Summary

This project is an agile and speedy airboat designed with spare parts that I had laying around. Like most FPV pilots, I have a handfull of spare or broken parts laying around and I wanted to use on a watercraft design. After countless testing and hull re-designing I finally landed on what I think is a good balanced hull design. The hull is able to be taken up to full throttle and fully turned without capsizing or upsetting the hull too much. The airboat works with 2 tinywhoop motors/propellers and steers via differential thrust.

Much more information for this project can be found on the projects github page:
https://github.com/unixvoid/rc_airboat

Parts List

This is the list of parts specifically that I used on this project, it should be able to work with any whoop parts though.

• Flight Controller: Happymodel Diamond F4 ELRS
• Motors: 2x newbeedrone 0703 16420kv
• Props: Gemfan 1610 biblade
• Battery: Betafpv 300mah bt2.0
• bit of velcro for battery strap
• conformal coating

How to print

This project is broken into 3 printable parts, You will need to print one of each of these pieces to complete your airboat. I printed most of the hulls and the carrier in PLA with great success.
I also tried out lightweight PLA on a couple hulls which ended up absorbing water, so I recommend other materials unless you want to coat it after printing.

Hull (airboat_neo_hull.stl): This is the hull of the boat, print upside down with supports
Carrier (carrier.stl): This is the piece that slides into the hull and carries all the electronics. Print flat side down with no supports
Carrier Plug (airboat_carrier_plug.stl): This is the plug that fits behind the carrier, it helps push the carrier forward to balance weight on the hull and fills in the gap behind the carrier. No supports

Programming the Flight Controller

Please see my github project for CLI dumps and directions for setting up your flight controller to work with differential thrust.

https://github.com/unixvoid/rc_airboat

Here are a couple videos of the airboat in action:
https://youtu.be/J2SFbNkRmbY
https://youtu.be/VxDwH-HvI94