Possibly Useful Suppliers?

Providing recommendations is an activity with a lot of associated problems. What may seem perfect to me might have a major flaw for someone else - a service I praise might be withdrawn the next day, a transaction which gave me no trouble may fail badly for someone else. I may have completely failed to notice the best provider in the market....

However, EeZeBilt boats are a little different from the normal boats you will find in your local model shop, and it is probably worth my mentioning some of the places where I obtained various items which may not be commonly available. Do tell me if you think any of these links are wrong for any reason, or if you know of some better ones....

These links are all based on purchase from the UK. In many cases the providers will ship internationally, but equally, if you are not buying from the UK you may well have better or cheaper local suppliers...

Glue

EeZeBilts were traditionally made with Balsa Cement - it sets fast and makes the build really rapid. Modern glue technology has superceded this, and so you may not find Balsa Cement easily. If you can't get a large tube of the stuff locally, here is a supplier I used - Creative Models.

Batteries

It's surprising how hard it is to get a flat battery holder in AA and AAA sizes. Strikealite do a good selection, with low postage, and they also do very cheap NiMH batteries to go inside...

Motors

There are several cheap motor suppliers around. Mindset do very cheap prices, though they have a minimum order size. Still, there are so many other strange modelling things on their site that I am sure you will find lots to make up the price....

Balsa Providers.

Balsa seems to be of worse quality nowadays than when I was a lad. Mind you, the sun is also not so good, and as for the beer...

It can be useful to have 1 meter lengths of 4" balsa - this can let you get a whole small boat out of one sheet. I found that Hobby Power provided me with this size, and a fast and cheap service.

Speed Controllers

We don't need very high amperage controllers, but we do need small cheap ones. Ebay shops now do ESCs which fit the bill perfectly - I bought a handful at about £2 each...

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Radio Gear

If you've got a cheap little boat, do you need a cheap transmitter to go with it? Hobby King do 2.4 Ghz systems very cheaply, and 2.4 Ghz is very good at interference rejection. We need this, because we're using little engines which may spark a lot, are hard to suppress and we can't move the receiver aerial more than about a foot away....