Began testing which glue to use with my servos. The plan is to glue the oak dowel masts onto the plastic Futaba servo mounts. Titebond III Wood Glue and Super Glue didn't work well bonding the wood to the hard plastic. Loctite Marine Epoxy and Gorilla Glue both held pretty well at about the same strength. Decided to go with the Marine Epoxy.

Read through the Futaba 7C manual, charged batteries, synched the transmitter to the receiver and tested servos for the first time. Just now realizing you have to keep holding the controls up/down or left/right for as long as the servo is turned from neutral. So controlling three independent masts and a rudder means each hand is constantly holding a two-axis position unless you're running straight with the wind. Wondering how you control switches at the same time. I guess that's what your "crew" is for.

Started to program the Futaba 7C transmitter, setting the end points for the servo travel to its maximum amount for the masts, which looks to be about 77 degrees from neutral. I'd call that almost perfect.

Glued two "tiller pushers" onto a servo's wheel mount with the Marine Epoxy. By mounting the servo on its side directly under the tiller the rotating wheel will push the tiller left and right. Never seen anyone do it this way, but it seems to work. Since my sails aren't going to be controlled by rigging, might as well skip it for the rudder as well to keep things as simple as possible (for me anyway).

Cut two mounting disks out of 1/4 inch basswood. Drilled a hole through one and mounted the mizzenmast (5/16 inch oak dowel) through it, using wood glue to bind them together. Then mounted that on top of a servo wheel with the Marine Epoxy. Seems pretty straight, though I'm dubious it could survive a very hard hit. I'm starting to believe this is going to actually work.

Week 23