Boeing U-787

[Glenn 787]

The new Boeing U-787 is registered with ABRA and it took an exhibition run today.

Will it be in the new hull roster and be considered a legal 1/8 scale hull to build?

I just noticed 787 is my NAMBA number.

 

[Hurricane]

Just right for you Glenn. Like Jimmy King said: "Slow & Boring" The boat was not entered to race and did not qualify but did run some exhibition laps at qualifing speed. Good question does that make it a legal hull for us to use. Not sue if it would be legal in RCU but maybe in NAMBA.

 

[Glenn 787]

Not sue if it would be legal in RCU but maybe in NAMBA.

We use the same hull roster as you.

 

[Glenn 787]

Hey old timer.....did you just call me slow and boring

 

[Hurricane]

Hey I wonder if the U51 Ichero OBerto that was given away at the Mariners game the other night might be legal. I think you might have read my post a little wrong!LOL Are you going to make it up for the NW Scale race in Oct? I can not make them any more when they are a 2 day deal and that far away, work schedule you know.

 

[Glenn 787]

I won't be making it again this year.

We have a race scheduled that weekend and I'm also running short on vacation days.

I keep seeing those U51 Ichero OBerto on Ebay. Is that a hot item up there?

 

[Hydro Junkie]

If I remember my rule book right, the U-787 isn't eligible to be added to the hull roster. To be eligible, a boat must qualify and/or compete in a race, of which the U-787 did neither. If you go back and look at the Bud T-4, it was only qualified(I think by Mark Evans) at one site, but unfortunately I don't remember if it actually was run in any heats. On that one appearance, the boat made the hull roster.

 

[Mike McKnight]

If it had run in a qualifying heat at an APBA event it would be legal to add to the roster. However, since this was an ABRA event and APBA is still the keeper of the roster it probably won't be added. Much like the U-4 American Maid hasn't. Since it was registered with ABRA as an insurance issue to run as an exhibition and was not entered in the race it wouldn't be a legal hull.

The T-4 was actually qualified by Chip at over 161MPH and was driven by Mark Evans at a single race when Chip flew home for health reasons. This race has always been the source of controversy because they broke not one but two horizontal wings in that race. As a Scale, people always insist they can run it with no wing because the real boat did it and they ran that way intentionally and it didn't. It ran that way in the final because they didn't have another wing. Mark was actually DQ'd in the final because he spun out and in the process of getting back underway he clipped Mike Hanson in the U-6 and almost caused him to cut half the turn.

 

[Hydro Junkie]

Now I feel better. I don't want to open up a can of worms on T4, but it just seemed to be the closest example. thanks for the clarification on it Mike.

 

[Hurricane]

So the U21 and U17 won't be legal hulls because they race ABRA and not APBA? RCU takes care of the master hull rooster and I think they will be added. I remember this being talked about some last year. Scott Meyers will be racing the Meyers Auto Tech in the future and he is the registar for RCU. Or I should say I think he will be. The U51 is a baseball promotion and might be a big deal to baseball fans.

 

[hgatjens]

I would expect that the U-787 is going to be a legal boat in RCU. Whether or not the other organzations choose to allow it I am not sure.

Our rule is that the boat must appear at a sanctioned unlimited event and run on the water. The U-787 did so and was also registered to run, as a backup to the primary Elam boat.

I have heard people trying to make distinction between the APBA and ABRA on other issues and I don't think that covers the intentions of the rule. The intent was that the boat must be at an event held by the primary unlimited racing organization for the unlimiteds. That has been the ABRA the past three years and the APBA before that. Otherwise any of the boats that ran only on the West Coast the past three years would not be elgible boats. ie U-21, U-17, U-48, U-9. These are all registerable.

 

[FloridaScaleBoater]

OK, Don't know who's rule book "RCU" follows?

But I just went and checked NAMBA's rule book, scale hydro section.

Section 21

Page 3

Paragraph E

Master hull roster

Sub Paragraph 3

Boats must meet the following criteria to be placed on the master hull roster.

A: the full sized boat must have been registered with an unlimited hydro racing association.

B: The boat must have made at least one verifiable test run in the water.

Does this help clear it up?

Rick Bellinger

 

[Mike McKnight]

Let me clarify...

As the NAMBA rules are written it would be legal. Will it be added the NAMBA hull roster....Yes because according to our rules it qualifies. What APBA is going to with it I don't know. Currently the only APBA sanctioned Unlimited race is the Gold Cup in Detroit. The APBA has always been the sanctioning organization regardless of who the circuit organizers were. URC, UHRA, Hydro-Prop and so on. APBA was always held the sanctions until 2004. In 2005 we had sites and owners wanting to get away from APBA and hence the ABRA is now the sanctioning body not APBA for all but one race. That is why I brought it up to Al Waters almost 2 years ago and it was put to the NAMBA Board of Directors to ammend the scale rules other wise according to the previous rules we wouldn't be able to build anything after 2005. I spoke with APBA when all of this was going down and of course they were in a big pissing contest with the owners because they wanted to go a different direction. At the time they were not really goin g to allow anything that didn't run in an APBA event. Whether that is still the case I don't know. But to be quite honest they didn't seem to be very concerned with what we as scale boaters were doing. I got attitude from them and I have been an APBA member since 1981 when I raced full sized kneeler hydros.

 

[Hydro Junkie]

To answer your question Rick, R/C Unlimiteds is sanctioned through the APBA. Since Harry is more up on the latest rules than I am, he is probably right, though I think it may become a topic of debate in the case of the U-787. It will probably come down to how the runs by the U-787 were interpreted. According to the Seafair program, the boat was only doing exibition runs, so if it is added to the hull roster, we have another problem. If the U-787's runs puts it on the hull roster, do all the antique boats need to be added or updated as well because of their staged races over the past couple of years in Tri-cities and Seafair prior to that? This might also open a can of worms, so I think the APBA, NAMBA and IMPBA really need to look very closely at this before acting as the replica of the 1955 Thriftway would have to be asigned the hull number 0760. To take this one more step forward, the replica Thriftway Too is going to be on the water in a year or two, so then what? Does the Too gets hull number 0862 if it's run next year? I think this should really be looked at jointly by the scale chairmen from all three organizations together on this one to prevent any problems between the different sets of rules.

 

[Eric Bourlet]

OK, Don't know who's rule book "RCU" follows?But I just went and checked NAMBA's rule book, scale hydro section.

Section 21

Page 3

Paragraph E

Master hull roster

Sub Paragraph 3

Boats must meet the following criteria to be placed on the master hull roster.

A: the full sized boat must have been registered with an unlimited hydro racing association.

B: The boat must have made at least one verifiable test run in the water.

Does this help clear it up?

RCU is an APBA club one of the few still around so they would follow the APBA rules.

Rick Bellinger

RCU is an APBA club one of the few still racing under APBA

 

[t_hedlund]

Does anybody have pictures of the u-787?

 

[Hydro Junkie]

I took a couple on the trailer and one or two more on the water, though you will have to be patient as I still have to get the film developed. Breaks of not having a digital camera

 

[hgatjens]

 

[Hydro Junkie]

Okay Harry, where did you shoot that one? I don't recognise the background

 

[Alexander Gnauck]

Does anybody have pictures of the u-787?

here are some nice pictures in the Sunday Activities gallery

http://www.abrahydroplanes.com/index.php?o...0&Itemid=59

Alex