Tag Archives: technology

Datchet IOM Worlds – Coming Up….!!

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It’s 3rd June. About ten days after the Worlds.

We are nearing the end of duties now. For myself, I’ve put the scoring systems away (the team are having a lie down!) and I am working hard to close the Championship accounts, …and already we are helping re-use the Worlds legacy knowledge to support Jim and the boys running the DF65 Nationals this weekend coming. Good luck to the East Kent Members at Barton’s Point !

In the rear view mirror, you get to appreciate how much we have learned putting many months of hard work behind us. In the coming days and weeks we shall look to reflect and digest – and place some of our knowledge on this website to help other Clubs run their events. In coming weeks, we are thinking of reporting to you on:-

  • the Robot Race-Buoys Age has finally arrived. What’s the Business Case?
  • the Amazing IOM2026 dedicated Website
  • Parallel Scoring : how to plan you’ll actually reach the last day… with flawless and audited results
  • Live-streaming and What we Learned
  • Making the Commentators’ life slightly easier : hand held tech commentary aids
  • The Hugely Important Role of Volunteers, How to Pull It All Together
  • What Drives Cost to run a Championship at this scale
  • How to Plan and Execute a Regatta at this Scale
  • Those Amazing Worlds Trophies provided by Robot Yachts – What it takes to Design and Make Trophies like that (if I can talk Tony and James into telling us!)
  • AI and writing Press reports quickly !! (Yes – a lot of what you read was AI generated !! Frighteningly good.)
  • Flags, banners, special flags and …. Flagpoles!
  • Campsite Management and building an enduring Club Asset
  • Scrutineering and Workflow
  • WhatsApp : Totally Central to Organising and Running a 2026 Championship
  • Special Technologies that can lend a hand : Satellite Comms, Waterproof Tablets, Portable Credit Card Readers, Buoybots, RTK, Application of AI – and more
  • Just how much do 84 competitors and 40 volunteers drink in a hot week?
  • Auditable International and Domestic Banking … not as trivial as you’d think
  • Do we learn anything for the Future of Our Sport

If there is anything else you’d like to hear about, simply let his know via the Contacts page of this website.

Beginner’s Guide : The Fin-Bolt Nut (Tools!)

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Do you take your fin off every weekend??

SailboatRC recommend leaving the IOM fin on, so I religiously do so – and have one of those lovely Potter Onesie padded bags for the whole thing. The fin is attached with an M3 bolt, needing a 2.5mm hex key.

In the Marbleheads, the fins are that bit longer – we all take the fin on and off every weekend as “the norm”. I had an M3 bolt on there, which turned out to be not really up to the job – too much leaping across the Datchet waves! Doctor Hetem has popped in an M4 bolt for me now (needs 3mm hex key) and I’m much more confident in it. I wouldn’t want my fin to be the third in living memory to have dropped to the bottom of the lake!

GH was careful to tell me to be very wary of over-tightening the bolt. I’ve been using simple hex keys left over from my cycling club days – nice ones with those round “any angle” ends on them. On the wide side, there’s about a 75mm throw so maybe the available leverage is a bit high. (See photo above). Too easy to over-tighten.

GH recommended one of those T-bar hex keys. However, as I dipped into the old race bike tool box I suddenly remembered I had a mini ratchet/torque wrench from a brand called Topeak (very big brand in global cycling). It has 2.5 and 3.0mm keys in the selection. The torque heads can do 4,5,6nm of measured torque, but I feel that even 4nm is a tad much for the Marblehead fin. However, as you throw the lever you can easily feel the “bite point”. Simply to provide shaft length to clear the deck well around the mast, I have the 4nm head on there in the photo (above), but have never let it “click”. If you look carefully at the top photo you can see “4nm” engraved on the shaft extension.

The ratchet on the handle is a dream for putting our long fin bolts in and out. Love it. Plenty of space in the tool box too. It comes with a little pouch, but my preference has come to be keeping the subset I need in a neat translucent plastic box – which turns out to be an old business. card box. I knew I’d find a use for those one day 🙂

The whole thing will be great for the Ten Rater (of my dreams) too !

You can see the current product on the Topeak website at this link below. Even better, the current product has 1-6nm of torque adjustment, an improvement over the 4/5/6nm set that I have. Click here:-

https://www.topeak.com/global/en/product/1602-TORQ-ROCKET-mini-DX

FR Sky Transmitters…!!

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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.