Inconsiderate Boaters

[tristar]

Was @ the pond two weeks ago, with my sport 40 doing a few laps. When all of a sudden my boat goes out of control and slams into the rocks on the shore. I looked @ my radio :confused: batteries at full charge turn around and some guy was playing around with his radio testing his servo's.

My buddies and most of the other people at the pond walk over to the guy and ask why did you turn your radio on before checking with everybody else first with what they have?

His reponse --- I just have an old junk radio surely nobody uses this frequency anymore. :mad: :confused: I go get my boat pack it up and go home

I don't get it, this guy has been to the pond numerous times and surely knows that you check before you power on your radio gear?

Needless to say it happened to another boater after I left, but he was not as lucky as I was, his boat was TOTALLY destroyed, I got away with paint scratches and a busted turn fin :cool:

I'm at a loss on this one, just had to vent sorry everyone!

[Spraguepsycho1]

We had the same problems at an r/c car track I used to race at back in the early 90's. That's what eventually led me away from racing at that track. Nothing worse than loosing control and hitting a chain link fence with a $450 car that you spent a lot of time dialing in for the track. I've also heard of problems at an r/c airfield my dad used to fly at, there were guys running cars nearby on air freq's and causing problems.

[97TRAKIN]

This is one of the main reasons I'm investing in a fail safe from Shark Racing!
Thier fail safe can detect low battery conditions, frequency conflicts, lost frequency, and so on...in these conditions it can return the throttle servo to idle and/or turn the rudder servo to one direction.
It can also kill the engine (GAS) if it detects a frozen servo or a disconnected control rod and so on.

This is a short piece of the right up on it. 'NOT MINE'

Carlos Andrade and his Shark-Racing team are on their 3rd variation of their fail-safe. This device integrates a radio fail-safe, a motor kill switch, a low battery warning indicator and the circuitry to detect a disconnected throttle servo. You can find out more about this wonderful device on the Shark-Racing web site (Carlos' site is full of useful information for model gas boaters, one of the best on the web)

[550racer]

i just got 2 fail safes for both my nitros..

[Doubledog]

Failsafe... one of the cheapest investments out there.

Its amazing how a $40 item can save your $1000+ boat or possibly save someones life.

Guys, the first time I ran boats here, I saw the same thing happen that tristar was talking about. Guys boat went haywire and slammed into the dam like rocks tearing his boat to peices. The guy was screaming mad and the whole time the guy that did it was like .... "uh, oh, um, yeah... sorry". He didn't even offer to pay or anything. Had it been me, I'd have come close to gettin' a few $'s worth out of his you know what & at least made him go for a swim along with his gear!

Brother, leason learned the hard way, but fortunatly no one got hurt and the boat was repairable.

I've got a second failsafe on the way for my new boat.

[97TRAKIN]

Maybe one day failsafes will be required equipment on the NAMBA and IMPBA backed courses. The good thing is a lot of the newer high end radios have them built in to the recievers. My last Futaba would keep turning the throttle servo to full idle shut down (nitro) if the reciever batteries were too low. Drove me crazy before I realized what it was..lol.

[haljmac]

Or you can get one like this, wait for him to run his and, BLAMM pay back:D just kidding but it would be a sight.

[550racer]

Originally posted by haljmac
Or you can get one like this, wait for him to run his and, BLAMM pay back:D just kidding but it would be a sight.

ur callin that the dager right?:D

[Doubledog]

Hows that boat coming?

[haljmac]

put it in the water last sunday. spent most of the morning trying props. Found the one!!!, It was fast, then I removed one of the rudders looking for more speed(like normal) came out of bouy 6 on the pipe, looking good, something happen in bouy 2 can't say what caused it, but it went to cart wheeling. So at the moment it has the sponsons removed, making a slight change, should be back on the water next week. With the dual rudders it handles great, tight turns left and right. I was once told I would never get a canard to handle, man I wish he could see this one handle.

[Doubledog]

SWEET!

When are you going to show us more of it? Come on!

[FlyerCAN]

!!:D

Is that possible?

[lovinnitro]

'Cmon Haljmac,
Don't be selfish with some vids buddy:p

[haljmac]

been at the R/C boat racing in baton rouge over the week end, didn't have a lot of time to work on the canard. Did do a little on it tonight. I just have a few pieces to put back on it. Should be back in the water this coming week end. I will try to find some one with a vid cam that I can down load on here if I can figure out how that works.
The race was bad to the bone just a little on the cold side. They had some bad ***** wrecks. The riggers were flat out running as the norm, just wish I had mine to run with them.

[hydroracer]

hey guys. if the shark failsafe protects against same channel conflicts as posted above, that would be a very wise investment for the money. i'll definitely look into them for myself. i wasn't aware of that capability in them. thanks for sharing.

also, if you plan on running boats or cars where there is a high risk of conflict (like most public parks are notorious for) you may consider getting a PCM radio. yeah, yeah, i know they are pricey, but if you have the means, i highly recommend them as a long term investment to use for any and all your surface toys with one transmitter. AM is asking for trouble, and FM is much better, but PCM is like flying-by-wire. I've never had so much as a glitch. whether a running boat's rattling on the starting bench or at nearly out-of-sight range. another benefit is that AM or FM transmitters on the same channel as the PCM won't have the same level effect due to the pulse coding that the PCM receiver reads. it would have to be another PCM radio to cause complete failure, which would be much less likely because fewer people use it.

just a suggestion. oh, the PCM receivers have built in programmable failsafes against loss of signal, but not against frequency conflicts.

[Tomass]

were do u guys go boating, i go to our freinds in the Warbys and use mine in a damn the size of a football field

[Spraguepsycho1]

I haven't had a chance to run my boat yet (still waiting for an exhaust system), but most of the time I will be running in a river that's 30-50 feet wide that runs for 45 miles. Lots of access, and several places that are only 2 - 4 1/2 feet deep, so no recovery boat needed in the summer. Also there are very few homes along the river, and I know most of the people that live near where I will be running, so no worries about neighbors complaining to officials about noise. There are also a few large ponds in the middle of a 3300 acre ranch that is behind my property (one is about 10-15 acres), and I can most likely run my boat there whenever I want without problems, as long as there aren't too many cattle in the area to worry about spooking.