Hello, I am new to the...

[Comp97gsr]

R/C boat crowd and this forum. I just bought my first boat last week. I got an Enforcer Super G powered by the Zenoah G230. I am in the process of dialing in the trim tabs. I am using a Futaba 2PEKA FM radio but I am having issues with the range on the radio, the servos begin chattering roughly 25ft away with the engine off. If anybody has any suggestions I would appreciate it.
John

[Tachikaze]

Comp97gsr,
If you are getting clitching with the motor off you can then assume that there is not a problem with interference from motor. This will leave you four places to look.
1) Is the reciever antenna touching any metal or graphite part. If so it must be moved away from those sources and placed as clear from the motor and servos as possible.
2) Are the batteries of the reciever and the transmitter charged? Weak batteries will produce a lot of trouble. Is there any break or damage to the reciever battery pack or wire?
3)Is there a problem with the steering servo or throttle servo? A bad lead or a dying servo will produce clitching.
4) Make sure the crystals on the transmitter and receiver match and that they seat well into the units.
To find out where you problem is place the boat in a place where you can see it and move away from it for at least 50ft.
Check all of the connections, battery power and antenna postiion.
Plug in one servo and begin to move back from the boat until you get clitching. Mark that site. Then unplug that servo and plug in the other servo and repeat the test. IF the servos are ok you should reach about the same spot.
If you are still getting a problem, i.e unable to get out past 25ft, then remove the reciever from the boat, place the antenna up high and repeat the test. If you still are having a problem then you have sometype of problem with the transmitter or the receiver. If this is new equipment check with the seller or the manufacture. If this is old equipement, see if you can get access to another receiver and see if you can test the individual components between the receiver and the transmitter.
I have found that the vast majority of the time it is some interference because of the receiver or receiver antenna position or from a dying servo.
Tachikaze

[Comp97gsr]

Thanks for the reply. For starters, it is new equipment. I don't have the antenna touching anything metal but it is routed about an inch from the rudder servo. I have also removed the entire radio system and used a different set of servos to see if it would correct the problem but didn't. I will probably try a new reciever to see if that fixes the problem.

[pmpjohn]

Comp,
You have been given good advise. when you get it figured out you are going to have a blast with the SuperG. Keep us posted.

John
www.whobbies,com

[pmpjohn]

I'm afraid I have to disagree on the wisdom of using 9 volts to power the reciever and servos. The system should run fine on 4.8 to 6.0 volts (4 or 5 cell pack) but 9 is asking for trouble. Also if you are talking about 9v transistor radio batteries, they will not last long (little capacity) and will most likely not have the current delivery that will be required by the rudder servo to turn a 42 inch gas burning boat at 40+ mph. You may even want to consider a quarter scale servo on the rudder for a more positive response. That is standard practice on all of our ( Warehouse Hobbies) larger boats.
One other thing to check is make sure the transmitter ant is screwed tightly onto it's mounting stud inside the Tx. Turn the bottom segment of the ant clockwise until tight.
Keep us posted.

John Starks
www.whobbies.com

[pmpjohn]

Harry,
I'm not trying to start a fight with you . Comp97gsr stated in his post that he had an Enforcer SuperG with a Zenoah G23RC engine. As an engineer with Warehouse Hobbies/Enforcer Manufacturing, the people who build this boat, I feel I am as qualified as anyone here to offer what I feel is good advice on this product. This boat does not use an ESC so low volt cutoff is a non issue. This is a ten pound boat with a rudder the size of a playing card that will do 40+ mph and carry enough fuel to run the engine longer than a 9 volt battery will run the radio even if it had enough power(Amps) to turn the rudder. If you want to use a 9 volt battery in your equipment by all means do so, it is your stuff. There is no way I can recommend the use of a 9 volt battery for radio power in one of my products. DON'T DO IT !! Find the cause of the short range and properly repair it before you run your Enforcer boat. One of these boats running out of control at full throttle could be deadly.
Comp97gsr please keep us posted with what you find to be the real problem with your radio.

BTW I do know a little about electric boats too.1990 APBA National Champ 12 cell Open OPC class.

John Starks

[pmpjohn]

Welcome back Harry,
In my second post I stated 4.8-6 volt was acceptable. The 1000mah capacity is about 400mah more than the normal 600mah pack that ships with most radios. This too is fine, we often build custom race boats with 5 cell (6v) 2000mah packs. As you stated in one of your disappearing posts the equipment will only draw the power that it needs. Power being current flow (amps) not voltage that will remain fairly constant depending on load and state of charge of the pack. Voltage is the potential energy available to push current (kinetic energy) through a given load. The resistance of the load +pack resistance will be the limiting factor in how much kinetic energy (amps) a given voltage will be able to push through the total load. Amps is the only thing here that can do any useful work, ie run a reciever or servo motors. If you don't believe me try connecting one wire from a charged battery to one terminal of a motor and measure the voltage between the open terminals = battery voltage. The motor has voltage applied but no work gets done until you complete the circuit and draw some amps.
In Jay's example of a light electric boat useing one lightly loaded servo on a small rudder and an ESC that draws next to nothing and will run maybe 5-10 min if it is a sport boat and much less if it is an all out race boat, he reports a voltage drop from 9 to less than 7 volts. If you double or triple the current delivery required to turn the rudder on a big boat the voltage drop will be substancialy more reducing even further the packs ability to deliver current (amps) pulling the voltage down even more. See the pattern? Now try to keep this up for 20-30 minutes and you have a runaway unguided surface torpedo capable of pokeing a hole in a full scale boat or seriously injureing a swimmer. I can only speak for myself here but I have no desire to have a razor sharp 75mm prop walk up my backside at 13,000rpm or be responsible for having that happen to anyone else.
If this works for you in your application ,fine, do it. Just ask yourself why none of the guys flying 25 -40% scale aircraft are trusting their $4,000-$10,000 aircraft to a $0.97 rx battery.

Have a great day all,

John

[Comp97gsr]

Thank you for all the replies. It is looking like I have a bum reciever. We put a new receiver in the boat and the range increased along with the twitching servos remaining still. To clearify, I am using a 1/4 scale rudder servo and have a fail safe on the throttle. Hope to get her out this weekend sometime to finally get a good run out of her. The previous 3 runs something went wrong everytime.

[pmpjohn]

That's good news John. I know how frustrating it can be when stuff doesn't work right. Now that you have a handle on the problem i'm sure you will have a ball with your SuperG. Remember, keep the prop side down.

John

[Comp97gsr]

PMP... what do you mean "prop side down"? Does the Super G tend to roll over? What is the rule of thumb on adjusting the trim tabs? Thank you once again ;)

[pmpjohn]

Comp97gsr,
Prop side down is a bit of humor like telling a racecar driver to keep the black side (tires) down.
The best setup for the trim tabs is if you can keep them completely out of the water (no drag). The SuperG is not overly prone to rolling over. It does however have enough power to blow over if the water is rough enough. A blow over happens when the boat starts to porpose(sp?) , the bow bounces up and down on the waves until enough air gets packed under the hull to push the boat over backwards. You want about the back 25-30% of the hull in the water. Much less and you risk blow over, to much more and the hull will "bow steer" or have a tendancy to spin out or "hook" in a turn. The amount of trim tab you need will depend on the water conditions. Use just enough down tab to keep the 25-30% of the hull wet. If the water is really rough there is no substitute for throttle managment. Hope this helps.

John

[Comp97gsr]

UPDATE: I took the boat out with a friend last Friday and had radio problems again. I have a new reciever in the boat so I assume it must be the transmitter. I adjusted the tabs a bit and it handled much better. I wish I could run it longer (the motor isn't broke in yet), it seems to get faster everytime I take it out.

[pmpjohn]

John,
Originaly you had motor off problems and now you are having problems while running? Correct? Exactly what are the symptoms? Is the boat glitching and doing things you are not asking for or is it slugish in responding? What type of fail-safe are you using and have you tried running without it? What are you using for a RX batt pack? Is the RX ant fully extended and as far out of the boat as possible?

John

[Comp97gsr]

The problem has remained the same. With the radio box out of the boat or in the boat, roughly 25-30ft away with the antenna down I get SEVERE twitching of the servos. This is also with or without the failsafe. It is a Dynamite failsafe, PN# I am not sure of as of this moment. With the boat on the water, at abot 50ft away the failsafe kicks in and I have no throttle control until I walk along the shore to get closer to where the boat is floating. I have also had the rudder servo go full turn while it was glitching and almost rolled the boat. I have also (against my better judgement) have run the boat without the failsafe. It does the samething except of course the throttle stays open until I regain control. I can usually raise my hand in the air with the radio to regain control but not always. For the battery pack I use a 5 cell Nicad or the 4 alkaline pack. It has not made a difference it the peformance of the radio.

[Tachikaze]

Comp,
You have pretty much isolated where your problem is with what you have just stated.
You say that you get the jitters whether the radio is in the boat or out of the boat. This tells you right away, that there not a problem with the boat. The problem is with the radio/ transmitter/battery.
If you do not have the Failsafe attached when the radio is out of the boat, the problem is not associated with that either ( somethmes if you have too many things attached to the radio, you will not have the battery power to run all of the items.) If with the radio out of the boat and a single servo attached to the radio, the problem is the radio/transmitter/battery.
1) Try altering radio AND transmitter crystals. Make sure you do not have a broken crystsl or mismatched crystal ( your hobby shop can do this for you if you do not have spares.)
2) Make sure the antenna to the reciever is ot broken( take the reciever apart and check the connection to the circuit board).
3) Make sure the antenna connection on the transmitter is working.
4) Can you use another receiver with this transmitter to determine if you have a bad receiver or not?
5) Can you use another transmitter with this receiver to determine if you have a bad transmitter or not?
The problem appears to be with your radio system not your boat. You need to isolate the problem by approaching each component step by step until you find what you add that clitches.
Good luck;)

[pmpjohn]

What Tachikaze said.

[Comp97gsr]

I am happy to say that for the first time since I have owned my Super G that this past weekend I ran it twice with no problems whatsoever!!! I have tried all of your suggestions but using another transmitter. To make a long story short, since I bought a 2nd receiver and the problem remained the same, I bought a replacement receiver antenna knowing that they are twice as long and installed it. I know that it shouldn't work but it DID. My range has tripled easily, I could barely see the boat before I ran out of range. I am afraid to go out much more than 150-200 ft so to me it works perfect. I had no twitching of the servos whatsoever. The handling needs work, with no chop the bow began bouncing and came close to overturning. Thank you all for your input.

A friend of mine bought a used Hydroplane and it needs ALOT of work, so hopefully you can shed some light on it sometime. I will get all the info on it first.

Thanks again.

[pmpjohn]

Try lowering the angle of the outdrive a little. The factory setting is parallel to the last few inches of the keel. Loosen the two pinch bolts and slide the strut blade down slightly. This will change the thrust line to help stabalize the running atitude without adding drag from the trim tabs.

John