Starting off the thread with SpongeBob is regretable but here goes...

 

The SpongeBob boat was inspired by Kim who used to play on one of the same hockey teams as I did a few years ago and who now and again thrashes me at Blades of Steel. So when I saw the toy on sale at K-Mart I grabbed it and knew what to do, try to make it run.

 

It was a good fight throwing everything together, I used a couple of old servos, unsoldered the motors, stuck them in the drive tubes. When testing flotation and center of mass I had the drive tubes up higher than when I actually glued them on (as tested the props were about half out of water). The unfortunate side effect is that the boat was stable when testing and unstable as built. Hence the detachable sponsons.

 

See pics and a couple of short movies at http://www.snowraces.com/tony/rcboats/spongebob/

Cool, but I still hold out hope for the RC submarine.

The pop bottle boat. The performance isn't quite what I want so I'm thinking about using a lithium polymer battery instead of the NiMH. Perhaps then I can also strip off the pink foam bits thanks to the reduced weight. And Li-Polys are impressive when they burn up.

More assorted boats, some works in progress (the big rubber duck for instance). I haven't even started conversion of the GI Joe aircraft carrier, the nephews still like running it round on the floor too much.

 

Some other toys too mostly old and decrepit (much like the pile of nearly worthless batteries there).

The pop bottle boat looks promising in the speed dept, but I'm concerned about the apparent lack of torpedo bulges.