Stock Electric Motor on a Boat

[Azimech]

77 Industries presents:

"Not a Detroit Diesel!"

(Gif shows older version of this craft)

This craft uses an electric motor. No, not with reaction wheels, the real thing!

The motor uses rover wheels to drive a shaft. Juice is provided by fuel cells. You’ll notice four different shaft sizes. The rover wheels have a finite torque which quickly declines with an increase in wheel speed. This construction is a sort of gearbox but without the coupling/decoupling of gears like in a normal transmission.

Instructions: Just stage, tap forward key for a few seconds, then use trim forward until max. It will start moving by itself. If you want more control, select one of the propeller blades and pin the context menu to the screen. Change focus to the propeller and back: you can now move the control authority slider to change propeller pitch. A shaft speed readout is useful, I use the mod V.O.I.D. for that.

As far as I know you can’t use SAS together with trim forward, thus steering is best done by trimming as well. Depending on propeller speed, you might need to adjust the trim to compensate for drift.

While this machine is no diesel, I use the mod Rover Wheel Sounds with my own sample to relax. Yes, I've recorded a Detroit Diesel :-P
You can download it in the link below, it’s the complete original mod but with added sounds and a changed configuration file. License is included. Just install manually like you would any other mod.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqq5x654t44d1z5/AzimechVehicleSounds_v10.zip?dl=0

Link to craft file.

Edited August 15, 2017 by Azimech

[SchwinnTropius]

Now just need to see this on a air boat like on the Bayou.

[goduranus]

What if you used paddle wheels?

[Azimech]

1 hour ago, goduranus said:

What if you used paddle wheels?

That would probably slow it down to 0.2m/s.

[Bubbadevlin]

Cool! Someone finally figured a way to propel things with rover wheels! If not the most practical, still really cool anyhow 

[Azimech]

16 minutes ago, Bubbadevlin said:

Cool! Someone finally figured a way to propel things with rover wheels! If not the most practical, still really cool anyhow 

Yeah, I hope someone will build a huge ship with this.

Or start a challenge.