The X-3 was built to learn about outrigger hydros and their design. There is no doubt the fastest thing on the water is an out rigger hydro plane. I have seen Nitro riggers boil the water and believe me it's nothing short of incredible to see these mosquito boats fly across the water at speed approching 80+ mph!!! Back to the X series. The X-1 was a gas powered rigger of my own design I tried to follow rule of thumb and some photos that I had of electric and nitro outriggers. To say the least the design was heavily flawed the sponson angles where all wrong and the center of gravity was off. If you add to the mix this was my first gas boat, and my first marine nitro engine and my first rigger design... You may have guessed the outcome to many first times made the chanses of my success very small. As I fought a crancky engine and carburetor adjustments only one prop and a weird balance/thrust problem I was lucky the thing didn't sink the moment I put it on the lake. The boat never got on plane, the prop was to big and the engine would flame out because the speed was not fast enough to get the water pickup to work properly. It was at this time that I decided that I would need to sepreate the design process from the nitro engine hassle. This lead me to change to electric powered fast electrics. I could work on the design and not have to worry to much about getting power to the prop. 

The X-2 was a second genereation design. It was modeled after the Yellow Jacket from Jay Turner. I didn't have the plans so I  lead myself with some overall dimensions and photos of the Y_Jacket from Radio Control Boat Modeler. The X-2 had two inovations first it had a flex drive system and it was coupled to a decent prop from Octura models. The X-431 was an inexpensive plastic propeller, but was still way better than the other molded prop from the X-1 design. By using the flex cable and my own scratch built hardware I was able to make the X-2 skim across the water surface -This was a major breakthrough for me because the X-1 was described by friends as a low-rider ...at least it didn't sink. If you know any thing about riggers is that straight-line speed is not what wins races -keeping your speed through the turns is what gets you the trophy. The X-2 had terrible handling in the turns. Every time it would make a turn the boat stalled to almost a crawling speed and you had to let off the throttle and start all over again. I didn't know about rear sponsons then and lived with it until I got tired of the sluggish handling and built the X-3.