I have successfully used 2 Action-Electronics P94’s both in brushed lifeboat projects, was extremely pleased with ease of setup and performance
The P94 is essentially a single unit containing 2 brushed 20amp ESC’s and a mixer, allowing full proportional control not only on the throttle but also on the rudder, with out any throttle, 4 modes are available with degrees of adjustment.
For Tugs and other very manoeuvrable boats it can be set to move the rudder a little then one motor turns slowly forward and the other turns slowly Astern, the motors speed up the more rudder you give, and of course if you throttle forward a little or a lot, this will alter the speed of the motors accordingly.
Alternatively for fast boats requiring ‘less’ mixing ability the motor can be slowed on the inside of the turn in line with the rudder, assisting with the steering of the boat.
Action-Electronics also produce a P40e this is basically the mixing element of the above but without the onboard ESC’s allowing you to use your own.
The P40e is described as compatible with brushless motors, and by all accounts as all the mixer is working with is the signals received from the ESC’s surely that should be the case, however on my latest project it clearly was not.
Whilst the P40e offers multiple modes, with 2 Brushless ESC’s my testing resulted in no change and regardless of mode setting the motors would start as soon as the rudder moves even with the throttle centred.
Only way to be sure was to send the unit back to Dave Mibourn (Chief service engineer at Action) for testing, Dave tested the unit (With brushed Action ESC’s) and reported no fault.
FORGE ELECTRONICS, forge was founded by Alan Bond, a wizardly electronics genius with a passion for model boats & aircraft, he produced a mixer and I used it in a project (Brushed) very successfully, it is more user adjustable than the Action unit, but that of course makes it slightly more complex.
Sadly Alan Bond passed away suddenly in July but his products are still being built and distributed by www.scalewarships.com
Forge unlike Action do not advertise their product as suitable for brushless operation, and ScaleWarship have kindly provided me one of their mixers to test, so it will be going up against the Action.
OK, so Action’s P40e mixer has 4 preset settings adjustable via dip switches;
OPT1 This is designed for fast models such as patrol boats and modern lifeboats. The inner motor in a turn is reduced in speed by applying increasing amounts of rudder command but it will not go into reverse, irrespective of how fast the model is travelling.
OPT2 This allows the inner motor to go into reverse at full rudder but restricts that reverse speed to 25%. It suits slightly slower models than Mode 4 or where a little more manoeuvrability is required.
OPT3 As Mode 2 except that the inner motor can reverse up to 50% full speed at full rudder.
OPT4 This is the classic “spin-on-the-spot” mode where the inner motor can be made to run at full reverse speed with full rudder and a little throttle. It is designed for very manoeuvrable models such as tugs.
For ,my project I wanted OPT1 as its a fast cutter launch, unfortunately with no fine adjust-ability it is unable to not engage the motors when the rudder is operated.
The key difference with the Forge option is rather than the 4 preset options you have 100% adjust-ability using an onboard potentiometer, therefore I was able to adjust the degree of mixing to be just after the full travel of the rudder with the throttle centred.
So in conclusion the Action was not compatible for my specific requirements, and the Forge was..
However for a final test I want to compare how much benefit I am getting from the mixer over a simple ‘Y’ lead connecting the 2 ESC’s to the receiver, so next time at the lake I will compare.
After all my testing I found this particular boat didn’t benefit enough from the use of the mixer, and a simple ‘Y’ lead and some minor rudder adjustments to give me a better throw was ll required, some time using the ‘KISS’ method (Keep it simple stupid) is the best approach!