Tag Archives: London radio sailing

A Winch is a Winch…??

I have both Stinger and RMG Winches here. The mounts are interchangeable, I believe. When you are starting out with radio sailing, it seems to naive me that a winch is a winch. Not so!! It’s not easy for the learner to understand what the finer points are about!! I didn’t even realise that there were 5 models of RMG for example. The differing drum sizes merit thinking about.

Then I found this RMG webpage via the SailboatRC website. Take a look at the things that one has to think about !!

https://www.rmgsailwinch.com.au/rmg/pages/Features.html#dru

Really, if you need any specific information about the Stinger, we have a huge centre of competence on Stingers at Datchet (k7yachts ltd) who can easily help with sales, specification, service etc on Stinger winches. You can get in touch with them via the contact-us page of this website.Here are some page entries about the Stinger (note Class specific options and a wide range of drum sizes)

https://sailrc.com.au/home/45-stinger-winch.html

At the time of writing (March 2025), the Red Ant News page has some good information, including drum size consideration…

Sunday March 2nd – Race Report….!!

I flunked out of sailing last Sunday (car reliability issues and low wind forecast).

(Cars used to just have mechanical problems, but the new fashion is to have “software problems”!! Funny the first time, but the novelty wears off !!)

Anyway, GH kindly called last night to tell me all about Sunday sailing. Each time I looked at the club webcam it looked very glassy, but GH reported that coffee-and-marblehead chatter lasted till 11am then, as if by magic, 8-10mph of breeze arrived!! The main club racing (a youth 29er event) was already abandoned for the day so Andrew G and his DF95, plus a handful of Marblehead sailors had 475 acres of water to themselves!! They got an hour and a half of fine races in, then the breeze went home in time for lunch!!

There was some great racing innovation going on, boat swapping, 2 boat calibration and all that. Honestly … sounds great and so sorry I had to miss it !!

More on Waterproofing Your Electronics with Corrosion X – Video on Sealing Up DF95 Electrics ….!!

New member, Andrew G, has pointed me to this great and useful DF95 video about waterproofing your onboard receiver and other onboard electronics using “Corrosion X”

One of the notable things to me is that they are using a pointed 1oz dropper bottle to dispense the fluid. It looks like in North America 1oz dropper bottles of Corrosion X are easily available. At the time of writing, in UK I haven’t found this product packaging. The same company are doing a fishing reel lube called SpeedX in a 1oz dropper bottle, but that seems to be it.

I’d rather have some small amount of Corrosion X in the boat tool box and with me all the time. I find through past experience that if the cap comes off those dropper bottles it will leak everywhere. Instead, I am going to try one of these (very cheap on Amazon)

It has quite a pointy end on the pipette which I thought might be better for this particular job, than the ones with olive oil to stick in your ear! And once that lid is screwed in, I reckon you are going to be safe against leaks in transit. The bottle size I chose is 50ml… so about 3 tablespoons – that should easily be enough for radio sailing.