Radio Controlled Boats Blog

Looking to buy an RC Boat and don’t know where to start? Before you make an expensive mistake here’s a few tips to get you started.

OK firstly don’t go and buy that beautiful petrol boat you’ve seen down at your local hobby shop for squillions of dollars that goes 200 miles per hour! It will be good to show off to your mates but apart from that it’s the wrong boat for you to start with. Let’s take a look at what you need rather than what you want…

Buying the correct boat for what you need will allow you to have more fun and give your new hobby a positive start.

Where will you run your RC Boat?
Have you thought about where you’re going to use your new boat? If not now is the time to do that. Do you live by a lake or wide, calm river? Wherever you are going to use your boat you must make sure it has no weeds that will tangle in your propeller and also try to make sure that it’s quite calm. Radio Controlled Boats do not like choppy water, particularly the faster, shallower hull type boats!

If you have the ideal, weed-free, unruffled place to race your new Radio Controlled Boat then you can pretty much take your pick out of any RC Boat on the market.

Where to start?
Maybe start off with an inexpensive nitro RC Boat or an electric RC Boat. Try to get one with a mono or single hull with a deep V shape. This shape makes it a bit easier to control without it costing you too much in speed. Once you’re a little more experienced you can move up to a faster boat, even a high-end Petrol RC Boats that will blow the competition out of the water.

Radio controlled boats above 40 to 50 mph are quite hard to control so if you have a smaller river or lake where a 50 mph boat is going to be too fast go for one or the electric RC Boats with a slower top speed say around 30 mph. That way you won’t end up accidentally driving your boat up the opposite bank trying to control it. Some of the more inexpensive nitro boats will also fall into this category, most websites will display the boats top speed so you can be the judge.

Think of the noise
The other thing you want to be wary of is the noise your new boat will make. Electric RC Boats are relatively quite whereas a Nitro RC Boat or a Petrol RC Boat is extremely noisy when you crank them up a bit.

So in the interests of community harmony and in the interests of not getting your boat confiscated by the police you need to think about how much noise your boat will make. Are you going to be running your new loud nitro boat on the community lake right next to that old people’s home? Good luck! While most of them will turn their hearing aid’s down a few of them will complain and your endeavour will be over before it really got started.

So there’s a few things to think about before you get your first boat; weeds, choppy water, size of the water area and noise levels, etc. Do your homework, start out right and have fun in your great new hobby!