125 Hydro design

[Dr. Thunder]

Ok ... After last racing season what have the 125 Hydro drivers/owners concluded is the best design for 125 racing in the US? What builders have been the most successful? What will be different in boat design for 2014 season?

[DeanFHobart]

Neal,

Trombetta (Italian) or Kala (Estonian)... Without a doubt.

Are you looking at getting back in? If so.... Cool.

Deano............................................. ..................................................

[DiGia54D]

Peter Kelley who won Depue Nationals had a Thompson 125 out of Florida.... The Kala boats...Eric Schmidt/Kurtis Nydahl/ Quesse/ Dave Tenney are all flying in 125.. Mike Schmidt made a couple this winter and if they are anything like the 250/350's they built..I would say they will be a hot Item next season.

[DiGia54D]

Sorry Schmidt/Nydahl are 175...But real fast

[Smitty]

It seems like people have been saying for several years that the Euro boats are better than any of the USA designs. Is anyone willing to explain why, to specifically describe the differences, maybe show photos, and further to explain why (as I hear it) boatbuilders here have not been able to make versions that are as good?

In the past, when Jones or Sid-Craft or DeSilva, or Hedlund or some other boatbuilder came up with a winning design, other builders were quickly doing their own versions, often with incremental improvements.

Word has it that Mike Schmidt's boats may be pretty much equivalent to what the Europeans have been building for some years. Maybe he will even improve upon them.

[DiGia54D]

Most of the better USA boats are made of molds or copied from Euro style boats. So Basicly the same thing. Schmidts bottoms are the same as the Mostes boat that Alex Cremona's brother ran and was on the west coast for a little while. TBR I am not sure, Just know that 125 they made for Kelley runs great. Ben's 250 is real fast also.

[David Weaver]

You have a number of competitive options in 125cc hydro. The "Euro" designs are popular and running well. More traditional "USA" designs still can hold their own. This includes both lay down and kneelers. With the one cylinder 125, there probably remains some marginal advantage to kneeling. If your typical water conditions are raceable, but rough, the Euro boats seem to handle better.

[Team B&H]

Brian Palnquist won the first 2 heats at Depue last year before the motor stopped before the start of the third one so Pete Kelly did win. Brian ran an ordinary B&H boat and was better turning than the Euro hulls. The advantage Euro designs have is in beach starts and maybe very rough conditions but there is not the advantage in 125 as much as with the larger classes. Brian's boat was/is similar to an ordinary CMH.

[Smitty]

Interesting!
What do the faster guys' boats weigh nowdays, what's a typical afterplane length, and a typical bottom width?
For example, in the early-to-mid-'70s when the first 125cc motorcycle engine conversions were being made by such guys as Jim Hallum and John Alden, they were typically run on all-wooden B Stock Hydros that were good to mid-to-high 60s (mph), and a new BSH in those days might weigh in a range of 100-110 lbs, have maybe a 60-66" afterplane, and a 32-36" bottom.

Are any nationally competitive hydros, for any hydro class, still being built entirely of wood, or are wood boats just too heavy anymore?

(I'd still like to see WHAT the differences are in the Euro boats . . . ).

[Dr. Thunder]

Hey Smitty, thanks for the comments. That is the information I'm looking for as well. Haven't been to any USTS races for some time so just can't get a good feel for what boat style is working the best here in the US for typical title series courses. As you said ... would love to see some pictures of the better performing boats and why they seem to run better.

[epugh66]

A wood boat is hard to build and starts to get heavy when you add in more steps, inner sponsons and wedges at the back. For the past ten? years, the euro boat has been about as close to a tunnel boat as you can get without being one. They have alot of lift, but the inner sponson narrows down the amount of air that can enter below. At the rear of the boat, the wedges become the running surface and allow the air to escape out the back.

There are more things they do, but I'm not sure I can explain in 1000 words or less and still not succed. No doubt though, they run great in choppy water on tighter turns. Weighting at less than 100 pounds for a big boat has it's advantages too.

As B&H and Weaver pointed out, don't count out the "traditional" American hydro just yet. Just who is going to build one though?

[Smitty]

Just who is going to build one though?

Um . . . YOU, is what I heard. And maybe you're the guy who can improve on the Euro boats.

I'm curious about your suggestion that the Euro boats are close to being tunnel boats. Looking at videos, they don't seem to work like tunnels, digging in the inside sponson as they roll up to the inside. Looks to me like they hang on the skidfin and lean to the outside like any hydro. Yes, the aft section of the bottom has planing surfaces on either side, but they appear to be flat, not angled like the full-length sponsons of a tunnel boat, so they should still work like a hydro bottom, rather than making the boat roll to the inside as with a tunnel hull. Ultimately, the Euro hydros should continue to have the strong point of any other hydros in being very fast around sweeping turns, where the real tunnel boats are very fast around tight turns. Or am I wrong about that?

Some think that because a tunnel boat corners "better" than a hydro because it will change directions 180 degrees real quick. And that's surely an advantage if the course is on a river, with one-bouy turns. But the couple of short test-hops I got in tunnel boats long ago showed me that the real-quick change of direction came at a price of scrubbing off a whole lot of boatspeed. Yeah, you had a snap turn, but then you needed a lot of torque to get back up to speed. Oh, I suppose this has been discussed here before. But it seems to me that on a typical oval course on a lake, with sweeping three-bouy turns, the tunnels offer no advantage over the hydros, in fact, the opposite. And so far as I can tell, the Euro hydros still turn like hydros (though possibly a little better according to some reporters). Yes? No?

Me and Dr. Thunder would still like to hear some dims for modern 125 hydros . . . .

(Had the pleasure of meeting, briefly, Art Pugh at the NOA Nationals in Minnesota in '68).

[epugh66]

Well, last year Gary said he had built his last all wood hydro. It went to a Mod racer in Indiana. Gary plans on building some more J-AX Stock wood/composite boats then maybe try to do a mold to build all composite. The same is in the works for some CSH he's has on the book's.

Perhaps I didn't do a good job with the tunnel comparison. To me, they are more like a four point boat with regards to very little contact patch with the water. They don't corner like a true tunnel with the full catamaran sponsons. Like we both observed, they rock over and slide. On a course like the 1.25 mile at Yelm with a clock start, it would be interesting to see how a race played out between a current American design and a current European design.

As far as boat size for 125cc, my last boat I built was close to 11'' That was in 2003 and the boat has been sold so it's really a guess at this time.

[DiGia54D]

Sam, I agree about Brian. I was more just answering about the euro style boats... Brian Palmuist and Todd Andersons B&H hydros are real fast.

[Smitty]

Sorry, Eric, for mixing you up with your brother as the boat-builder. Still wondering about the general diminsions. LOA doesn't help a lot, given the different ways builders make the sponsons. Afterplane lengths, bottom widths, and empty weights with hardware, are what Neal and I are hoping to see. I can recall all of these figures for most of the stock and alky classes in Reg. 10 . . . but for the mid-1960s, not now!