First of all thank you to those who bought me a coffee in the last month. We are still some way off covering the next three years web site subscription fee. So if you enjoy the site and are getting benefit from it, it is so easy to pop over to Buy me a coffee.com and support the future of this site. It does not matter where you are in the world.
You possibly heard the term high mode or VMG mode. High mode is simply where you want the boat to point as high as possible, either to climb away from someone off a start line to hold a lane or lee bow another boat to force them to tack. VMG mode or Velocity Made Good mode is where you sail the boat as fast as possible to windward to achieve the fastest speed directly to the windward mark, usually with the main boom about a cm from the centre of the mainsheet post. We do not have access to instrumentation like on a yacht so achieving best VMG is a little bit of guesswork but most designers will give you a setup to get you close to a VMG set up. Of course even with a designers numbers, there is always the eyeballing of the boat to get the best rig set up e.g. getting the main and jib leeches parallel, achieving a balanced helm etc. With high mode you want the main boom in the centre of the boat. Of course remember in high mode, the boat will slow a bit and you will have to make a call when to get back to VMG mode
So when you set your boat up, you are looking to achieve max VMG. Now the high mode setup is easy to achieve with your transmitter. Once sheeted in, by moving the sheet stick to the left or right, you can pull the sails in a little bit more to allow the the boat to point up or ease them out slightly. I found the technique to work very effectively on the DF95 and DF65 where you can hold a high lane for 30 seconds or more without any loss in speed.
Here is the high mode in action on the transmitter and the boat. You can increase or decrease the amount of movement to suit your boat or rig setup.
So how do you do it on the transmitter.
Lets start with a Spectrum. These are the setting for a DX6e
First of all go to the monitor screen on the function list.
Move the left hand stick up and down and you should see the bar above THR move up and down. Then move the left stick left and right and see what moves. In my case it is the RUD. These are the two items you need for the next step.
Look for "Mixing" on the Function List and click on it to pull up this menu.
Go down to Mix 0 by rotating the toggle on the bottom right hand side of the transmitter. Press the roller toggle to open up the mix screen for mix zero. It will indicate INH>INH nt as shown above.
The following screen will appear only it will say Mix 0 instead of Mix 2
Click on Normal to get the following screen. It will not look quite like this but you should have no problems replicating the screen.
A bit of background on the way my transmitter is set up. My boat rudder steering stick on the right hand side is listed as AILeron and on my transmitter the left hand stick when moved up and down, controls the sheets, and shown as THR and when moved left and right moves RUD. So I want to use RUD for my mixing
Fingers crossed once you have done this, when you sheet in and move the throttle stick to the left the sheets should tighten by a few mm. Move the stick to the right and you will ease the sheets slightly. Increase or reduce the rate to suit how you want to set the high mode.
On the Futaba transmitter it is a little different. On the main menu which is accessed by holding down the + button on the bottom right of the transmitter and select P Mix.
Note on the screen grab below I have already set the mix, up:
CLick on INH for Mix 1 and you will get a screen that looks like this:
Work through the screen until it looks like this:
If you have it right than when you shift the sheet stick to the left it will sheet the boom into the centre, and when you move it to the right it will ease the sheet slightly. BEWARE, to use the high mode the boom must be sheeted approx 1cm from the centre of the mainsheet post for VMG mode.
If you have any issues with this don't hesitate to ask and best of luck giving this a go.
Comments