I bought a used Northwind 36/600 a couple of months ago. The rigging wasn’t in the best of shape, but luckily the manufacturer’s warehouse had some parts left over, so I was able to return the rigging to original condition.
A 27 MHz system was included with the boat, which lead to some problems on my maiden voyage. Someone showed up at the lake and didn’t ask if anyone was on the same channel…which mean my boat went straight into the concrete block. Fortunately there was no damage.
I fly RC planes and since I had extra 2.4 GHz receivers, I converted her to that system. No signal loss at all so far and she has a slightly faster response.
I’m now working on making a suit of sails using the originals as a template. If that’s successful, I’ll next work on a set for high winds.
Welcome Rafael,
I must admit to having a similar experience with my first boat. I was a totally new to RC and was so excited to try out my new boat (Nirvana ll) This was quite of few years ago and like your boat mine came with the old 27mhz AM set up. At first it was working like a charm. I was getting the hang of the sticks and finding the wind, and the boat was very “newbee” friendly, so it was all good. As the breeze began to pick up things got even more exciting - I was on nice run across the lake when all of sudden my boat “hangs” a hard left turn and begins heading toward a very ugly embankment - I was trying like mad to get some control, but nothing worked, so I started running, which must have been funny to anyone watching me. It was like some one had taken full control of my new boat and was determine to ram it into the embankment at full speed. I reach the point of impact a micro second before the nose of the boat would have hit - needless to say I was relieved but dumb founded! What the heck just happened. There was no one around with another RC boat or plane. I called the guys that got me into this and told them what had happened, they laughed and laughed and told me about these kind of radios and how they are vulnerable to ghost signals over powering them. I figured that it was probably some “dolt” mircowaving a burrito or something like similar that almost crashed my new boat.
From there I went to my local hobby shop and picked up a nice 2.4 set up - Airtronics RDS 8000 - I use it for my boats and planes now - no more problems !
That was a long time ago and I have learned a lot since then. I like many on this forum am hooked on RC sailing and flying. Great way to pass the time and there are a lot of really nice folks out there that are more than willing to help newbees along the way!
Enjoy
Boomer