Airboats potentially make a good beginner's model as they are relatively simple to build and setup, it's just a case of mounting a motor onto a punt shaped hull and having a simple rudder mechanism to steer it. Airboats also have significant advantages in that they can run in shallow water and over submerged patches of weed that would otherwise foul the propeller of a conventionally powered water screw model. If you have visited the Florida Everglades you will probably have seen many airboats in use, predominantly for tourist trips. These boats don't have a keel to grip the water so tend to slide sideways somewhat when turning, making control challenging at times, rather like a hovercraft - but they are a lot of fun! As it happens, my first radio-controlled boat was an airboat; this came about because I had decided to migrate from model aircraft (which I tended to crash) to model boats. This first foray into R/C boats was thus an airscrew driven trimaran built from balsa and powered by a 0.8 cc glow plug engine.
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