TimMillner

I have an old futaba attack 4. Can i use that for a boat????

rgburrill

Only if it is 75MHz. If it is 72MHz, no. That's aircraft frequency.

Hydro Junkie

How old is it? Anything prior to roughly mid 1991 is not legal due to being wide band. I have a 1988 Conquest 4 that I can't use for that very reason.

mfr02

Not exactly illegal, more a case of unsociable. The wider band receivers will be inclined to respond to anything thansmitting on adjacent channels, the wider band transmitter is likely to cause interference to any receivers on adjacent channels. I have a vague feeling that Futaba were working to the tighter standads before the powers that be mandated the present narrower bands. So the only real problem might well be the actual band of the set - if it is an air only band, no it should not be used for surface.

Hydro Junkie

Not here in the US. Back in late 1980s, the FCC(the government agency that controls everything that transmits a signal) mandated that by a certain point in 1991(don't remember exactly when), all R/C radios had to meet a 40KHz maximum bandwidth requirement or they were not legal to use. Since the previous requirement was 80KHz, it was now up to the user to get their radio gear retuned to the narrower bandwidth or replace it. The reasoning behind the change was that the FCC was giving the R/C community twice as many channels but not giving us any more space in the RF spectrum. In fact, the FCC initially was going to cut the amount of room it allocated for R/C equipment by deleting one of the frequency bands since we had 27, 50, 72 and 75MHz assigned to us. Toy grade systems were assigned one channel in each 29 and 49MHz so that stores like Radio Shack could sell simple remote toys. Today, we still have the four frequency bands available to us, though they are being phased out by the manufacturers, along with the current go to of 2.4GHz frequency hopping systems. The way it works today:
27 and 50MHz can be used for pretty much anything, though 50MHz does require an FCC license due to the need to fine tune the equipment
72MHz is anything that flies
75MHz is everything that stays on the surface
2.4GHz covers everything R/C

mfr02

Mch the same over here, but without the legal compulsion. Not generally a problem today, since a great many early radios will probably have ceased to work. Apart from cases like his, where an old one comes out of the woodwork.
Migh be an idea to just sit back and wait for the OP to come back.