Newbie problem

I have been tasked with finishing a friend's motorboat conversion from diesel to electric. The motor is a brushless motor with a Seaking ESC. He has a Futaba 6J transmitter and a Futaba R2006GS receiver.

Following the programming instructions I set the Futaba transmitter throttle control to REV. I carry out the Seaking calibration instructions with the full throttle and mid-point positions recognised. I set the 'Running Mode' to 'Forward and backward'. I also set all the other parameters correctly.

However, the motor will run from nothing to full speed in the forwards direction moving the control stick from mid-position forwards but from the mid-position backwards the motor does not react at all.

I feel I must be doing something really dumb but despite wasting a vast amount of time and trying all sorts of settings I can only get the motor to run forwards not backwards.

I would be really grateful for any suggestions.

Many escs for brushless motors have a breaking function and or pause to reverse function.

What this means is to obtain reverse you pull back on the stick from throttle speed, and back to mid way quickly ( this generally stop the boat)then pull back to go into reverse. And same way to go back forwards. ( some require you to pull right back and back to full throttle to change to reverse mode, the full back on stick to go reverse....

It’s usually that pattern to get reverse working... you may have to fiddle about practising as some escs have a pause between neutral to reverse.. so a little trial and error .... it’s frustrating but this is usually the case how to toggle between forwards and reverse.

The reason for this is very simple a brushless motor is Ac so it’s always going in one direction, the esc needs time to flick what ever bit of magic they use to reverse the current ( eclectic way or swapping any one of the 3 cables to spin the motor in the other direction) brushless motors do not respond the same way as a DC motor..

Just a little trial and error on flipping the stick about should show a solution. If in doubt I would suggest looking on YouTube for tips and tricks using your esc,  I’m confident you’ll find a few that will help.

Hope it helps!!

Aron

Could possibly be that the ESC has been set for forwards only. Did you get audible confirmation of settings from the ESC in your set up?

I don't know if this is your version of ESC but you can get the gist.
https://www.offshoreelectrics.com/proddetail.php?prod=ker-seaking-pcard

setting number 1. forward/forward reverse