Same routine as normal really.
Make sure your receiver is properly bound to the transmitter, then power off the receiver.
Set your joysticks dead centre.
Aboard the boat, set the rudder dead centre and the mainsheet at the centre of its overall travel (measure with a ruler). If your boat has a swing rig, then it probably has a longer mainsheet throw than your smaller rigs – as a result the centre point will differ. Most probably your fully sheeted out position is the same for all rigs, but it is the sheeted in. point that varies.
We would suggest measuring and establishing the centre point of your mainsheet throw for the swing rig, and use that.
Connect the receiver to channels 1 and 2 of the boat (In Spektrum, that’s Winch-THR and boat rudder-AIL respectively). Check you understand the polarity of each plug as it sits in the receiver. Looking for the negative pin and the negative wire is easiest. Connect the receiver battery. It should all simply jump into life.
Things that could go wrong at this point :-
1/ Your mainsheet mid-point may appear to move if you have a recent model of Stinger winch. We think that this is because the winch software features a “throttle curve” on board, intended to make the mainsheet joystick less sensitive when you are close hauled. A few clicks of joystick when sheeted out results in more mms of sheet movement than when you are sheeted in. In theory you could apply a transmitter reverse throttle curve to remove this effect, but we decided to work with it. Simply know it might happen.
2/ When you power up, both mainsheet and rudder might slightly jump off centre a little. On the Marblehead in the workshop, this happened on both the rudder and winch. It may not be a problem – try adjusting your end limits in OUTPUTS on the transmitter. The end point can be 0-100 or 0-150 depending on transmitter model. It may be for example that even at the extreme of a rudder end point you cannot reach the deflection that you want. Simply put the rudder joystick on dead centre, remove the holding screw on the rudder servo, gently lift and rotate one spline at a time until you find the nearest spline to dead centre. Put the screw back!
This is not a characteristic of the transmitter – it was happening on both my Radiomaster and Futaba… as well as my Spektrum. It’s a function of the servo fit up. The adjustment is tiny but effective.
If you plan to try some of the advanced features of this website, then you are best advised to get this perfect now. It may otherwise cause problems later on with the advanced features.
3/ Dont forget to check, one more time, that your joystick channels deliver movement in the correct direction of travel. We explain how to reverse winch/rudder channels in the Channel Assignment page of this website.
Next move on the “End Limits” part of this website.
©Datchet Radio Sailing
Datchet Radio Sailing Transmitter Manuals - Spektrum 