RC Scale Speed Schooner Sailing

The boats are classic models, scratch built of plywood to plans available from     http://www.bearospaceindustries.com/b... Observed speeds of my 48” gaff rigged schooner “Irene” under sail have ranged from 2.8 - 3.1 knots (scale 9.7 - 10.7 knots) depending on wind & wave conditions. The GPS we use is a GPSmap76CSx made by Garmin. This "hand held” type of GPS is often kept aboard full size boats, so if you don’t have one, you might be able to borrow from a boat owning friend. William Froude (1810 - 1879) was a pioneer in the use of models to forecast the performance of new ship designs. He developed mathematics to work with boats and the waves they make, including the formula we have used in this video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William... The “Scale Speed” we arrive at is related to the waves (bow & stern) which are produced by the boat. Traveling scale speed, she will leave a scale wake. Laws of physics will assure that a sailing model with a displacement type hull will sail pretty close to a scale speed. She may however APPEAR to be going REALLY FAST.  This is because the model size is 1:12 while the “scale speed” is approximately 1:3  (laws of similitude) This is the reason sailing videos of models appear more realistic when played in slow motion.    Pete likes to have DATA !