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Your absolutely right there steve, the hard part is trying to convince new members to build stock boats, maybe we need to have a section on the website with suggestions of what setups to start out with for beginners ? , just a thought

There you are Damian you've hit the nail on the head you will soon be driving a Maserati. Go and start mass producing a simple deep vee design all set up to be powered by a Zenoah. Perhaps the national association could spend a few dollars and each club could have say two boats each for newbies to get them interested and started in the sport.

Gonna be difficult to overcome the bias for petrol boats, given that they're generally easy to setup and run. The electric boats I've seen seem to blow battery packs on a reasonably regular basis, not cheap or simple, especialy if they leak! There's no argument that electric boats are as fast or faster, and it certainly seems to be a growth area for the manukau club, they're building electric boats left right and centre there now.

Damian has the mould for Big Red (he also makes and drives Maseratis), can't get much simpler and faster than that, the alterntaive is those cut down apache hulls with the ride plates, not as good in the rough but fast as a fast thing for oval racing.Both boats go almost as fast with a stocker in it as it does with a modded engine. Plenty of options there and there's enough of them around to get info on set-up easily enough.

But go back to Damian's comment, the hard part is convincing begineers to build stock boats and stay with them long enough to get good at driving them.Gonna be hard to make that happen.....Maybe allow rookies to only enter nitro, Electirc or Stock petrol classes for their first 1-2 years of membership?

Quote from Sorry on January 23, 2014, 21:33
No I wouldn't want to see rookies restricted in any way you could end up loosing them. If they want to go straight into the deep end then let them.

There's the paradox right there, most newbies, with few exceptions do go straight to the deep end, and then we lose them. Although in my experience most newbies, I've seen come and go in recent times have been running stock engines anyway.

At the risk of sounding even more contentious, what might actually help more is the establishment of a documented code of conduct. You don't have to go far in this sport to find somebody with a number of somebody done somebody wrong stories. Look at the number of clubs and individuals that are no longer part of NZMPBA, for around 80-100 members, it's got to be one of the most fractionated/factionalised (I might have invented those words) sports around. Cleaning up the culture and getting everybody back under one roof might sound like a eutopian ideal, but I seriously think it's one of the biggest reasons people don't hang around long once they've heard or even experienced some of the behavioural horror stories floating around. It's a competitive sport with it's fair share of egos. It can also be a very individualistic, very easy when you're doing a club day to get focussed on getting your own gear going instead of helping others.

It's the quality of the relationships that keep people engaged in work, home, spots team or anything else. This sport isn't any different, no matter what we do with the technical aspects, maybe it's the relationship quality that really needs to be fixed?

Quote from Bigfishbob on January 23, 2014, 14:27
Gonna be difficult to overcome the bias for petrol boats, given that they're generally easy to setup and run. The electric boats I've seen seem to blow battery packs on a reasonably regular basis, not cheap or simple, especialy if they leak! There's no argument that electric boats are as fast or faster, and it certainly seems to be a growth area for the manukau club, they're building electric boats left right and centre there now.

Time to lose old myths! Lipos don't leak and usually only blow up because they are abused often due to ignorance of the technology. I haven't blown a pack yet,and I've pushed things pretty hard at times. It just takes a bit of learning and testing like any other boat to get them running right. Electric boats are certainly not harder to setup and are just as easy to run (maybe easier). The only downside is runtime, but as we are running oval sprint races which are generally 5 laps the point is moot. BTW I took out the last King of The Lake 10 lap race at the end of last year with electric.