Tag Archives: receiver

Beginners Guide to Diagnosing Under-Deck Problems – Electrical/Radio/Winch/Servo….!!

I had a little outage last Marblehead Sunday. The boat slipped into Failsafe mode and drifted quietly off toward the Royal Castle of Windsor!!

The Commodore leapt into RIB duty mode and helped me get it back, no problem! Useful to take a lifter with you! As soon as racing finished, in classic Datchet manner… everyone gathered around, tool boxes came out, to get my fault diagnosed.

It was pretty educational and a great learning to see them go about it. We quite quickly figured all the electrics and radio were OK and identified the winch as a possible failure point. It was great to see them checking out the transmitter, receiver, battery, cabling etc.

All this learning was a delight. So as not to lose it, I have documented the diagnostic and repair process here. If you find yourself in a similar position, it may be helpful. Click below to download.

Click to access sailing-pdf-version-v2-diagnosing-under-deck-problems-jul-2024.pdf

Radio Receiver Chatter – Interesting Short Video….!

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.

Receiver Experiment Comparisons….

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At least three of us at Datchet are experimenting with receivers that come with Radiomaster. It’s interesting to compare with the regular Futaba Receivers.

You’ll notice that the Radiomaster unit has only channels one to three that we need. The first implication seems to be a substantial physical size reduction.

The next thing that caught my attention was the absence of dangly wire radio antennae. I know, I know – we shall see how it goes and report back!!

Like the Tour de France cyclists, we are in a sport which recognises the sum of marginal gains. If you’re in a weight sensitive class like Marblehead, you might also be intrigued by the weight comparison:-

Interesting!