Return to sheds   

coj's solar boats page

This page shows some of coj's solar boats designed for the Fort Amynthas pop pop trials

	The pond was made from an old door, a ring of bricks and a piece of plastic sheeting It would help to place the pond in bright sunlight but as my garden faces north it only gets bright light from about 10am to 2pm, after that it comes through next door's trees
	Most boats are made out of old sandwich boxes. They don't really need to be very streamlined This boat had 3 solar cells 'shingled' and a pulling aircraft propellor
	This boat had a chunky propellor but it threw so much water sideways the rudder had to be very curved to keep it going straight
	This one has lego propellors on the end of a biro casing. This design when going behaved like a speedboat but when it was slow the water would leak in the back
	I molished them so I could swap the solar panels over
	The copper tape I had used came loose when it got wet so I soldered some cells together and mounted them on letter stiffeners
	4 cells in series gave about 1.8V and a current depending on the sunshine up to about 1A