Does anyone have any knowledge/experience of using these winches? I’m considering having one fitted to my new boat! Any comments welcomed! Many thanks 

Colin 

I have been using the Red Ant Stinger winch in my boats for two years.

They are fast and reliable.

Just make sure that if you are using a Futaba transmitter, you disable the Fail Safe (F/S) setting on the first page of the menu by selecting Normal for channel 3.

That way the winch will sheet in when you turn your receiver off.

Make sure that you get one with an XT30 battery connector. Phil Holiday at K7yachts supplies them. Was  £175 pounds, delivered.

My new Venti was supplied fitted with one, without a direct battery cable so the power supply had to go through the Rx.

The winch can pull a lot of current, so I have swapped that winch for another

Roger 

Why didn't you change the wiring so it doesn't go through the RX?

 

I thought Colin's original post would get more feedback know at least one person who uses one and impressed with it. 

Personally I have got a Red Ant rudder servo in my boat this has still got to have its maiden voyage, looks a quality item but a tiny little thing watch this space.🤔 

In theory a 1mm diameter wire can carry 7 amps so routing the power through the Rx block should not be a problem (the pins on the Rx are 1mm).  Unless you sail with the winch permanently under a high load, the 'average' current is nowhere near this much.

Back in the day many winches had a BEC to supply the Rx (and therefore also the rudder servo).  I believe this had more to do with protecting the Rx rather than the current draw of the winch.  Today's Rxs can tolerate very high input voltages, so powering them with 2 cell Lipo/Lion is not an issue.

I have only had a brief look at someone else's Red Ant but it seemed very good (if expensive).  Most winches are actually very poorly designed for what we use them for - they back off under load and the position resolution is poor.  I only had a quick pull at the Red Ant (didn't want to break someone else's boat) but it did seem that it tried to hold position regardless of the load.   The specs for winches usually tell you the stall torque and the no load max speed of rotation.  What you really car about is how fast it responds to relatively small movements, how accurately it returns to a given position and how much it moves when a load is applied.

Off-topic to the winch itself - sorry! But this (from a connector manufacturer) might be of general use to people on the subject of wire sizes.

Just an observation on RedAnt Stinger winches from my recent experience ..... there are several versions of the winch with a variety of wiring options employed depending on its version.

The versions I've seen with include:

* single cable with thin wires that get power through the receivers (as described above);

* two cables both with thin cables, one for and to power the receiver and the other for a direct power connection to a battery; and

* two cables, one with thin cables for and to power the receiver and the other with larger gauge wires for a direct power connection to a battery.

There are also different versions of the winch from the original single speed to a newer version that seems slightly faster (untested) and the brand new version that is dual speed depending on stick input from the TX.

There maybe more versions so if you really interested I suggest you ask Yoda at RedAnt for the specifics of any S/N you may have or looking to buy.

My new RedAnt winch, which replaced a RMG 290J1 due to some faulure issues,  is a single speed but came with the two cables, a thick gauge power lead to which I fitted a XT60 connector for the battery and a thinner cable pre-fitted with a JR plug for the receiver.

I'm only a novice but happy with my change to the Stinger 😀 

 

 

Edited January 25, 20251 yr by womble66
Typo

Thanks to those that have responded. Seems that few people have experience of these winches and by chance a fellow member at Woodspring has just purchased a used IOM and it’s fitted with a red ant and he’s having trouble with it, so it’s an RMG again for me!

An XT30 connector as supplied with LiPo 7.4 Volt batteries is continuously rated at 15amps, 30amps max.

Futaba connectors are only continuously rated at 3 amps, so connecting a 7.4Volt LiPo battery to an Rx with a Futaba connector is not just bad practice,

it is likely to overheat and because of the smaller gauge cable used, have considerable volt drop thus reducing the speed of the winch

12 minutes ago, Roger Crates said:

An XT30 connector as supplied with LiPo 7.4 Volt batteries is continuously rated at 15amps, 30amps max.

Futaba connectors are only continuously rated at 3 amps, so connecting a 7.4Volt LiPo battery to an Rx with a Futaba connector is not just bad practice,

it is likely to overheat and because of the smaller gauge cable used, have considerable volt drop thus reducing the speed of the winch

How much current does an iom winch need? (18awg wire will do 7A). 

A futaba might be even more likely to overheat under top-end load because of minimal contact area - squarish peg in maybe similar squarish hole, compared with snug cylindricalisity of the xt design. Or if you slap random 'grease' all over the contacts (why do people do that?)

I wouldn't use futaba on an iom, but xt30 is plenty chunky enough. Sadly roger, many batteries are xt60 - overkill for us.... (Which has me in the frame to solder new connectors onto a couple of new batteries for a mate next week, again...  lol)

I have a red ant winch that I’ve been using with lifo 6.4v battery without any issues. Thought I’d try a Lipo 7.4v battery that has an xt30 connector that is if recall correctly into the flysky reciever using a dean connector. When I tried it I ended up with an alarm constantly ringing on the flysky transmitter so I reverted back the the lifo battery.

Anyone have any idea the cause as I’d really like to use the red ant winch to its full potential. Is it anything to do with the issues mentioned above?

Thanks in advance.

Guy 

Which flysky receiver are you using? The Fsia6 that I use won't tolerate more than 6.6V.

Hi I use the flysky receiver FS-iA6B  2.4 GHZ  and it does 4.0v-8.4v hopefully it will help you 

To continue the explanation for the XT30 connector.

I just came across the Stinger winch specifications, see below.

Stinger Winch

Features/Specifications@6.0v, @7.4v

Speed:3.14rev p/sec, 3.78rev p/sec

No. Turns:66

Weight:145g, 145g

Stall Current:6.6A, 7.7A

So the stall current at 7.4 volts is 7.7Amps.

The Futaba connector is only continuously rated at 3Amps.

Whilst the winch is unlikely to ever stall it is does show that it is able to draw far more current than a Futaba connector is designed to handle.

Hence my advice to use an XT30 connector

 

 

Question about red ant winch

Mine seems to have a bias, to letting out more sheet in the first 1/3 of the stick movement, making fine adjustments when sheeted impossible and at the other end, moving the stick to almost half way before the boom barely lifts off the shroud.

I have neutral settings on my fuabta on the exponential, which was confirmed by another experienced futaba user.

anyone seen this before, before I dive in and set up an inverse exponential to disable this affect

Thank you

You would be better off using a "throttle curve" on your transmitter, if it has it, as you can set the movement across the whole range of the winch by defining a number of points on a graph. "Exponential" generally works from the mid stick point to either end of the stick position which probably isn't what you want.

I've found this with both my ARS808 and a friend's RMG. The trick that I found was to start fiddling from the centre of travel. What I mean by that is that you remove the winch drum, set the end points on the winch "equal" (i.e. both, say, 100). Set the winch stick to EXACTLY mid-position so that the winch itself is mid travel, then power off. Next move your sheet clip to EXACTLY the mid-point of its travel. Next, fiddle with your winch drum so that the sheets are still midpoint and get your drum back on the winch as close to that mid position as possible - don't put the screw in yet.

Now, with the transmitter stick still mid travel, power everything back up, and GRADUALLY test the travel in both directions and adjust the endpoints so that your range of travel is correct and both endpoints should be within one or two of each other. Take care with this stage because if you sheet in or out fully you may wreck the pulley blocks amongst other damage, slowly and carefully is the watchword.

On both the IOM's we moved from a single click on the winch stick (Futaba T6K) resulting in 1cm+ of sheet movement to small mm's of movement and even across the range of travel.

Really helpful, starting from the mid point!

Currently have it sorted it’s throttle curve, but the above it for Monday night boat fiddling after weekend.

On 25/01/2025 at 08:00, womble66 said:

The versions I've seen with include:

* single cable with thin wires that get power through the receivers (as described above);

* two cables both with thin cables, one for and to power the receiver and the other for a direct power connection to a battery; and

* two cables, one with thin cables for and to power the receiver and the other with larger gauge wires for a direct power connection to a battery.

I'm just taking a look at a couple of these for a mate (for a separate question) - looks like one is a #1, the other a #3. The single 3-wire cable - hence power coming in via the receiver - is sleeved so I can't estimate the wire gauge, but to me it doesn't look capable of ~7A. The other - like my own RMG - has separate and chunky power leads, independent from the Rcvr connection. That's the one I'd want....