cat or v. what do you like

[Pyrotechnic]

what do you guys like better and why. catamaran or a deep v. this has nothing to do with me buying anything. just want to know what ppl like and to try and get the section up and running:). i personally like cats better because of there stability and speed in calm water. but i will take a deep v because i LOVE wave jumping. lol. so lets hear what you like and if you could, what boat would you get?? for a cat. id like a expresscraft thunderbolt with a modded zenoah. and for a v, i would like the gtx outerlimits with inlines.

[Savage Man]

I am a V or VEE (as they are called in the marine world) fan Growing up around boat has lead me to learning about different types of hulls. There are displacement hulls, Tunnel hulls, Deep Vee Shallow Vee, Cattermeran, planing hull Hydro plane, Flat bottom and hydro Foil. I won't describe how each works but I will talk about vees verses cats. Cats are are pretty well two hulls side by side with a wing in the middle they're mainly used in high speed offshore racing sail boats and more recently Off shore powerboats they allow the boat to use a shorter rig or mast and still achieve they same speeds as mono hulls. It was realized that when the boat heeled over at high speed the outer hull lifted out of the water creating less drag ( the affect of working to hard ) on the other hull which in turn allowed them achieve a much higher speed then they expected. They are however very unstable at high speed one wrong maneuver and it's game over. The wing does provide some stability but is only used for directing air under the boat to help push it out of the water. Powered Cats on the other hand like those in offshore power boat racing work on the same principal as sailing cats but the don't lift the outer hull out of the water the tend to ride on top of it. Their wing is basically up side down to create down force the bow does come out of the water to help achieve a steady planing speed but you notice that the more of the hull looks like it in the water. These type of boat are very fast and achieve their top speeds rather quickly but when coming into a turn you have to give up some power in other words let off the gas because they tend push a bit at high speed do to the rotation of the propellers which can lead to a spin out they also don't like big waves either they tend to dive through the rather then go over them. Now on to Vees these I believe thse are the most stable for high speed running and turns they take big wave very well some depending on their design can actually plow right through an oncoming wave and keep going. You have to look out for prop and chine walk if the hull is equipped with chines. Prop walk happens when too much of the hull is out of the water and the boat is essentially riding on the prop this can be very dangerous and can cause the boat to flip over do to the props rotation also if the boat is equipped with trim tabs this will cause the bow to ride too high if they are trimmed in that direction the same can be said for the opposite if trimmed down too much of the boat will ride low in the water and the hull will plow or crash the waves which is not good when running at high speed. Chine walk is when the hull begins to rock from side to side in it's own with no input from the driver it doesn't happen all that often but when it does it can be very difficult to control it is usually caused by taking a turn too tight or coming off of a wave the wrong way. Well I hope I cleared the air about the two designs I'm only going by what I know and have learned. The choice though is yours on which design you'd like to run! Happy sailing!

[Pyrotechnic]

wow. thanks for sharing all that. i know a good amount of info about boat, but i guess some of the stuff i thought i knew was wrong. i still like cats better for some reason though, they just look awesome running in the water.i kinda wanted this thread to be about VEE's and cats but i guess whatever you like the best you can say. the unlimited hydro's are pretty cool looking, but cats are for me. :)

thanks again for all the info. i learned some stuff from it.

[thrashmetal]

i currently have 3 boats and all of them are cats. i really like the look of a cat .

i have a pro boat blackjack 26 brushless , a hydro and marine 36" drifter cat and fullers fast electrics 30" cat .

i run my blackjack 26 brushless on 6s lipo with an octura x642 prop and have run a top speed of 55.4 mph (gps measured) this is with the stock motor and esc.

im in the process of finishing my hydro and marine drifter cat and havent tested it yet. im running a castle hydra 240 esc, a lehner 2280 brushless motor on 10s lipo. i should get some pretty good speeds from this boat but i think i will have to goto a longer hull , probably a mono hull.

i like the look of cats but you cant beat a deep v hull for turning and running in rough water.

[Ron Olson]

I like them all. I've currently got 2 gas Cat's and a slew of mono's. Currently on the building board are 3 outrigger hydro's.
Wanna see some pix? These are only about half of my fleet.

[OldSchoolRC]

Nice! is that outrigger a custom build?

[Ron Olson]

It's a JAE .12 kit from www.zippkits.com .The kit is an inexpensive way to get into outriggers. You can drop in just about any .12 engine or up to an .18 . In mine, I've got a Nova Rossi .12 with an air-cooled head, it comes stock with a water-cooled head. They're only $165.00 from www.novarossi.us which is cheap compared to a lot of the .12's that he 4-wheel crowd are using.
There's one more of those on the bench which will use the water-cooled head and a .21 version.

[Ron Olson]

My latest two. First is a Rampage mono, Motorhead's modded RCMK, Futaba radio with Hi-tec servo's, Speedmaster hardware and a Cooper Cobra pipe.
The other not quite done yet is a JAE gas outrigger, RCMK R-254 and also the same radio setup as the mono.