I have a Dumas EC12 that has been sitting for years and never sailed. I was not the origional builder so I have a few questions on the wiring. The boat is old so it had the old style futaba connectors which I switched over so I could use a modern reciver. During this process a 20 year old soldering job on the on-off switch gave out and i wasnt able to see how it was hooked up (of course all the wiring was meticulously hidden). The sail control is a Dumas bang-bang (non proportional) swing arm setup. I think its a Dumas 3701. I checked out ec12.info and found wiring diagrams for an RMG winch. Will this diagram work for the Dumas sail control? The boat isnt set up like any I have seen pictures of. It has one high torque servo for the rudder and another high torque servo that activates a three position switch that is somehow wired to the sail control motor and i assume the on-off switch where i guess it gets power from. Does anyone run a setup like this and might be so kind as to point me in the right direction with the wiring? I was going to run a one battery pack setup but now i am considering using two batterie packs. I wont be racing but just using it for fun and I would like it to be reliable. I am in the Stamford, CT area if anyone knows of any clubs around here.

Thanks,
Matt

I am not sure where you are on the switch, but I use the exact same setup in an old Reynolds boat. The only wires I have on my switch are red/black and that really doesn't matter because they are going only to the motor. Yes, you will be using a seperate battery for just the winch, and while that incurs some dreaded added weight... in the EC-12 it's not really a great factor. The safey side is that should your winch battery fail, you still have seperate rudder to bring the boat back to you, and vice-versa. I have brought many a boat home to the dock and saved myself that long walk out and back carrying the silly thing by such a setup.

All you need to do is connect the battery of choice (usually a 6V gel cell) and make sure that when you operate your radio, and the servo flexes the switch that the winch moves in the desired direction. OF course, you can always reverse your servo throw on the Tx, just make sure that doing so doesn't affect the range of motion. I have seen in the past where reversing a servo can make a small difference in the arc it covers, and since the tolerance is a little tight on your servo/switch linkage.. you would want to make sure that you are not straining the servo (i.e. too much travel) which might require a travel override.

If you have the room to work though, you can manipulate the length of the servo arm to accomodate the amount of travel required to make the switch operate the way it is required.