IMPBA's FE Rules - Discussion

[Darin Jordan]

I just have a question concerning the effort to update IMPBA's FE rules.

For the hull length retrictions... curious as to why all the monos are listed as "no more than XX inches in length", but the Sport Hydros are a range??

If you are going to allow all of the Power bases to be "up to XXV", indicating that one could run 7.4V in the E-2 class if they like, then why would there be a need for a minimum length to be listed for the Sport Hydro hull size?? The same scenario would be perfectly legal for a Mono/Tunnel Boat...

Also, I would like to see the max length for the E-1 class, for Sport Hydros anyhow, increased to 28"... Some of us race converted ProBoat Miss Bud hulls, and the gas/nitro guys are starting to allow these hulls in certain classes... It's 27.5" long and by these rules would not be legal for E-1, which is where it would best fit... especially with Lipos... (it's pretty tough to stuff 12-cells into that thing...)

I'd like to thank Paul and whoever is behind the scenes for their efforts on this...

 

[Paul Pachmayer]

Hi Darin,

For the hull length retrictions... curious as to why all the monos are listed as "no more than XX inches in length", but the Sport Hydros are a range??

This was a tough one for all involved. The sport hydro lengths are taken right from the IMPBA rule book. The idea being to try and mirror the nitro rules as close as possible. For the mono/tunnel lengths there was much input from peoples personal experiance running lipos and understanding the power range in any given class. I really wanted min and max lengths like the sport hydros but there were many good arguements for no minimums.

Also, I would like to see the max length for the E-1 class, for Sport Hydros anyhow, increased to 28"...

LOL, we went over and over on that one too. We wanted to keep the bigger boats out of E-1 and going to 28 inches would allow to many crossovers, something that we wanted to avoid.

Certainly across the board some might not care for some of the rules. This is all designed around moving electric boats in a new direction. These are all pretty radical changes from the norm and with that change people have to think differently. One thing that I have mentioned several times to all involved is to forget what has been and focus on what could be. You simply can't compare the two.

Paul.