ProBoat's new 29" Mystic Brushless catamaran

[desmobob]

My buddy and I had a weekend of mixed water conditions for our Mystics. Saturday was choppy and we spent very little time running wide open and lots of time in the recovery kayak. Today, it was almost dead flat and we had a lot more fun. I finally remembered to bring the GPS along and my stock Mystic with an Octura x640 was running 40.6 MPH. We were having a good time and I didn't take the time to try my other props [stock prop, Prather 215 (same as stock?), and Octura x642].

My buddy had some issues with his RTR Mystic... when he put in his two 2S1P 5000mah 40C Turnigy packs and turned on his ESC switch, the beeping of the battery confirmation and ESC arming was barely audible; at first, we didn't hear it at all. When he took off and got to the far side of the bay, his boat went dead in the water. After about a minute, it responded again and he ran the rest of the pack out with no incident. On the next set of batteries, it also quit mid-run in the same spot and again responded after a minute or so.

He's using the supplied ProBoat Tx and Spektrum marine receiver and has the long side of the antenna up in the antenna tube and the short end running forward in the hull. Since the incident happened in the same spot --at the farthest distance we had been running the boats-- he thought he may have run out of radio range. But my boat with its cheap HobbyKing Tx and single antenna receiver (with a shorter antenna than his, no less) had no problem in the same spot.

What might cause the barely audible beeping when the ESC is powered up? Could the issue with the boat going dead in the water be related? Curious....

Take it easy,
desmobob

[Make-a-Wake]

Ran my Mystic today in a new local pond i found..............................ran decent for about 5 laps then slowed a bit..................hmmmm....................went around two more times and noticed no spray from the outlet. Brought her in and the was a 2" minnow wrapped nealty around the rudder right in the exact spot where the pickup is. Opened her up and smoke came out.........not alot but a bit did come out. Checked the motor and could only hold my finger on it for about a second.........smelled a bit burned too. I let it cool for a couple minutes and fired it back up, Everything worked and i gave it a full throttle blip and it revved up but didnt sound like it was revving all the way to its top rpm. I'll know when i run it next if it suffered damage.

[awall]

I ran mine in a small pond in front of the house. I noticed my boat slow alot.... brought it in...and had about a half a dozen pine needles wrapped around the rudder. Removed and it's ok. Funny what just alittle debris will do.

Hope your cat is ok.

[Derrick Davis]

Hey desmobob,

I could be delirious (according to my Wife), but I think I recall reading a thread / post on this forum by Darin Jordan addressing the faint audible sound of the electronic arming system. I believe he said that the loud audible sound will be heard basd on where the motor has stopped from the last time it it was run. Seems strange, I know.
I tested this using the following method...
BEFORE i plugged in any batterys, I turned the prop horizontal. I plugged in both battery packs in the boat and turned on the radio and then the boat electronics. I heard the normal (loud) beeping sound indicating that the boat was now in arming mode. I UNPLUGGED the batterys in the boat (turned off the radio) and turned the prop vertical and then turned everything on again. This time I could barely here the arming beeps. This might be what your buddy was dealing with. It will still arm as normal, just a difference in audible tone level. Regarding the loss of signal- Thats a head scratcher. Could it be that the electronic gear you have in your boat might have better reception? I bought the PNP Mystic and I use Spectrums DX3s radio and MR200 receiver and have been very satisfied with the range. It does have it's limits though.

I tried a new octura x642 prop (balanced, sharpend & polished) on my Mystic this weekend (my son has one on his Blackjack). WoW! If I could keep the Mystic's front end down I think the boat would really be fast! I flipped it pretty easily and and was not able to give it full throttle . I think I read a post by you awhile back where you stated you had a similar experience with the x640 prop? I didn't have enough time to make adjustments to the CG. Next time.
Have a good day.

[Darin Jordan]

Hey desmobob,

I could be delirious (according to my Wife), but I think I recall reading a thread / post on this forum by Darin Jordan addressing the faint audible sound of the electronic arming system. I believe he said that the loud audible sound will be heard basd on where the motor has stopped from the last time it it was run.

The "Beeps" you hear when arming are actually coming from the motor. The ESC is sending power thorough the windings to make that happen. If the rotor is slightly turned, the volume of the beeps will change. The next time it's weak, try carefully rotating the coupler (NOT BY THE PROP!!) a tad and you should hear them get louder. Only a convenience... doesn't change the way it arms/runs...

As for the range on the DX3s... You should be able to drive that system out until you can't see it any longer... I know for certain that mine has a range of well over 900fts... which is about the limits of being able to accurately see the boat. If you are not getting that range, then there may be other issues. I have had situations where there were things under the waters surface (water pipes, etc.) or strange "dead-spots" on the lake which have interfered, but that is a rare occurrence.

[desmobob]

As for the range on the DX3s... You should be able to drive that system out until you can't see it any longer... I know for certain that mine has a range of well over 900fts... which is about the limits of being able to accurately see the boat. If you are not getting that range, then there may be other issues. I have had situations where there were things under the waters surface (water pipes, etc.) or strange "dead-spots" on the lake which have interfered, but that is a rare occurrence.

Hi Darin,

Thanks for confirming Derrick's response on the beeping. That will give my buddy some piece of mind.

As for the range issue (if that's what it is), I looked carefully at his wiring and he has his antenna routed in exactly the same manner as I do, plus his antenna is longer so it stands up above the boat farther AND he has a second antenna. I almost thought maybe the fact it died in the same spot was some kind of coincidence and it was related to something other than radio range -- highly doubtful, though.

I would estimate the distance to where the problem area was to be about 125-150 yards, which is farther away than we need to be running, really, so it's no big deal. The second time it happened I took note of his Tx antenna attitude, etc, and everything looked fine.

We plan on popping the kayak in the water and doing some on-the-water range testing next weekend. I'll bring my laser rangefinder to measure distances. That should provide some interesting information for the three of us who all use different radio systems in our boats.

Thanks again for the help, Darin and Derrick,
desmobob

[Darin Jordan]

We plan on popping the kayak in the water and doing some on-the-water range testing next weekend. I'll bring my laser rangefinder to measure distances. That should provide some interesting information for the three of us who all use different radio systems in our boats.

Thanks again for the help, Darin and Derrick,
desmobob

Test it in different directions around the lake... 2.4ghz happens to be the same as many land-line wireless phones, etc... so sometimes those CAN have an effect... or so I've been told. Some of our lakes have "dead-spots", where everyone's boats (Futaba, Spektrum, etc) seem to have issues... test it in different locations around the lake and see what happens.

[desmobob]

I tried a new octura x642 prop (balanced, sharpend & polished) on my Mystic this weekend (my son has one on his Blackjack). WoW! If I could keep the Mystic's front end down I think the boat would really be fast! I flipped it pretty easily and and was not able to give it full throttle . I think I read a post by you awhile back where you stated you had a similar experience with the x640 prop? I didn't have enough time to make adjustments to the CG. Next time.
Have a good day.

I did experience the same kind of thing when I first tried my x640, but now that I've run the boat some more (I'm new at the RC boat stuff), I'm realizing that my problem that day was water conditions, not new-found excess speed.

The one time I tried my x642, the water was dead flat but I didn't have my GPS with me and only had one set of batteries. It was also very weedy in the area I was running. I never got a chance to do back-to-back runs with the x640 vs. x642, and even if I did, I wouldn't know how many strands of milfoil were hanging off the rudder during each run!

Yesterday I had enough batteries charged and had the GPS with me, but my buddy and I were having fun AND were on a limited time schedule so I didn't do any comparisons. Hoepfully, I'll get to it before the lake freezes over! :)

Take it easy,
desmobob

[awall]

Looking forward to your opinions on the 642 vs. 640. I have both coming. I broke a tip of the ended of my current 642 before I had a chance to run it. So Ive rounded the ends and cupped it. I'll report on it once I can get it in the water. I'm working on replacing the battery trays with 1/8 birch ply and redoing the sponson blueprinting. I want sharper edges.

[awall]

IMAG0684.jpgInstalled beefed up battery trays. Epoxied in best I can. Will spray foam under next. Ready to go after painting sponsons...sanding edges...painting again..sanding edges again. WOW. Lot a work. But wanna race hard!

Now have a new proboat stiletto to start tearing apart.

[awall]

Everything back together. Finally. Have the new X642 (sharpened, rounded tips, detounged and slightly cupped) installed. We will see what this thing can do... if anything.

Last thing is to see if I can fit my sprint evo under the hatch to get gps readouts...but might add to much weight.

[ecoovert]

Great job on the fiberglass hatch.

[awall]

Here are more pics of my cat. And a pic of my modded prop.

IMAG0692.jpgIMAG0693.jpgIMAG0691.jpgIMAG0694.jpg

[desmobob]

I did experience the same kind of thing when I first tried my x640, but now that I've run the boat some more (I'm new at the RC boat stuff), I'm realizing that my problem that day was water conditions, not new-found excess speed.

The one time I tried my x642, the water was dead flat but I didn't have my GPS with me and only had one set of batteries. It was also very weedy in the area I was running. I never got a chance to do back-to-back runs with the x640 vs. x642, and even if I did, I wouldn't know how many strands of milfoil were hanging off the rudder during each run!

Yesterday I had enough batteries charged and had the GPS with me, but my buddy and I were having fun AND were on a limited time schedule so I didn't do any comparisons. Hoepfully, I'll get to it before the lake freezes over! :)

Man, it turns out I really was all wet on my prop testing.

I got out my props today to sharpen a spare x640 I have, so I decided to touch up the other ones in the box. The prop I had thought was an x642 was an x445! No wonder the boat didn't seem faster... it was probably struggling to turn that thing. I have an x642 and a Grim 42x55 on the way but I don't know if I'll get a chance to try them this weekend. We have a winter storm warning in effect for tomorrow afternoon through Sunday. I'm having a hard time accepting the fact that summer is over. And by the time I accept the fact that fall is here, it will be winter!

Take it easy,
desmobob

[awall]

Hard to keep props straight I'm finding. More you have the harder it is...I need to get a tag system down. You have a decent size storm effecting you all up there. You could just drive 11 hours down here and drive in the pond on my island in 70+ temps. LOL Sorry