Last week I took the Fantail Launch for sail on the club lake in the evening. The weather was kind and pootling around the water was very pleasant. After a couple if circuits I messed around sailing the boat between buoys near the edge - close enough that I could rescue the model with a pole rather than a other boat.
My plan was to see how long the engine kept going so I could plan future trips. On two tablets of fuel and 60ml of water, I managed 21 minutes. At this point the engine was obviously losing power and in danger of stalling so I pulled it to the bank and tried to put out the fire by blowing down the chimney.
On doing this the water filler popped off. Fortunately it fell onto the landing stage.
Obviously what had happened was that the boiler had run dry. The fuel tablets last urges were enough to melt the solder and the remaining pressure enough to flip the filler, which is simply soldered to the surface of the boiler, off.
During the week I manged to re-fit the filler, albeit not quite as neatly as before. Doing this without dismantling the cladding meant I managed to singe the wood a little too. This will give the boat character I think and not just a memento of my laziness...
A steam test showed that there weren't any other leaks so last night the model took another turn around the water. This time I limited the run to 15 minutes and all was fine. So now I know - quarter of an hour an no more, or it's the soldering iron for me !
No comments:
Post a Comment