R.T.F.M.

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

(Read The Fascinating Manual)

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

I had an impassioned note from an exasperated forum member during the week;

"Some of the posts on here and on Mayhem betray an appalling ignorance of basic electrical principles.

Back in the 70s most people seemed to have a much better grasp of these issues but now there is no 'feel' for what is right and wrong. They have no idea of what is likely to release the blue smoke and often struggle to discern the difference between volts and amps.

So much for modern education."

Today I've been in correspondence with a well-known model company. Here are just two illustrations of where we seem to be with trying to get folk to Read The Flipping Manual:

I just had a customer who connected a Brushless ESC to the servo and wondered why it wasn't working. On top of that it turns out he'd fitted a Futaba plug to an 11.1V LiPo and plugged it directly into the receiver!

I asked a guy if he could measure a battery and give me the dimensions, his reply… "I can't do that – I live in a flat."

At the risk of trying to make the horse drink once you've dragged it kicking and screaming to the water, here's a useful link for people who would actually like to know a little bit about what they're dealing with. **LINK**

It's not cool to be dumb – it's just dumb.

Dave M

[Paul TParticipant @pault84577]

Dave

Back in the 70s you had to understand how things work as, unless you were very lucky, nobody else was going to help but now we live in a nanny state where everything is done for you and the average 'dumb' expects to just throw things into the air and for it all to fall into place and work perfectly.

As an example 7 out of 10 UK drivers have no idea how to change a wheel if they ever had a flat.

[David Marks 2Participant @davidmarks2]

I worked for the MOD all my life and back in 1983, switched sites and went from training apprentices to training Student Engineers. These lads were in their gap year, had a raft of A Levels (including Physics) and all had been accepted to go to university to study Mechanical Engineering, Electronic Engineering etc. The training section required some extension leads, so the component parts were withdrawn from stores, i.e. cable, six-way extension blocks and 13A plugs. Unfortunately I had assumed that ALL these bright young things were fully capable of wiring these components…..sadly not. With some, this included having no idea which colour was Live/Neutral/Earth etc and to which terminal within the plug they should be connected. So in a lot of ways I blame the education system. Too much emphasis of passing an exam, to get a certificate, instead of concentrating on practical aspects.

[Tim RoweParticipant @timrowe83142]

Crikey Dave

I pressed your link and found there was a whole lot to read for goodness sake. I couldn't find the App to put it on my phone and there was no audio!!

As a teenager I knew not to stick my fingers, or anything else for that matter in TVs or anything to do with the mains. I did find out by practical experiment, the dramatic effect a large dose of amps could do but then again I found the smell of a lot of the magic smoke quite pleasant. As the experiments were largely conducted in my bedroom and I was never able to persuade my Mum of the same. I do read manuals now but that does necessarily mean I understand them. The quality of English can be variable to say the least.

The hardest language (manuals) to understand are written in American. There is nothing that won't either kill you or seriously main you if you are lucky because the alternative is a substance known in California to cause cancer. I was seriously trying to find out what component in a model aircraft kit was going to do that and there wasn't even any plastic in the box. I was wondering just how much balsa or tissue paper you have to eat before you get the symptoms. In an American boat manual for example, by the time you have separated out anything that actually means anything, at best the tide will have gone out or worse, that that particular boat is now obsolete.

I have a similar problem with warnings on prescriptions. All the possible side effects are mentioned on all medicines. Of course not to protect the punter but to cover the pharmaceutical's backsides.

Joking apart, I do agree that if you are taking up a hobby, part of the process should be to understand how things work and that can be a large part of the challenge or enjoyment.

Now back to your article.

Tim R

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Dave has commented to me as below and Glynn Guest has previously made much the same point in the magazine. Forums make you lazy and don't always promote understanding. People accept advice blindly without appreciating what is behind it and frequently suffer the consequences.

Too many people can't be bothered to do a bit of homework and the outcome can be expensive if not dangeraous.

Colin

I think that the nature of on-line forums is much to blame. Why take the trouble to think for yourself when there's always someone there to do it for you?

Edited By Colin Bishop on 21/03/2019 18:25:31

[Ray Wood 3Participant @raywood3]

Hi All,

It's a shame people stopped reading books, all the things we do in modelling has been done hundreds of times and described, but loads of practical stuff hasn't been required for the younger generations, their loss 😮

Regards Ray

[Tim RoweParticipant @timrowe83142]

Good point Ray

I cherish the books I acquired from my model engineer grandad and in the last few years have picked up some very useful references on Ebay. My next purchase has to be one about making sails for model yachts.

Tim R

[harry smith 1Participant @harrysmith1]

HI Lads

As an ex telephone technician I has seen some very poor wiring setups.

The last one was an Air Sea Rescue Launch with twin brush motor and an old school mixer to slow the inner motor on turns.

The battery leads had three connection between it and the main board.

Extra length in all the other wires.

Re-cable the battery still using the Tamiya connectors which I dislike.

Made it all neat and tested it all out.

Test run the boat in a test tank all OK.

Change over to another battery, totally dead!!!

The Tamiya connector fail.

Repair the connector and all is working again.

I would of like to replace all the battery Tamiya connectors to XT-60, but he did not want to go that far.

Also pull out the motors, regrease the dry shafts with silicon tape grease , add thrust washers, file flats on the shafts and lock threaded the grump screws.

I will see if it all works tomorrow in the real test.

Harry Smith

[Charles OatesParticipant @charlesoates31738]

Whilst I totally agree with well that's been said about ignoring manuals etc, many of us on here aren't typical of the general population, we're enthusiasts. The older ones among us probably built projects from old RCM&EE magazines, and possibly built our first radio control from kits. We had to learn a lot as kids just to make stuff work. In the early 1970s when my wife took a job in a hi fi shop, (Greens) she was the only one who could wire a plug correctly, not one of the blokes could do it, her dad brought her up very well. I was the only person among my mates who knew a resistor from a transistor. Not everything was rosy in the past.

I suspect what has changed most is that nowadays people are more used to things just working out of the box, but when technicalities arise, they don't have the habit of working a problem through. Think of the people we all know who shout at a computer.

Newcomers to the hobby will quite naturally want to change and improve their models, and need help to do that, all forum members can do is offer that help. If its ignored that's not our problem.

Chas

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Yes, you are right Charles but there can be a bit more to it than that. Quite often I want to do something that I'm not altogether familiar with, laying the new click type vinyl flooring or various other moderm DiY methods for example. So I do my homework, often online by checking things out until I have an understanding of the characteristics of the materiaI such as do I need an underlay for a small area if the substrate is flat, does there need to be an expansion gap around the edges, what is the best way to cut the planks, how much should I allow for wastage etc. etc.

Along the way I get a feel for the job and know how to avoid the more obvious pitfalls I might encounter. It doesn't take long and it pays off in achieving a better result more quickly than by 'suck it and see'.

This principle applies to anything your are unfamiliar with. My recent Huntsman kit has a brushless motor and a LiPo battery which is a first for me so I did some background reading using Dave's article and other material which gave rise to a few questions where I managed to track down the answers as I basically knew what I was looking for. This left me with just one or two specific points that Dave was able to resolve. I am now confident that I could build another boat with this setup even if it varied slightly in the operating parameters, different size motor & battery pack etc.

One of the weaknesses of Forums is that people come on with very specific enquiries and are told what to do such as connecting this wire to that terminal etc. but they have no real understanding of what they are doing and why they might suddenly be shrouded in blue smoke. They are just working blind and learning nothing.

And because they might not have fully explained their problem in the first place, the adviser may have made assumptions that are not true such as that the battery/motor does actually match the load being put on it so when the connection advice is followed the thing still doesn't. work.

You cannot give effective advice unless you have got all the relevant facts and that is not always easy. If the person enquiring has done a bit of homework in advance (as, to be fair, many do) then the chances of a happy result are greatly improved.

It's a mindset issue I suppose.

Colin

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

My original point [RTFM] has become a little fogged. It doesn't mater how old/young/clever/dumb/lazy etc you may be, the point is that there should be a set of instructions accompanying electronic devices for models, and it's been put there for you. If there isn't a decent manual with it then don't buy the product. The logical starting point is that the writer knows something about the device whereas the purchaser probably doesn't, and it's all there for him/her to learn. Ignore the manual at your own risk.

I guess it's that time of year when boats are taken out and dusted down ready for sailing, and the electronics become subject to anything ranging from careful checking to mindless vandalism. Needless to say I only get to see examples of the latter, and they are crawling out of the woodwork at the moment. My recommendation? READ THE FASCINATING MANUAL and PLEASE don't try to tell me that "it didn't work at all, even though I wired it up according to the the instructions". If you had then it would have worked.

Rant over – for the time being. This has not been a good week for my sanity, and that's before I even think about politics…..

DM

Edited By Dave Milbourn on 22/03/2019 19:23:50

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Ah, the joys of Spring eh, Dave…

Colin

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

If only you knew, Admiral.
DM

[Charles OatesParticipant @charlesoates31738]

Dusting off the models? We never stop sailing out here, just put a sweater on.

I have to agree about the instructions, they were all that saved me when I was a kid, and now.

Colin, like you I started with brush less last year, it was Dave's article, and a basic knowledge of numbers that helped me get it right. It also made me wonder at some advice given by a few people elsewhere.

Chas

[John DickinsParticipant @johndickins22212]

Years ago, when I worked as an electronics technician, we could always spot a graduate. They were the ones who held the wrong end of a soldering iron, twice! Now it is those who ask "What is a soldering iron?"

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