Category Archives: Radio Equipment

Beginner’s Guide to …. On-Off Switches !!

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Have you got an On-Off switch in your boat??

I don’t have one aboard the Marblehead (weight!), but my K2 One Metre has a lovely shiny red one, located on a printed mount as part of the pot….looks great! It gives out a delicious “click” with a lovely “ding dong” when you press it! …And you don’t really need one….

All this came about because my One Metre did a sail-away on Sunday in stiff B Rig breezes. I’ve not been sailing all that long and this is already the second sail-away that I’ve had. The Marblehead went for a run in early 2024. I’m suddenly very focussed on this issue….

We were a few seconds into pre-start manoeuvres and suddenly “no control”. I guessed it was a power drop as failsafe didn’t seem to have time to kick in – off it went to the horizon. Datchet is pretty big.

The Datchet RIB team were great, but you can sail a long way there before you hit shore. I estimated the boat would make shore at Windsor Castle…. Anyway – the RIB team brought it back safely.

How to Diagnose and the Hot Tip

If you’ve had a power drop, you may have already read our “How to Diagnose” when the answer was a winch failure. You can find it elsewhere on this website.

On my sail-away yesterday, the amazing GH put on his Doctor Hetem outfit and got to this issue AND the repair very quickly. He took about two minutes – so embarrassing!!

1/ Check battery is up to charge and swap it anyway for a new one. Do all the connectors look secure on the receiver and anywhere else you can see or touch? The connectors were all good in our case. The boat was also dry inside.

2/ Dig the receiver out so you can see it, and activate the switch. On most receivers there should be a light to show power is there and probably that signal is being received. On a Futaba receiver, the red LED goes green…. As we prodded the switch, the green light would glimmer for a moment then extinguish. “Looks like we have a switch problem”, said Dr Hetem. It took about 30 seconds to get this far.

My brain was wondering about taking the boat home, extracting the switch, buying a new one, then the wiring, recabling and all sorts. The boat doctor simply said, “Let’s cable out the switch and isolate it…”

GH just quickly saw how to cable past the switch and seal up the old circuit in a closed loop. He quite simply swapped the XT plugs over – see the diagram above. That took around 20 seconds. The boat sprang into life immediately.

So no worries about removing or replacing the switch, and no downstream re-weighing by the measurer. Just leave everything in there sealed up but “no switch to go wrong”.

If I’d known that, I have done it straight away when I took delivery !!

Post Script :

Did you know that you can power the boat by plugging the battery directly on to the receiver? My Marblehead was originally cabled to take the battery to the winch and then power around the boat. We now take the battery into one of the spare channels on the receiver via a little cable with a futaba receiver connector on one end and an XT on the other. Everything is powered from there and it maximises the likelihood that the receiver keeps power. Very clean and simple.

Next Generation Remote Control Race Marks in Test !! (Plus Race Report 16/17 Nov !)

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Great Weekend Racing – we had the Next Generation of Radio Control Race Marks in for testing. Pretty good they were too. On the previous generation you would get a bit of movement – GPS accuracy can be anything from 1-4 metres depending on thickness of cloud cover (apparently well known to pilots and drone fans!). Anyway the kit seems to have improved noticeably and the accuracy seems more like half a metre or less with the new marks. Eat your heart out Americas Cup!!

At the morning coffee break, Craig gave us a great tutorial on 3D boat printing (really interesting to see close up) and the tweaks on his new printed IOM design.

Results from the weekend at Datchet:-


Four of the regular Ten Skippers were out on Saturday with a light breeze and thanks to Phil’s marks we were able to set a good course on the north bank. We managed eight races and were the only boats on the water.


Results were 
Hugh 8 points
Phil. 11 points
Graham 15 points
Richard 16 points

Sunday saw the marks in use again in a bit more breeze and Craig sailing his new IOM managed 11wins from 11races.


Overall 
Craig 9 points
Darin 20 points 
David Adam 30 points
Phil 33 points

It was good to see Richard Jones on the water after a long lay off. He was not scored in his 5 races and neither was I with 7 races


Good day with sunshine, even if it was a bit in the eyes with a low sun.  Phil had his new Blitz 6 from Red Ant

HM

Futaba Users : Do You Have a Transmitter Carry-box ??…

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Do you get anxious with carrying your delicate transmitter around in the boot of the car… kind of sliding and rolling around?? It has been worrying me. Delicate joysticks and all that.

My Radiomaster Pocket feels like you could throw it across the room and it would come up smiling. Blinking tough, they are. The rest of my transmitters, less so.

Do you have Futaba? Half of our club do. Very popular 🙂 I’ve been looking online for bags or cases for the transmitters simply to protect them from bashes. I found some cheap ones made of black felt which didn’t inspire. I also found some smart steel cases (very sexy in a way) with foam inserts (allegedly for Futaba) but they only take one transmitter at a time and are unreasonably expensive I felt. If you are a two transmitter person, that means lugging two suitcase things into the car each weekend and that’s just before you load the boats and rigs. I felt… not good.

Then by complete accident, I discovered this from Black and Decker. Their standard 19inch toolbox – available everywhere globally I’d guess for about £20 if you’re lucky. I bought mine in UK Homebase DIY Store – in the start of year sales.

Before I show you the inside, those two little red flap compartments on top are good for spare receivers, batteries etc. Very quick access….

But Futaba lovers – look at this!!

It’s like the toolbox was made for our transmitters. Amazing ! One transmitter, no problem! You could get one or even two in there – and the size even protects your transmitter switches just perfectly. Can you see in the photo that the switches are held securely in free space?

To stop them bouncing around, I simply popped some sticky back neoprene in there. The end corners are deliberately not lined as that’s where the switches will sit. It’s really snug and the neoprene holds them like a gloved female hand. You can see I have one piece of loose neoprene to separate two radios.

On top fits a loose tray – great for batteries, voltage testers, or whatever you want.

I tipped the tray over and did this…

I put four neoprene pads to sit over where the joysticks are situated. I reckon that if the transmitter wriggles out (unlikely) of the gloved female grip, they can only move upward 10mm before they touch this neoprene. I might put an extra layer of neoprene in the bottom of the box to lift them up and close that gap completely.

What do you think?? Good for £20 ??

I even like it that it looks anonymous and doesn’t shout “please steal me”!!!

By the way, I have tried it on my Spektrum and it’s too wide for this. So Futaba people, this idea is just for you !!