Hello and welcome to my home page. Allow me to introduce myself -

My name is Chris Shilling, but a lot of folk call me "Shilbo". I have been building radio controlled model boats as a hobby for the past 7 years. The boats are of a generally simple construction, powered by one or more electric motors and predominantly made from balsa wood. To set your expectations, I should state that I am in no way an artist nor a craftsman. The models are not necessarily to scale, and seldom are they modelled on any one real craft. Now I've told you what they are NOT, I can say with hand on heart that they ARE fun to design, build and sail, and if you are a newcomer to building model boats then if you have half the fun building yours as I've had building mine, then you won't be disappointed.

Take a look at the models, and if you have any questions, suggestions, or just want to chat then feel free to drop me a line.

My models so far are as follows:

Panipurri - My first boat, plywood construction. A prototype.

Admiral Graf Spee - 5' 6" long model of the German pocket battleship.

Dizzy 1 & 2 - A break from tradition, being a hovercraft. Dizzy 1 was the prototyle and Dizzy 2 the final version.

Zippy - A "fun" boat themed on the children's TV program "Rainbow"

Patience - A Mississippi riverboat, featuring smoke, lights and music

Papillion (the papier mache narrowboat) - An experiment that worked!

The photograph above, is of my model of the Admiral Graf Spee, on her maiden voyage at Nottingham university boating lake. At this stage, she was only 95% complete, and the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that she did not have anchors when this photo was taken.

Current Project status - Contrary to rumour, I didn't abandoned my building of the papier mache narrowboat. I must admit that work slowed down as my attention was diverted to other projects (not least, my 1961 Ford Consul Classic 315 called Christine).

I have, true to my word, built a model narrowboat out of nothing more than cardboard, paper and glue (plus paint etc, but definitely no metal, plastic or wood in the structure). It's around 5 feet long, and powered by lead acid batteries under radio control (NOT, of course, made from paper)  Sounds impossible? Check the Narrowboat link below to find out more about it, and discover what happened when it went into the boating lake for the first time.