Hydro Junkie

Then again, most boaters wouldn't put a Spectrum in anything. I watched several boats go into and up the banks due to radio issues as well. One was a brand new scale 1980 Miss Budweiser. Everything was new, including a freshly charged 5 cell pack. Boat was started, launched and lasted one lap before it went out of control and into a steep bank. Unfortunately, the front of the boat was badly shaffered, ending it's day. Since the owner was not familiar with running boats, he asked one of the veteran drivers to test his boat so experience wasn't an issue. What was discovered was, even with full rudder input at the transmitter, the boat failed to turn. A range test was performed, no issues noted. Someone then suggested doing a longer range test, this requiring going over the water. This time, there was noticable glitching of the servos, up to and including a reversed servo output. The test was repeated, this time with the radio operator walking down the road, away from the water. The radio operated fine this time but, when the radio was taken around the far side of the pond, the glitching resumed. After that, it was several years before anyone tried a Spectrum again. What we determined was that, due to the short wavelength, the transmitter signal was being reflected and/or distorted by the surface of the water so that the receiver was unable to supply the proper servo response. The radio was sent in and deemed to be in perfect working order, regardless of what was said by the owner. For some reason, a year or so later, Spectrum came out with "Marine" receivers. These new receivers seemed to fix the problem but most, myself included, use Futaba systems