Gyros ??

[Simon.O.]

Yes I know I am a busy bugger typing away furiously tonight.

I think I want a gyro. This is for my tow in boat, some of my tow ins can take up to 5 minutes as the cats do not like to be towed in stern first fast.

Driving the tow boat is a pain, throttle is easy as it is ratcheted but I constantly have to correct heading for windage and an off set tow.
A gyro should make this easy ??

Then I can grab my coffee mug, roll a fag and wait for them to arrive at the pond edge.

Are most gyros just plug and play or am I nuts for even wanting to try this.

Note: This is NOT a discussion on boat retrieval methods, please !!

[Ub Hauled]

I think that's an idea... if it works.
I know that a certain type of gyros have head lock BUT
I don't think it's like a "painted target lock"... in other words, it'll keep going north
but not necessarily to where the boat that needs rescue is flipped... current,wind,
ducks, etc will not be compensated by the gyro.
There may be some expensive gyro that will work though.

[questtek]

I have been thinking about this idea for a while. In fact, Jan and I discussed it last week as a potential application to keep a boat on a correct heading. Jan's comment was that there would probably be too much correction thus slow the boat down. Maybe, but then again.........

I picked up an E-Sky heading gyro, shown in the pics, and designed a simple bench test set up. A servo tester is substituted for a transmitter and receiver to make it simple. First test results look good on this 30 second video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2BTHyPszQ&feature=youtube_gdata

comments and suggestions?

[questtek]

I installed the gyro in a 32" FE mono and connected it to the rudder servo. You can see the preliminary in boat but not in-the-water tests. I will have to wait until the rain stops to venture onto the lake for some real testing. The 30 second video is located:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjn8TFDz5rs&feature=youtube_gdata