Flat-bottom
Airboats or hovercraft have a flat-bottom design. As the name suggests, the bottom of the boat is flat or very nearly so. They float on a cushion of air just above the surface and have motors that sit up above the body at the rear of the boat. They use an airplane propeller to provide forward thrust. Dinghies and rowboats also have flat-bottomed hulls, but you're not as likely to find them in radio controlled models. Hovercraft can be a lot of fun for all skill levels.AquaCraft Alligator Tours Airboat (Buy Direct) and the Prop Boat Vortex .46 (Buy Direct) are both examples of nitro-powered airboats. These Cajun Gator RC AirBoats are both ready-to-run and built from kits and include a semi-tunnel hull design as well as flat-bottom models.
Monohull
There are several styles of monohull or monoplane hulls but the most popular is the familiar vee-shaped hull. The monohull design maintains a single continuous surface in contact with the water. Deep-vee is the hull shape commonly seen on sport boats. Some racing models may have a shallow-vee hull design that puts less hull surface in contact with the water, thus increasing speed but sacrificing some of the stability of the deep-vee design.CEN Grey Thunder has a deep-vee hull while the CEN Aqua Jet features a semi deep-vee monohull. AquaCraft Reef Racer 2 (Buy Direct) is a small electric monohull.
Hydroplane
The 3-point hydro, catamaran, tunnel hull, and outrigger are RC powerboats known for speed. The hull design has more than one surface in contact with the water. This design creates space for trapped air under the boat that helps to lift it up out of the water so that there is less drag (less hull touching the water) and the boat can acheive higher speeds. Outriggers are the fastest of the hydroplane hull designs but the trickiest to handle. Catamarans and tunnel hulls provide a better balance of speed and handling for the beginning racer.AquaCraft Top Speed 2 features a tunnel hull design. Pro Boat Miss Llumar is a nitro hydro with the 3-point hydro hull. Pro Boat Apache (Buy Direct) and the Pro Boat Blackjack 26 Brushless (Buy Direct) are electric catamarans. Dumas Hawk Hydroplane 7.5 is an example of an RC outrigger.
Next, find the best style of RC powerboats for beginners.
The RC boat models named and linked to from this article are intended as examples of the different RC boat options, not as endorsements for any specific model or RC boat manufacturer.
