Tag Archives: radio sailing

Sunday 7th July at Datchet – Saving the Launching Platform…!!

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Unexpectedly we had rather a great day at Datchet on Sunday. So many people are racing away, we only had four Marbleheads out and the weather was a challenge. (I did discover embarrassingly that my shorts go transparent when drenched by rain… 😦 … twice…)

We had B rigs on, did maybe five races or so before the strong breeze collapsed to zero. We invested in more tea and coffee, but actually the company was great and the chatter even better. For myself, I needed a fair bit of advice (tacking in a breeze without coming to a dead halt!) and my fellow club mates were falling over themselves to help.

Club management was quick to point out that we had lost one of our two launching platforms in last week’s summer gales. Impossibly the platform started life to the north of the RIB pontoon, and ended up rammed and jammed under the south side. A mystery that is.

Two of our amazing radio sailors immediately piled in and dislodged the thing… wrestling it to the shore. Next Job was to haul it out of harm’s way with the Club Jeep.

A roller wheel has parted from the leg nearest the camera. However, our Sailing Secretary has recovered it from further around the bay. It looks repairable.

Great news!!

Cord Sizes – What to Carry in Your Tool Kit !!

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Rather impulsively, in 2023, I decided to make a move into Radio Sailing. Practically nothing worked in my big boat toolbox for this part of the sport. Evidently none of my (huge) string and cord collection was going to work . In the flash of the moment I acquired a reel of dyneema to be ready for anything, or so I thought.

That’s it in the photo above. The experienced amongst you will spot my error straight away. It’s a 300m reel – that’s enough for a whole club fleet to use for a hundred years.

It is also 4 braid which gives it a slightly lumpy appearance – I know now that SailsEtc recommend 8-braid lines.

If you have come to radio sailing from another branch of sailing, you’ll realise that you use different size and strength lines for different jobs on the boat. In your first encounter, you may think that all the lines we use are the same size (small).

Not so – explore SailsEtc and try looking at the Sailboat RC website. Sailboat RC carry a stock of four grades of lines – if you buy from them, they come on different colour spools about the same diameter as 5p piece or smaller. In a crowded tool box that’s a good idea, but I’m also thinking is using different colour lines to indicate diameter or strength is a good way to go – see SailsEtc.

This is what Sailboat RC says:-

GREEN spool   0.25mm 18.5kg Topping Lifts

BLUE spool 0.30mm 36kg   Main&Jib Sheets

LIGHT GREY spool 0.70mm 60KG  Drum Sheets 

                                                                        &Jib Foot to magnet    

TRANSPARENT Spool 0.70mm 30kg Rigging all round

The diameter is interesting, but not half as interesting in the line loads indicated for each job.

Generally speaking they only put around 5-10metres on a spool, and frankly that would last a club sailor a lifetime. At that size, you can tuck them anywhere in the toolbox.

If anyone needs 300m of dyneema, give me a call!!

Preferred Transmitter Types ….!!

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Screenshot

We had a super flare-up on our WhatsApp Group this week about radio transmitters! There’s real passion out there !!

Reasonable reactions …. as for all of us, the transmitter is your primary interface to the boat. We all have different size hands, different feeling at the fingertips etc etc. It’s good that people have strong views!! Don’t mention purchase price to a group of radio sailors, or you’ll never get away. (!)

It’s clear from our WhatsApp chatter that every transmitter brand has both war stories and accolades in good numbers. For beginners, I’d say the stories (good and bad) just make choosing your first transmitter much harder to work out. Oddly there’s almost no way to compare how the various models feel in one’s own hands – big/small/balanced etc.

As a result of all the messages I posted the little poll above – half the members replied in about three hours, so we have touched a nerve!! Interesting result above, actually….

I’m thinking we might run a “Transmitters for Beginners” section here on the website, as understanding all of this area is a significant barrier-to-entry for newcomers. Very daunting,… speaking for myself anyway. It need not be, if we can demystify it. If you buy a second hand boat as your entry to radio sailing there’s a high chance that it comes without a radio. So the beginner hits this wall straight away.

There is limited help on YouTube for radio sailing beginners (excepting FlySky to a degree) and they all have dreadful User Manuals… or no manuals at all to speak of.

The radios are all built for the market as a whole. The market for transmitters is dominated by planes, cars, drones, gliders and the like. At MYA we have a little over 2,000 members… you’d think that was a lot. Do you know how many drones are licensed in UK as at 2023?? 513,000…. Mind boggling. Furthermore, the needs of planes, drones etc means that the transmitters are way over configured for what we need. Radio sailing needs only a tiny amount of the functionality that the transmitters deliver.

So, if we are going to get the help and manuals for beginners sorted out, it will have to be radio sailors that do it.

The Commodore and I have an idea……