Southampton upgrade demo

This is a simple demonstration showing the results of an upgrade I made to My Southampton RTR tugboat a couple of years ago, its aim is to demonstrate the result of a 3-channel modification to the Southampton RTR tugboat made by Hobby Engine / Graupner.

Originally she was a two channel boat powered by a single 600mah ni-cad battery with AM radio equipment, now she has two esc's in her and an FM receiver. The reason for the change was simple, I wanted more manouvrability in the hull for tug towing and steering competitions.

Her Transmitter is a Futaba 6EXA operating on the UK surface waveband of 40MHz, if you are in USA or canada, please use a 75mhz radio or a 2.4GHz radio like the Spektrum DX5 or DX6, or the Futaba 6EX FASST system. My Transmitter is functioning in what is known as Mode3, rather than the regular mode2, this puts channels 1 and 2 onto the left hand stick, and channels 3 and 4 onto the right hand stick, I have also selected the radio's ELEVON mixing program, meaning that I dont need a seperate mixer chip to be plugged into the receiver on the boat. The only drawback with Mode3 usage is that if someone else needs to borrow my radio at a competition because their radio has failed, they have to control their model on the "wrong sticks" if they choose to stay in Mode3.

On the ESC's, both Mtroniks Viper 15, there is a primary and a secondary esc, the secondary esc has had the red wire removed from the servo-plug, meaning that the receiver has power from just one esc, it is a wise precaution to do this so that the receiver doesn't get confused by the singnals coming up the lines.

The battery I use now is a two-lead 2300mah Nickel Cadmium pack though I have two identical 2300mah single lead packs when I need the extra run time.

You may also notice that she sports Robbe rudders as opposed to her original rudders, thats because of an accident resulting in the breaking of the original hobby engine white metal rudders.

Category:

Film & Animation

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