In October 2003 I purchased a Megatech Nirvana
RC Sailboat. This is a diary of sailing the vessel and the lessons I
have learned with this boat. Felix at Megatech thinks this boat
will only improve as they continue to market it. For more
information check out the the Yahoo! group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nirvanasailing/
Tuesday, May 8, 2004
My Nirvana has been under the knife the last two days. I have
cut out the portion of the radio compartment beneath the deck leaving
the top intact so I can still use the same lid. In researching
whether a winch or dual arm sail control is feasible, I realized how
much like other boats the Nirvana is once you are able access the hull.
The issues I am running into with the winch set up is how to use a
bungee to keep the lines taught as a continuous loop seems impractical.
The other option, a servo arm control, looks like it will work; but I am
going to have to determine the best location for new fairleads and if
the job will need pulley to compensate for the difference in length if
the boom attachment locations are not matched.
Sunday, May 8, 2004
The club was asked to sail at a little pond at a retirement village
this week. It was a lot of fun. After EC-12 racing was
over, I rigged the Nirvana and had about six kids give it a try.
It's amazing how quick they figured it out.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
From the feedback I am getting, it seems more and more people are
picking up this great little boat. I have been sailing it on
Sundays and taking it with me to club sails on days when we don't sail
for points. I did find some 58# stainless steel wire to remake
the side shrouds. It seems to be working well. My balloons
around the receiver have taken all the abuse they can stand.
Given how hard they are to get around the receiver, I am probably
going to switch over to condoms.
It takes 20 AMYA members who are Nirvana owners to ask that they
create a class. If anyone is interested in trying to start a
class, let me know and I will do some more thorough checking on
the process.
At the local hobby shop tonight I found that they are getting away
from anything that comes in a kit form. They are focusing on
Ready-To-Run (RTR) boats, cars, and planes. So they have started
stocking the Sanibel ($280). The sales guy said he didn't expect
to see anymore Thunder Victoria boats back in the store.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Went sailing at Apex Park lake with the EC-12 and Nirvana. I
rigged the Nirvana and couple of different people ended up sailing it
while I had the 12 out. There was not shroud failure today as
the wind a much more manageable 3-7 MPH. One fellow that sailed
the Nirvana had just been to the boat show and saw the EC-12 kits
being sold by John from the local club. The other
temporary Nirvana skipper was Dale who looked to be about 9 years old.
I was amazed that he was able to get the boat around as well as he
did. While Dale was sailing it, he moved the sail control in and
out so fast and so much I figured the lines would get tangled in the
radio compartment, but there was no problem. After bringing in
the 12, I took the Nirvana out and the controls were running in
reverse on both channels. Now I am really impressed with this
kid - Dale. Ross showed me a few seconds of footage from his
boat mounted wireless camera he bought off of E-bay. It was
pretty cool. He had mounted it on the aft deck about two inches
high looking forward. Now if he could get one of those displays
that fit behind your sunglasses, it would be really cool for knowing
when to round a mark.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
While getting the Nirvana ready to sail today the single piece of
stainless steel wire used for the shrouds broke at the top where it
bends 180 degrees and goes back down to the side stays. I used
some braided steel wire rated at 40# to create a new shroud line and
went sailing. On the first sail, the wind was averaging about 15
MPH. The longer I sailed, the stronger the gusts became. I
finally brought the boat in for a rest and everything looked okay.
I went back out for a second time and a couple of 25 MPH gusts and
turning the boat into a submarine on a couple downwind legs got me
concerned enough to bring it in. Once in, I found my new shroud
line had failed at the top again. I guess I am going to have to
find some stainless steel wire to replace it, but I still need to
determine why it keeps breaking. If you read on below, you will
see where I had problems with the adjustment line for the shrouds when
I first got the boat. I thought I had overcame that problem when
I started using a clip on the adjustment line so the line would not
get sawed into by the 180 degree bend at the top of the stainless
steel wire where the adjustment line threaded through. If I go
sailing tomorrow, I will create a new line using the same braided
wire, but double it as failsafe measure.
Thursday, January 1, 2004
I made it out to the lake today as well as this past Tuesday.
Tuesday had winds gusting to 20 MPH and was too much for the Nirvana,
but I still gave it my best shot for about an hour and a half.
When I got home I suctioned out two-thirds of a cup of water from the
hull. Today the wind was light and variable, but Ross was there
with the Sea Dolphin and there was a little Nikko RC speedboat.
The winds were inconsistent, but provided a couple of hours of good
sailing. The sails on the Nirvana with no built-in belly show
their shortcomings on light wind days. Maybe a winter project
will be to get some sail material and try to make some replacements
with some belly.
Monday, December 29, 2003
Missed a great opportunity to sail today, but I was lazy and and
got addicted to the History Channel's daytime programming of "Days
That Changed History." I did get off my butt tonight and used
some rubbing compound on the Nirvana hull and wet sanded the ballast
bulb again and did the rudder this time too. After the sanding,
I used rubbing compound on the underwater parts and then applied a
coat of NuFinish. The rudder lost a little color on one side
from the sanding, but I don't display the boat and it's in the water
while under sail. I also drilled a hole for the new radio
antenna get out of the radio compartment closer to the receiver.
This should give me about four inches of antenna to run up the back
stay. Hopefully I will get out to the lake sometime this week.
I did get to sail it once last week. The top rigging for the jib
had been misconstrued for sometime and while sailing I fixed it.
Turns out fixing it gave me too much mainsail and the Nirvana kept
turning up into the wind. Next time I will tighten the jib line,
which also acts as the fore stay, to get a good balance between the
sails.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
A lot to tell in this update. I think I mentioned below that
I was going to have to replace the radio that came with the Nirvana.
I could not get the servos to stop twitching even with fresh batteries
all round. I had actually ordered a Hitec Laser 4 from Hobby
Horse (Hitec Specialists), and was going to use that radio with the
Nirvana and a Hitec DCX receiver. Just after placing the order
for the radio, I went sailing with the EC-12 club. As always, I
get some great advice on tuning the Nirvana and they try to talk me
into considering an EC-12 as my next boat. Two weeks earlier the
Commodore of the club had sent me an e-mail listing the four local
boats for sale. The one that caught my eye was a recently built
boat that included a radio and two sets of sails. It was also
the most expensive. While sailing, I asked about the boat I was
interested in the general consensus was I should consider a different
boat. This boat was owned by the brother of the guys
sailing at the club that day. I talked with the brother and he
gave me the background on the EC-12. It was actually his boat at
one time and it needed to be rebuilt from the keel up. He wasn't
too interested in tackling the job at the time and left it sitting
after finding another boat. Later his brother bought it from him
and together they rebuilt it from re-pouring the keel up.
The reason the boat was for sale was the brother never had time to
make the drive up to the club enough to justify keeping it. I
made arrangements to meet the owner at his home a couple of days later
and picked up the boat, which was the cheapest one of the four that
were listed for sale in the e-mail I had received. At some
point I will start an EC-12 page to discuss the details. For now
back to the Nirvana. With a new boat coming, I was going to need
yet another radio. So I called Hobby Horse and they hadn't
shipped the Laser 4 yet and I upgraded it to a Laser 6 for use in the
EC-12. I went to the local hobby shop and picked up a Futaba
Attack for the the Nirvana. The receiver size was a bit of a
challenge and I ended up taking the sail control servo arm off of the
servo and changing the area of travel within the radio compartment.
The old Megatech receiver was smaller than an average match box and
easily slid down beside the servos out of the way. I tried
several locations for the new receiver, even removing the plastic
case, but just wasn't happy with any of them. I ended up placing
the receiver on the port side of the radio compartment with the long
side of it on the vertical. This is what required the servo arm
change. The new receiver sticks up just enough that where the
servo arm previously traveled would have come back and hit the
receiver. I had some room on the other side of the radio
compartment free of obstructions and adjusting the arm seemed like the
thing to do to get it all to fit. The servo arm adjustment also
meant I had to adjust the control line endings to make them shorter.
This was fairly easy and I managed to get out to the local lake to
test the new radio yesterday. It took a couple of test runs to
get the control lines into the right hole on the booms, but the servo
travel and lines seems to work just like before. The only
problem seems to be the short antenna wire that comes with the 75Mhz
receiver. With the Megatech, I had enough wire to run it up the
backstay and secure the end to the line with some masking tape.
This one would work that way, but I would only have enough wire to get
about one or two inches up on to the line. So what I did was try
to tape the antenna around the outside edge of the radio box.
This worked okay, but the boat would get out range at a shorter
distance compared to the Megatech radio and external antenna. I
am going to do some googling and see if there a formula for
calculating the length of antenna wire to add to keep the efficiency
of the antenna at its optimum and try that.
Monday, December 8, 2003
Had a good day yesterday. No problems. Today I found a
link for a Nirvana at $130 with the Megatech radio equipment
installed.
http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html?PID=1047314&ctid=17&ls=toys
(Ed. Note: Verified this link on 12/28/03 and the price is now $199
at KB, so the best deal for a Nirvana is the combo at
Tower Hobbies)
As always, check the return policy before making a purchase.
Added a RC Sailing page for local sailing clubs and introductory
information. Click "Up" to see it.
Saturday, December 6, 2003
Just got back from freezing my a** off. The temp is 42°F
with a wind chill of 34°F. From NOAA:
|
Wind |
from the NNW (330 degrees) at 9
MPH (8 KT) gusting to 20 MPH (17 KT) (direction variable)
|
Needless to say the gusts were taking a toll on
me and the boat. I managed to do two quick sails of about four
reaches each before calling it quits. The Nirvana held its
own, but it was all I could do to get her to tack from one reach to
other and a jibe was almost impossible. On the runs to bring it
back it, I was able hold it straight for about 10 seconds before a
gust from the side would put it on a reach again. Had a little
water to bail using a fuel bulb pump (see below).
Considering the boat deck was acting like a rail on a surfboard most
of the time, that's not too bad. Hopefully tomorrow will be a
bit warmer with calmer winds.
Looks like I will have to replace the Megatech
receiver and transmitter soon. Even with fresh batteries I can't
seem to stop the servos from twitching. I would like to find a
good four channel ground system that will work with the Hitec servos.
If anyone has any recommendations, let me know. (nirvana@timbrown.net)
Tip: If you need to get the water out of
the hull or radio compartment, go to your local hobby shop and get a
Sullivan fuel bulb pump. It consists of large red rubber
bulb, a plastic top with protruding tube, a short section of flexible
tubing, and a wire to secure the top on to the bulb. Once you
have it put together, it can easily be used like a turkey baster to
suck out the water from radio compartment. Where it beats the
turkey baster is its ability to insert one of the plastic extension
tubes from a can of compressed air into the flexible tubing to reach
into the hull. This stiff plastic tube can be inserted into the
drain hole at the bottom of the radio compartment to suck the water
out of the hull. I went ahead and used a wire wrap to secure the
smaller tube to the flexible tubing. The smaller plastic tube
restricts the flow a bit, but it also gives you chance to move the
hull around so the tube is actually picking up the water.
Clarification: I stated below that Tower
Hobbies had the Nirvana with radio for $138. I was under the
impression that included the Megatech radio. It does not.
The Nirvana with the Megatech radio is still $179. The $138
price is for a Tower Hobbies combo. It includes the base Nirvana
without a radio, a Tower Hobbies two channel radio and two standard
Tower servos.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXFGA1&P=7#combos
This probably isn't a bad way to get the Nirvana. The
Tower radio has to be better than the Megatech. If Tower
will let you, I would substitute a HiTec 645MG servo for the
sail control (will be a little more $) in lieu of one of the standard
servos, or buy the 645MG in addition to the combo and you will
have a spare servo for the rudder control in the event you need it.
More later...
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Had a great sail Sunday afternoon. I am not sure if was the
sanding and polishing of the keel & ballast bulb and plastic polish on
the hull, but the boat was screaming! Well not exactly, but it
was fast. The Sea Dolphin that had been hanging with me the week
before had a very tough time this week. A few more days like
this one, will go along way to increase my confidence in this boat.
I have been downloading and trying out a lot of sailing simulators
and actually purchased the only one I have seen that offers a model
yacht as a boat selection. The graphics on the Sailing Tactics
Simulator from Posey Yacht Designs
is not going blow you away, but my goal is to learn to sail not
experience motion sickness while I sit at my computer. I have
also tried Virtual Skipper 2, Sailing Simulator, and Virtual Sailor.
Virtual Skipper 2 is great for graphics, but it is hard to find unless
you order it on-line. The first version of Virtual Skipper was
distributed by UbiSoft and goes for about $10 on Ebay. A quick
search on the web just turned up a Virtual Skipper 3 site. I
have requested information on the US distributor and will post it when
and if I get a response.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Spent Monday and Tuesday night wet sanding the keel and ballast
bulb. I ended up doing the second night of sanding after
deciding to run a bead of thick CA along the seam of the ballast bulb.
I also ran a bead of CA where the keel joins the ballast bulb.
After sanding the CA down, I polished the surface with a plastic
polish that I have used on motorcycle face shields. I used level
two and level one of the polish and it brought the luster right back
to ballast bulb. Looks like the holidays may be a bit chilly around
here, but it will be worth it to test out the new radio switch and
smoother underside.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Went sailing again today after blowing the leaves for the second
time this year. Still used the battery pack with the stripped
bare wires. Wind was really great - almost too strong.
Sailing near the dam was the only safe refuge from the wind at times.
When Ross showed up, I was about to pack up and decided to say a
while, but the Nirvana had developed another short somewhere (probably
in the switch - see below). So I cruised around on the ZZ for
awhile until Ross had to head for work.
After calling it a day, I went by the local hobby shop and picked
up a JR switch harness and battery holder. Got home and
installed them and the electrical system was working properly once
again. While replacing the switch I removed the jumper wires that fed
power straight from the battery to sail control servo. I guess I
am doing this to bring the boat back to spec in case I sell it or do something
with it in the near future. Basically one less thing for the new
owner or relative to have to worry about. I also decided to
follow up on a suggestion from the EC-12 guys and smooth the
rough edges of the plastic covering over the ballast. I did wet
sanding starting with 180, then went to 400 and finished up with 800
grit. The ballast and the sides of the keel are now super
smooth. I plan to apply some type of plastic polish to bring the
glossy finish back to the ballast.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Went sailing today at a lake (photos) I hadn't been to before and found a
fellow sailor. His boat was a Kyosho Sea Dolphin 77. It had
great acceleration in light wind being a tad smaller boat and held its
own with the Nirvana. The Nirvana had a short where the wires go
into the battery pack, so I cut them, stripped a little of the
insulation back, used the batteries to hold the bare wire in place and
went sailing anyway. It's just as well as I really need to
replace the receiver battery pack with a rechargable pack and the old
battery pack will need to go then anyway.
This little lake is fairly decent. I can drop the Nirvana in
at the dam end without getting my feet wet, but the dam also tends to
block the wind so bringing the boat in can be a little slow.
Today the wind actually died and I got a chance to use the Hobby Zone
Zig Zag to push my boat in and then Ross used it to push his in while
I steered his boat.
I checked out the EC-12 guys yesterday and sailed one of their
boats for a bit. Wow, if Santa could put one of those under my
tree I would be set. ;-)
Monday, November 17, 2003
Went sailing again yesterday and had a good day. The
adjustments recommended by the EC-12 guys resulted in a much different
(better) boat. The sails were providing too much power with the
new adjustments. Here is the rule of thumb they recommend.
Three fingers should slide down side by side between the boom and
bottom of the main sail. On the jib, two fingers should fit
between the bottom of the jib and jib boom. This rigging creates
some good aerofoil shapes to the sails when underway.
My final opinion on the Nirvana is it's a great boat to for first
time sailors
and people who love tinker like I do. Highlights:
- Out of the box it is a workable boat in light to medium wind.
If you want to sail on higher wind days, plan to tack to get the sails
reeled in.
- The two times I have needed to deal with Megatech customer
support have been very good experiences.
- I can't confirm this, but one post on rcuniverse.com, in the
sailboat forum, stated Jon Elmaleh was the designer of this boat.
From what I can find, he assisted with the design of the RC Laser - a
very well respected boat. Note: 7/13/04 - (Patrick
Stewart's birthday BTW - Check out this site for confirmation on this
design. http://www.outthere.com/nirvana.htm)
- I mentioned this once before, but right now the latest issue of
RCX has a Tower Hobbies ad that lists the price for the Nirvana with
radio for $137 and some change. You will have to get the
discount code from the ad to get this price at Tower. At that
price, I don't think you could go wrong with this boat.
- If the one you get doesn't have some of the modifications I have
made, there is one you need to do before setting sail. Go ahead
and get the sails adjusted as the manual recommends, then where the
sail control lines loop through the side of the radio compartment find
some means to hold the lines in place where this loop occurs so the
jib and main sail lines are kept at the proper adjustment. A
simple solution would be to tie a knot and apply some CA glue just
outside of the radio compartment where this loop occurs. I
ended up replacing the rigging line and tying a small piece of rubber
tubing outside of the radio compartment to keep the lines same length.
Click on the photos link on the left of this page for details.
- One thing I have found that works well to protect the servos from
water is to take a medium sized balloon and cut off the neck of it and
use the larger portion around the bottom of the servo. On the receiver
I ended up using whole small balloon and a nylon wire wrap to seal the
neck of the balloon around the servo and battery wires.
Looks like the Nirvana is a keeper.
Maybe one day I will organize this into a decent how-to, but for
now it's just a blog.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Took the boat over to sail with the EC-12's today. There was
one Victoria and he and I were given a 60 second head start. The
winds were light and I didn't fair too well, but it was great learning
experience and I got some great tips on enhancing the boat a bit more.
Going from memory - I need to find a way to make the mast stay pointed in
the right direction. The boom and vang attachment tend to rotate
to one side or the other instead of staying pointed to aft. The
eyelet for the front of the jib is too far back on the sail, it needs
to be closer to the front and the rigging needs to pull the jib tight
toward the front of the boat. I had the vang too tight, but that
was due to the boom catching on the rear mast stay line. I will
give looser vang a try next time out. I need to tighten the rear
mast stay to produce a little mast curvature to help the sail get a
good aerodynamic shape. I had been rigging the sails way too
tight and they had no shape. One other thing that was discussed about
the boat was the front mast stay line being the part of the jib.
Also the jib and main sail need a method of holding their rear bottom
edge while at the same time allowing it to go up a little.
I am open to suggestions from anyone on how to address the issues.
Even after re-caulking the seams of the radio compartment, I am
still getting water in it. Given the food container lid design
there are only two places the water could be coming from. The
sail control lines or where the rudder control rod exits the back of
the radio compartment. The Ec-12 guys were very impressed with
boat given its price point.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Lots of wind this weekend. When I was rigging the boat to sail, the
line to tighten the side stays broke again. Luckily I had some extra
rigging line with me and a clip from my tackle box. Tied the rigging
line to the clip and ran the stainless steel mast side stays through
the mast support hole and hooked it with the clip. This seems to have
solved the problem.
I had a couple of hours of great sailing. The new servos did their job
and the radio compartment stayed fairly dry which is probably pretty
good considering how far over on its side the boat was most of the day
with strong winds. According to AccuWeather the winds were NNE 14mph.
The Nirvana held its own with a few gusts above the average. When
sailing a beam reach, the rudder lost a little effectiveness. With
full rudder you could compensate and settle the boat back down. Today
was what I would have expected from a Ready-To Run boat. It’s a shame
its taken replacement servos and having to re-solder the transmitter
pots to accomplish servo reversing, re-caulking the radio compartment,
and installing a rigging clip to solve a design problem.
Check out these photos to see some of the modifications.
http://www.timbrown.net/nirvana/nphotos.htm
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Still
hoping for wind this coming weekend. Looks like Sunday might be okay.
I went by the local hobby shop tonight and they have the Victoria for
$104. Also checked out a new rag "RCX" RC intro edition and saw where
Tower Hobbies is selling the Nirvana with radio for like $137.
Hopefully I can get photos of the boat and closeup of the mods I have
made posted here in the next week or two.
Monday, November 03, 2003
No
wind this weekend, but I did go check out the local lake where the
local EC-12 guys sail. It looks very nice and has markers for a
triangle race course.
Took my nephew to the RC field to watch some flying and it turned out
to be a crash fest. Three planes while I was there just over an hour.
One in the ground, one in the lake, and one in the trees. From what I
understand, one was just finished the day before and had a $1400
price tag. The engine on that one was bigger than the one on my
weedeater. The one that went in the lake was retrieved by a boater and
ferried to shore by a kayaker. The one that hit the trees was the
result of transmitter battery failure.
I finally got a new receiver for my Gentle Lady and hope to go flying
soon.
Monday, October 27, 2003
Third Sail:
Had the day off today so I went to the lake and set sail. Things were
going well. The modifications to the sail control lines and a stronger
servo with direct power seemed to solve the sail control problems.
About 30 minutes into sailing, I seemed to lose control. I could
accomplish a port tack if I held the rudder control completely to the
left, but if I let up on the rudder control the slightest the boat
started doing circles to the port side. I fought the boat for about
fifteen minutes before heading over to the other side of the lake to
wait for the wind to take it to that shore. I ended up having to fight
it a bit more as the winds died a bit and the boat just floundered. As
soon as I pulled it out of the water, I see the rudder all the way
over and the rudder control rod with a huge flex in it. I opened the
radio compartment and there was water in it again and the servo was
shorting. In looking around the edge of the radio compartment I notice
a seam where the box protrudes up from the deck that provides the
surface for the radio compartment lid to attach to. In the fore
starboard corner of this seam there appears to be small opening where
caulk appeared to have seeped into the compartment. I ran my finger up
under the inside edge of the radio compartment and could feel where a
large amount of caulk had ran down the inside of the radio
compartment. Once I was back at home, I made a trip to the store for
some silicon caulk, another standard Hitec servo, and some balloons. I
cleaned the seam with 91% alcohol and re-caulked it. I swapped the
rudder servo and used balloons to cover the bottom of the rudder servo
as well as my soldering joints on the battery and sail servo lines.
Finally I put the receiver in another balloon and used plastic wire
wraps to try and seal those balloons. Typing this reminds me that I
didn’t check the rudder servo direction. At least I can swap the side
I use to connect the rudder and overcome that problem with out going
inside of the transmitter. Whew!
Well, with the loss of daylight savings time, it will be the weekend
before the next sail. If things don’t go well this time, you can look
for this boat on e-bay.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Megatech Support:
Sunday night I went to the Megatech web site and completed a request
for assistance with my problems. Monday morning I had an e-mail
response that said I should call. During my initial call I was
referred to Felix who was off that day. So on Tuesday I called back
and spoke with Felix. He relayed a couple of things that I had figured
out myself. The problem with the sails coming out of adjustment could
be easily fixed by tying a washer or some other type of retainer where
the sail control lines loop through the radio compartment. The weak
servo issue had only one solution – replace the servo with a stronger
one. Felix suggested the Hitec RDC 645mg high torque model.
It took a couple of days, but a local hobby shop got in some 645
servos and I bought one for the boat. The actual servo swap was pretty
painless. The problem came when I figured out that the Hitec servo
operated in reverse from the Megatech servo. No problem, I remember
those access holes to do servo reversing on the back of the
transmitter. Wrong answer! I found out holes don’t necessarily mean
there are actually switches there. A few google searches and some
reading on rcuniverse.com gives me two options, open the servo and
flip the connections to the motor, or open the transmitter and use a
little solder to accomplish what the switch would have done. I won’t go
into the details but a strip of solder where the switch should have
been, another wire on the other side of the potentiometer, and removing
the opposite wire from the pot reversed the direction of the servo just
fine. While I was soldering I took an idea from the Victoria resource
page and installed some jumpers to feed current directly from the boat's
battery pack to the sail servo. We will see if this also assists the
sail servo to do a better job.
Sunday, October 19, 2003
First
Sail Sataurday:
Made it out to a local pond today to test out the boat. With my
previous sailing experience limited to Windsurfing when I was about 20
years younger, I wasn’t quite sure how I would do. With that in mind,
the pond selected for the first sail was very small. The boat rigs up
in about five minutes; you just have to watch the main sail boom isn’t
twisted so that the vang connector doesn’t somehow end up on top.
Winds were 7-9 miles per hour with a few gusts a bit stronger. No
problems with the rudder control, but the sail control was another
story. With brand new batteries the sail servo was unable to reel in
the sails and the sails (jib and main) kept getting out of alignment.
Before starting the day, I had set the sails as instructed by the
manual. The jib was about 10 degrees from center and the main about 3
degrees from center, but after sailing just a little while the jib was
as tight as could be zero degrees from center and the main sail was
flapping in the wind. It seems the control lines come out of
adjustment very easily. Compounding the problem with the main sail
flapping in the wind was the weak sail servo. Unless you kept the ship
headed in the wind for a few moments on a tack or jibe, you could
forget about the servo being able to reel in the sails. After a couple
hours of sailing, I packed up and went home.
Second Sail Sunday:
Feeling a bit more comfortable with my sailing skills, I ventured to a
lake located just behind my neighborhood. I had to go out on the paddle
boat dock to drop in the boat as the shore was too shallow for the keel
depth. Winds were about the same as the day before and I experienced the
same problems with the weak servo and sails going out of adjustment.
Just before calling it a day, I had a problem with the rudder servo. The
radio compartment had gotten wet and the rudder servo was shorting,
which made it go so far to the right that the control rod was bending.
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Between no time and no wind I haven't sailed the Nirvana yet. I have
unpacked it and checked it out. The rigging is very straightforward
even for a newbie. There are A B C stickers on everything that guides
you to match up the stickers so everything ends up in the right place.
The Megatech Nirvana radio is a P&C model. The plastic control horns
are little sharp but feel comfortable in your hands. The sail control
is on the left and has no ratcheting or self-centering a spring. This
is a good thing. The rudder control is self-centering with no
ratcheting. The radio has access holes on the back to adjust servo
reversing, but the switches are not there (more on this later). The
only problem straight out of the box: a broken clevis on the rudder
control rod. It was plastic and was split around the threaded portion.
I replaced it with metal one. I also had to replace the control rod as
the new clevis was too big for the original control rod. The only
thing that broke during installation was the control line to tension
the steel side stays for the mast. Lesson learned: don’t attempt to
tighten the side stays using the Dacron rigging line. Instead, pull up
on the top of the steel line and adjust the slider on the rigging
line.
Nirvana Specifications:
Length: 32 inches
Beam: 7.75 inches
Weight: 5.5 lbs.
Sail Area: 578 sq/in
Hull: ABS Blow Molded
Sail Material: Mylar
Mast and Booms: Carbon Fiber
Rigging: 30-50 lb test (Braided Dacron), side mast stays steel wire
Radio Compartment: Two Std Servos, sail servo has approximately
2.75� arm with pulley on the end with spring tension servo protector
in head. Receiver is enclosed white plastic housing stuck to floor of
radio compartment with double-sided foam tape.
Radio: 27 MHz (FM) TX: P&C proportional two (2) channel RX: P&C four
(4) channel FM receiver
Features: (from the Megatech Web Site)
95%ready-to-sail
Low-drag composite hull design
Carbon fiber mast
Removable racing keel with ballast bulb
Large area, deep-water rudder
Fully proportional radio with sail winch control
Only minutes from box to water (no glue required)
Capable of sailing speeds of 6 knots
Jib features lightweight boom and adjustable clew tension
Mast features quick release "foot" for portability. Both jib and
mainsail booms are trimmed via fully proportional radio control.
Ballast bulb style racing keel features quick release for easy
portability
Fully installed digitally proportional radio provides accurate sail
control and "underway" trim changes
Radio compartment is self-sealing for water tightness
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Sometime in the first part of October of 2003 I purchased a Megatech
Nirvana at King RC. I had been looking at RC sailboats since last
Spring. I looked at what was available locally and wainted something a
little bigger than the 24" boats carried in most stores. I narrowed it
down to the
Nirvana (Megatech),
Sanibel (Horizon Hobby), and
Victoria (Thunder Tiger). The Sanibel is vapor ware, it seems to
only exist on the Horizon Hobby web site, but looks like quite a boat.
The Victoria is tried and true, but it looked like there was more
building involved than I wanted to deal with. Little did I know I would
almost end up rebuilding the Nirvana from scratch.
