Has anyone come up with an effective weed guard for props that does not effect the props thrust? Thanks! Jon
Yup. 1) Avoid moss and weeds 2) If IRCWCC or MWCI, 30 second moss rule Other than that, I have never seen anyone install a weed/moss guard on a ship.
hahaha nice. unfortunately weed/moss was so bad at the last WWCC event that we ended up haveing about 2/3 of the ships on the water weeded and dead in the water for most of the battle.
We (NYBG) have but I dont have any pictures, Iceman might. They came about from battling on his "pond" which loves to sink boats, even uncut fiberglass hulls have fallen victim. If I remember right they were more or less skegs that were very close to the prop blade letting you chop the moss better so you wouldnt get long strands of it wrapped up. We never measured thrust with/without them. Iceman knows better than I do, he did the experimentation to find a good solution. There may have been some black magic involved, eye of newt, that sort of thing.
Jstod, the "pond snot" type weeds that generally grow in the WWCC's pond are very difficult to protect against. The only method I have seen that truly works is to build a finely meshed wire cage around the prop to protect it. The other option is to remove the weeds from the pond. This means someone has to show up the day before, with waders and a really big rake, and clear everything out. You have to do it the day before to give stray weeds time to clear out. Otherwise you'll have a few stray clumps of free-floating weeds that are even more difficult to avoid because of their mobility. George and John used to rake weeds the day before, but haven't for a while.
Kotori, I was talking with your brother and he was saying that these weeds were not the "pond snot" of the past. These were stringy and really strong pieces. I was actually thinking of adding a wired cage around my props using left over petscreen and seeing what happens.
interesting. I wonder when that changed. The stringy type can be cut with high-torque motors, and skegs very close to the prop blades. That will chop them up before they get too strong for the motors to cut.
