Jari got a Hero camera which takes still pictures and video and stores them on a memory card. It weighs about 120g and it's watertight, so it's possible to put it on-board and take some pictures while sailing. Seems to work quite well. This could be used later for looking at how the mast bends in different winds and with different shroud and/or spreader positions. (See here for some statistics from the ongoing IOM Euros).
10 boats, including two guest sailors from Russia with Naviga one-metres, completed 12 races in varying no1 rig conditions.
The pictures show some cnc-milled aluminium fittings by Jari Immanen, and Oleg Konka's RUS-32, a Naviga one-metre built by Janus Walicki. Note the rudder. The forward section has an airfoil shape while the aft half of the rudder is a very thin and flexible carbon sheet.
Update: Thanks to Jorma Ojama for sending me some nice pictures from the first six races!
Race 2 of the IOM Nordic Cup (also known as the Scandinavian Cup, although that name is much longer and geographically incorrect) was sailed on 9 Aug 2008 at NJK Björkholmen. Only ten skippers showed up, probably partly because Helsinki/Finland is far away, but also because our own Finnish ranking series has seen a decline in participants this year (could smaller more readily available boats solve this?). 12 races in a shifting westerly wind were completed.
Results on iom-nordic.org
Race 3 of the series will be sailed on 20-21 September in Prestø, Denmark
With the servo-upgrade of the cnc-mill complete we are now beginning to run the kind of jobs that weren't previously possible. Stepper motors simply don't give the kind of 3D contouring capability and reliability for running 3-4 hour finish jobs like these. The finmould is finished with a 6 mm ball-nose cutter.
Jari made these moulds in steel, but it's possible to cut them in aluminium too. The fin mould here has a NACA 0010 section and the rudder has a thicker NACA 0015 section. With the precision that cnc-cutting provides we hope that the fin can come out of the mould quite complete and fit a cnc-cut finbox/bulb without much manual fitting.
We can produce fin, rudder, and bulb moulds in steel or aluminium on a small scale. Get in touch by email or by commenting below if you are an interested IOM-builder.
After the test run on Saturday Jari made a complete bulb in steel on Sunday. The first half can be milled with the stock clamped to the vises, but for the second half we need this jig. It's in aluminium and was fairly simple to make - which also means making a bulb mould in aluminium should be easy. If someone is interested in a bulb mould, do drop me an email.
Milling the second half proceeds exactly like the first half. Here the rough-program is run leaving about 1 mm minimum of material for the finish pass. We now adjusted the program for a bit faster feedrate and much faster plunge-rates as it is clear the program is error free and all plunges are outside the stock.
Surface finish is slightly better than on the trial bulb. The design weight was 2410 g and this one came out at 2416 g - pretty good. With a 100-150 g fin trimming the total weight close to 2500 g shouldn't be a problem.
Model Expo along with cats, dogs, snakes, and Llamas at PetExpo, and everything family-ish you can imagine at Child'08 happened over this weekend at the Helsinki fair centre. Like last year (see here and here), we had the MicroMagic's sailing in the pool. This year with four less noisy fans and up to 10 boats.
The RC-pilots were only allowed to fly in a large hall with a net separating the planes from the public, but after the doors had closed the braver pilots did some flying over the pool!
Graham Elliot from the UK doesn't have a website of his own (yet?) , but wanted to let everyone know that he is now building and selling the Widget IOM. Designed by Chris Dicks in 1995 the boat has gone through quite a few changes to everything except the hull shape. The Widget has won the 1996 European Championship, the British National championships in 1997 and 2007, and the 2007 World Championship, not bad for a boat that was designed 13 years ago. The mouldings of the boat are manufactured by Dave Creed.
Graham's options and prices are:
Currently (Feb 2008) there is a waiting list of approximately 16-18 weeks.
Please contact Graham Elliot on elliottyachts "at" hotmail.co.uk if you are interested!
I remember a quote from MMI some years back on the IOM "there's nothing wrong with it another metre wouldn't put right!". Well the days of the A-boat and 10-Raters are pretty much gone in most countries, and now there are a number of sub-1-metre boats or kits becoming popular. Some are popular in great numbers, like the Micro Magic (see my post from Feb 2007). Here are two home-built boats/boat-types I've been notified of lately:
This one is 750 mm long, comes from NZL, and is called a Racing Sparrow. The website looks exceptionally good with a lot of information, pictures, and downloadable plans. Designer Bryn Heveldt has also written a book, available on Amazon, about building the boat. There's a YouTube video here.
This is a Strathclyde 70 class (does the class have other 'homepages'?) boat, also around 700 mm long, planked in balsa by Peter Trimmer (AUS). It's actually a 70 % scaled down version of the Laerke IOM.
I wonder how these boats sail? I've sailed a MicroMagic a couple of times, so if anyone can comment and compare these two to a MicroMagic or an IOM I'd be interested. Do people really want the 1+ metre boats, or is racing just as fun with a smaller cheaper boat?
As before I would predict that any class that aims to be popular needs to have good availability of boats. There are a lot of MicroMagics and RC-Lasers around because you can buy them (more or less cheaply) over the counter at the hobby shop. It's just a shame that usually the designs and class rules of home-builders and accomplished radio-sailors (you know, the ones who still have their A's and 10R's in the basement) seldom meet with the needs/requirements of people who are able to mass-produce a boat. I think currently there is no commercially mass-produced kit or ready-made boat sold that fits in any international class (A, 10R, M, IOM) ? The Windstar probably comes close, but I understand it requires a lot of modifications before it's competitive with a standard IOM.
I've toyed with some ideas around IOM-production, but it's not likely that 2008 will see major progress (too much else to do...). If anyone has some news or ideas let me know! Now it looks like we will have MicroMagic sailing at both the Helsinki Boatshow (Feb 08) and the Helsinki Model Expo (Apr 08) - and I did sort of promise last year that I would turn up with a boat of my own in 2008...
Update: There's an article in the latest Model Yachting magazine about Jon Elmaleh's latest project the Twang IOM. It's going to be mass produced and will hopefully be available in the summer of 2008. No word on Jon's site yet...
I wrote a short report from the Marseilles IOM-Worlds which appears in the latest issue of Pienoismalli.
Swedish sailing blog Blur.se visited an IOM race in Gothenburg and did a report on the event and the IOM class.
The swedes now have about four boat producers, which will surely increase class numbers year by year: Meterboats (Khaa and Bagheera), Onemetrefun (Norlin-design), Azetone, and Sphincter,