[hpv-boats] re Flex Shaft

[Giuseppe Carignani]

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Hi Rick, Mark and all
I believe there is 'enough interest' both for the propeller and a complete
flex shaft propulsion system.
This opinion comes from the sustained growth of the Open Waterbike Project:
the community is still tiny (just over ten thousand unique vistors, just a
few hundreds members)  but autonomously growing nothwhitstanding our very
limited resources. We have requests from individuals and firms, coming in
 from countries as different as Brasil, Turkey, India (but now the
baricenter has shifted from Europe to the US). Most people and perspective
dealers and manufacturers are intersted in buying the drive system, while it
seems appealing to most is the possibility of building locally  hulls and
other less critical and cumbersome parts, and they seek technical support
for that.
I reckon the availability of a complete high performance drive system will
be the turning point: maybe the dream of an 'Open' high performance pedal
boat has a real possibility of becoming reality after all..m.

Giuseppe Carignani
Initiator, The Open Waterbike Project


Rick Willoughby wrote:
...
A friend, building a pedal boat here, copied one of my fixed bladed props
and has moulded aluminium and bronze blades from the resulting pattern.  He
is also working on a lighter nylon/glass version.  He only has a couple at
this stage and he gave me one with aluminium blades for testing.  It suits a
ratio around 1:4 or a bit lower if the hull moves easily.  The linked image
gives an idea of what the bronze one looks like:
http://www.rickwill.bigpondhosting.com/Bronze_Folding_Prop.png
He has talked about selling them if there is enough interest.

Rick