bow thruster and running gear

yesterday and today permanently epoxied the b/t unit into bow space. soldered the wires on first and made a mounting block out of scrap mahogany. will fit sucuring strap tomorrow.

trimmed thruster tube ends and sanded down.

removed one arm from rudder control levers as will be useing 2 servos for independent rudders. they are cheap enough and i've got 11 channels to play with so why not. makes for much simpler manoevering. you just fold both rudders inboard and forget about them. when running just use one rudder to steer. ifiled a groove in the top of each shaft which i roughed up a bit withe a file and put a drop of cyo on the join as i've heard they come loose.

next fitted the running gear. this was tricky. need 6 hands. got all held temporarily with clamps and ticky tape. found it necessary to extend forward the slots for the "a" frames by about 1/8th inch before it was possible to get rudder rods through skeg holes. when all in correct position found that one nozzle mount ing plate lay evenly on hull but other one had a void under it. fileing it flat would have made things worse so i glued up as it was with araldite 30min then when set used a hypodermic syringe to inject araldite into the void. will require quite a lot of work to grind down joint edges and fill small gaps with p38 filler prior to priming.