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Help my Mississippi wants to turnover.

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Jul 16, 2026
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Help family bought me a 1\ 50 Mantua Mississippi riverboat 1870 for 80 birthday ,1year to build great .in bath test wants to turn over.on advice from model shops ECT fitted a 8 inch alloy keel with 8 ounces of lead at bottom.too low in water,and still wants turn over . The 2 stacks weigh 10 ounces, i am trying to contact someone in Germany who can put me intouce with Pierre Dippel of Smc kasse45 jahre Mississippi raddamper e-antrieb schfelrad felja88 2023 utube video hull seems deeper ,has a weighted keel .sails perfect on lake and show pool
 
I have never built a model designed to float, but in the 1970's there was an English company that sold plans for pond yachts and floating hulls.
None of the plans had floating bodies that were anything close to scale. All of them were much deeper - had an over large under water body.
The physics do not scale. Displacement and metacenter are not arithmetic - they are Calculus. Mother Nature's math is Calculus.

The underwater volume of your steamboat probably has to be at least twice that of scale to allow for the necessary ballast to get the metacenter - the long axis center of rotation - low enough to keep your craft from turning turtle.

None of this engineering math has any application in biochemical pharmacology so I cannot help with the running of the actual numbers.

You may possibly be able to add a foam hull with a socket for the scale hull and iron rods at the keel level of the foam addition.
Someone else will probably have to come up the a way to secure the rods and secure your hull to the sabot.
 
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