We have written about this a couple of times before, but until there’s time for us to get an up to date radio sailors manual written for the Spektrum take a look at this.
This website has an online link to a very good (US) radio sailors manual for the Spektrum DX6E. However, I think that the DX6E cannot do program mixing. The later DX8 and DX9 have it though. Program mixing enables you to implement “pinch and puff” modes on left-right throttle stick (mainsheet stick) movements.
I managed to get my hands on one of these a couple of days ago. From the airplane and gliding world, the FrSky Tandem X20….. Bit of a wow. It was interesting to see what they use over in flying.
They cost about double (450GBPs) what radio sailors would think of as “pricey”, but can you tell the difference?
Amazingly – a resounding “yes”…. the feel was a huge step up from what we are used to. The body was a lot more solid (alloy maybe) and interestingly weighed about 900g so a bit heavier than common radio sailing transmitters. It felt very good in my size/shape hands. The “Apple” of transmitters maybe.
Gimballs (“Hall gimbals”) very smooth and more central on the console which somehow gave a nice balance (nearer centre of gravity perhaps) while you used it. Thinking about it more, if you move the screen to the top of the unit (most of our transmitters have the screen at the bottom), you can then move the gimbals down lower on the console itself.
Another thing I noticed was that the gimbals can be rotated slightly for those in search of more comfort over longer periods. Somehow, the whole thing looked more showerproof too. Really tightly fitted together.
When we decided to write the radio sailing manual for Radiomaster transmitters, I came across FrSky because the previous range FrSky along with Radiomaster use the same OpenTX software. FrSky seem to have abandoned that OpenTX strategy now as it was holding them back. They have done their own modern looking operating software called EthOS. That’s amazing too – it’s like having a full iPhone aboard, …all icons, colour and sexiness. Lots of preloaded configurations for power mixing and the like.
I might have misunderstood, but the owner said you could send updates (like custom model configurations) to it “over the air”…. so he can swap configurations with friends very easily.
The owner of the unit that I tried was a Competition Gliding fan. I asked what he used previously, and interestingly he had a Spektrum DX6E – which of course is very common in sailing.
Way over-configured for the needs of radiosailing, but it was interesting to see what £450 would buy you.
Finishing joint third in our fleet popularity poll, we have the Spektrum transmitter. (see above!)
We have war stories and praise in equal measure, but Craig is a big fan .. and he gets five votes obviously 🙂 RW adores them – he owns four!
I’ve been ploughing around the internet looking for what radio sailing beginners really need in way of user manuals, and found this…. Have you seen it?
The link to the Radio Sailing Manual below is for the DX6e. The current model at the time of writing seems to be the DX8e…. we shall start work on a radio sailing manual for that soon and publish it as a download on this website.
Honestly, I’m a wuss about these things – and just knowing this manual is available makes a huge difference to my personal views. This manual just makes it all so easy. It takes a lot of the “learner fear” away. Print it out and take a look for yourself. (Only 27 pages and all about radio sailing. My Futaba manual has 167 pages and radio sailing is not mentioned even once. Honestly…)
However I already just added a Radiomaster Pocket to my Futaba in the household transmitter-stable… and if I have to learn a third platform, my head will explode. I might end up with more transmitters than boats at this rate. Then I’d be single again.
(PS A note to Futaba fans : it looks like this Spektrum DX8e model has an adjustable ratchet on the mainsheet joystick)
Datchet Radio Sailing - Making It All Much Easier !! 