Four of us raced on the North Course in the SE’ly breeze of 8 to 10 Knots with pulses of a little more.
The northern course was ideal as there was a gaggle of 29ers having a training weekend and an FF Open. We were joined by Nigel testing the latest version of Craig’s Proteus.
We managed 10 races before departing home for the Rugby, least said best mended!
It was very pleasant in the sunshine, though the conditions were top end for lightweight sails. The lions share of the races went to myself, though pressed closely at times by Richard and Phil, indeed Phil managed 3 wins with his recently fitted new sails.
Richard had problems with his counter weight and had to retire from the last race, but did manage 3 second places to Graham’s one.
Hugh 9 pts with 7 wins
Phil 15 pts with 3 wins
Richard 24 pts
Graham 26 pts
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.
We will all have our favourite weather app, won’t we?
Do you find that you look at more than one weather app to judge what the wind is going to be at your sailing venue? What rig shall we go out on?? Well, this article is aimed at you !!
I recall a few weeks ago at Datchet, Rob V telling me he had abandoned the BBC App as it was simply never right!! I have huge sympathy for that … but some days it does seem to be correct 🙂
Many years ago, we used to have an anemometer at the top of the slipway which told us exactly what was happening there at the moment, but there again it gave you a reading – not a forecast. Chipstead SC have a smashing online weather station at the side of the lake… but there again it’s not in the middle of the lake!! So what to do??
During lockdown, the main Datchet Club ran a Members’ Zoom tutorial on this subject. It turns out we have a meteorologist member in the main Club who hosted the session. Extremely interesting, it was.
Did you know that the world of weather forecasting is basically a wholesale-retail model? At the wholesale level, which is where all the data comes from, there are really only half a dozen suppliers of weather data worldwide. I think we were told that for using truly global data there are only two suppliers. These suppliers are currently at the level predicting wind in a 1km grid section… and trying get even finer resolution. Huge compute power is the limiting factor.
The other suppliers are basically the lower cost alternatives. As I recall, UK Met Office is one of the big players. You may recall a kerfuffle a few years ago when the BBC decided to stop using the Met Office data and signed with someone cheaper.
A friend has recently completed an RYA Advanced Race Officer course. The chatter there was an about a weather app called “Predict Wind”. Have you seen it? I’m using the free version, but the key thing is that you get to see all the wholesale layer of information on one screen – and you can make up your own mind what the breeze will be.
(this morning’s data above…)
I like to view average speed, direction and the expected gust speed. The photo above shows you the screen I use for this. Average speed at the top, then direction and gust predictions below that. You can just see the top three rows of the gust forecast and have to scroll down to see the rest.
Each row you can see is labelled P, G, U, A, S etc. I think this indicates the wholesale source of the wind data. Someone like the BBC or Apple will use just one of those rows that you can see. In fact if you look at the BBC app and Predict Wind simultaneously, you can work out which one it is.
Even on the morning of the forecast (the screenshot above is for this morning…), you can see how much forecaster opinion varies, but at least when you see them all together you can make a few decisions of your own. Some days, they all agree, then you really know what’s coming !!
Datchet Radio Sailing - Making It All Much Easier !! 