Ian Vickers has decided to sell the file to create laser cut frames for his well-liked V8 IOM RC sailboat so that you can build one at home! He's selling the plans for the V8 along with the file that you would send to a laser cutter. He is NOT selling the actual laser cut frames. And you are only allowed to make ONE boat from the plans and the frame file. It's a fair deal. If interested, go to his website and check it out. Once you pay for the plans and file, he will send you an email confirming that you agree to only build one boat, and then he will send you the file. You then research a laser cutter in your country and have them cut it. Here is a purposely blurred image of the DWG file that you will receive and send to your laser cutter. (It's blurred and low-resolution to protect Ian's intellectual property.)  The file is ten sheets of plywood, all 12" x 24". If you're not in the States or Canada, then you'll probably display that in mill...

So all the cool IOM kids seem to have nice wooden boxes to store their rigs in. This might be my next quick project then, so that I can pretend to be cool too. :-P The rig box images that I've seen online are mostly similar, and would work well, but David Jensen from Bellevue, WA, USA (The same guy who designed a fantastic IOM boat stand I posted about earlier) has a really nice design that he shared on RC Groups . Or if that link doesn't work, the go here and search for " IOM sail box " or " IOM rig box ". It holds three sets of rigs for the A, B, and C rigs. He also has a nifty way to attach his IOM boat stand, with a boat on it, to the rig box. His rig box has wheels attached, so once everything is loaded up he just wheels it to the launch spot. Very nice! There are other sources online. They show different variations of the same type of sail box. Here's a nice looking one . Here's a YouTube video of a really nice one . Wil...

I have been sent an update on the Rip Tide . I was just sent a TIFF image of the original Rip Tide plans, and they are much more accurate than the one-off DWG plans that I posted about a year and a half ago. This seems to be the original plans by Ted Houk himself! It includes a small sail plan, as well as his original design specifications. Pretty cool, huh?! From this, I think I could make a pretty faithful 3D model. And then from that 3D model, I can make very accurate laser-cut frames. Should be doable! This will work much better than the DWG files that I posted earlier. It would be called the Rip Tide HF (HF for "High Flyer").  I would of course update the Rip Tide HF to be a Vintage Marblehead "High Flyer" RC sailboat with 16" draft and a spade rudder. But the "canoe" hull should be exactly the same as drawn. And, with the longer fin, I would expect my boat to actually weigh less than the 18.2 lbs that Houk originally planned beca...