Category Archives: Winches and Servos

Beginner’s Guide to Winches and Drums

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I was going to start a fresh item on Winches and Drums, but have lacked the time to get on with it.

Instead, take a look at this page (link below) on Lester Gilbert’s fabulous IOM website. It;s possibly a little dated now, but I found it very good for :-

1/ Understanding more about how the basics of how the transmitter joystick is actually talking to the winch.

2/ Get the basics of a plain drum, spiral drum designs and drum sizes versus winch power

3/ The spiral drum is really clever in its intent, but realise that electronics might have taken over this role. Now we have Throttle-curve on our transmitters plus the latest Stinger winches have this function onboard in their software.

4/ Good simple explanation, with diagrams, of Open Loop and Closed Loop sheeting systems – which I found great.

Take a look here:-

https://www.onemetre.net/Build/Drums/Drums.htm

Beginner Guides and Radio Sailing Transmitter Manuals…. POPULAR !!!

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When we launched the Datchet Radio Sailing website in late 2023, we had an eye on trying to reduce the inhibitors people often feel when they get into radio sailing.

A few “Beginners Guide” manuals were created as downloads, mainly for radio transmitters, but also the likes of installing new winches (very popular!), diagnosing problems in the electrics, installing new transmitters and so on.

The response has been amazing. In a few days time, the radio transmitter global downloads of the manuals are going to reach a total of 1000. It’s 985 downloads as I type (August 2025). Of those, about half are for the Radiomaster – interesting.

The beginners guide on how to fit a new winch has, alone, been downloaded 255 times. How to install a new transmitter has been downloaded 72 times.

The Futaba and Flysky manuals are about equally popular as each other – Futuaba slightly more so.

I have a Spektrum in the workshop ready to install on a Proteus IOM. I had a plan to produce a manual for that also (one day … takes a lot of time). In the meantime, there is a link to an excellent radio sailing manual for the Spektrum DX6 on a US based website. If anyone wants to give a hand with that, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Really interesting.