I saw in the Club WhatsApp group some exchanges about transmitters and receivers. In particular, Craig and Rohan were very keen on a receiver unit called the AR620 from Spektrum.

This little video came up when I googled it. It’s just a few minutes long. It’s an interview with the Technical Director of Spektrum. It is pretty interesting to hear what the product designers think is important. Of course, it’s 100% about planes and rc cars, but nonetheless I was intrigued to hear his comments about:-

• No antenna – integrated aerial by Texas Instruments and it actually performs better than dangly wire aerials
• Binding to the transmitter via a button, and two methods
• FlyBy telemetry for reading onboard battery capacity, and “flyby” means it only works to a range of 600-800 feet
• A very intriguing set of remarks about mounting the receiver 2-3 inches away from carbon fibre in the plane fuselage as the carbon blocks the signal. Given the amount of carbon fibre in our Marbleheads, it’s worth reflecting over. Note that Craig and Rohan didn’t make any comments about this being a problem. A small (not thorough) piece of research from me said that Kevlar does let radio signals in. Interesting.
• Quite a large amount of chat about two failsafe modes, “PreSet” and “SmartSafe” and the “Hold Last Command”. In radio sailing that part of worth listening to a couple of times.