the keel. I did spot glue some of the frames to those frames to hold them down. Not much thou. They slid out pretty easily. The glued planks held each other in place to keep the shape.



Size comparison to my hand.



Beginning to remove the wood down to the inside part of the keel.



Inside all cleaned out with notches in place for the bent frames which will be styrene.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Beautiful work. And top-notch photography to boot. Good stuff!