Which way should a throttle control work?

[snowleopard]

I read recently of someone who was having trouble with a morse-type control. He would pull it back to go forward. It turned out it was because he was used to driving an automatic car.

I occasionally drive a powerboat with a twist-grip throttle control (Yamaha 15 4 stroke). To open the throttle you turn it anticlockwise looking at the front of the motor. The tiller is mounted on the port side of the engine and the obvious place to sit is on the port side, steering with my right hand. I just can't do it - the moment I stop thinking about the control and concentrate on the manoeuvre my motorbike instinct kicks in. I roll my wrist upward to shut the throttle and instead bang it wide open. The only way I can use it is to sit to starboard, reaching across the engine to use my left hand on the tiller.

We have a dinghy for disabled sailors which has a joystick for steering where a push to the left makes it turn to port. I find that easy but some dinghy sailors find it wrong.

I noticed a similar problem the one time I had a lesson in a light aircraft. The throttle was a knob sticking out of the dashboard and my brain told me to pull it to increase power. Likewise the rudder pedals seemed reversed when taxiing.

On the other hand I regularly switch between automatics and 4, 5 and 6 gear manual boxes with no problem at all though a bus with reverse top left and 1st bottom left did give me some headaches.

Anyone else have problems with a control setup?

Anyone used to British big bikes and switched to Japs with the brake/gears on the wrong side? I had problems switching between BSA and Triumph with their reversed gear sequence.

And how do F1 drivers manage to avoid problems switching to left foot braking and hand clutch - or is the whole situation so different you automatically shift into a different mode?

 

[timbartlett]

The only way I can use it is to sit to starboard, reaching across the engine to use my left hand on the tiller.

My understanding is that that is the intention. It comes from small outboards used on very small boats where -- if you sat on the same side as the tiller -- pulling the tiller towards you would be slightly awkward. Sitting on the opposite side to the tiller gives you more room.

 

[Signed Out]

Whatever the owner is happiest with... But any guests or buyers should be made aware before getting their mitts on it.

On mine the control is across the boat, but not yet had her in the water, so can't say how it'll be to use. Want to move it though anyway.

My 1st bike as opposed to scooter, was an Indian Enfield, but don't recall any confusion when getting on a "normal" bike back home, but there was a couple of years between.

Both kick bikes I've had since then have been KTM, which I believe use opposite kicks to others, but couldn't be sure.

I have no problem though going between cars, motorbikes, cycles and boats. Not sure where the brake is on my boat...

Video games sometimes have the option of switching control direction. But they're not mechanical.

 

[snowleopard]

Not sure where the brake is on my boat...

One of the boats I sail has a brake. It's not obvious so I've had to show the other helms how to use it. The boat is a Drascombe longboat with a rudder that lowers out of the bottom of the boat and can be rotated 360°. By putting it square across the boat you get very effective retardation enabling you to keep steerage way on much longer when berthing in tricky conditions. Some dinghies can do the same if the tiller doesn't foul sheeting arrangements.

 

[Lakesailor]

I've never really thought about it. We've had all sorts of vehicles with one or two periods when we had left and right hand drive cars.
I vaguely remember a van that was all arse-about face.
I don't remember if it was a J4 van I had or a Morris LD ambulance I had the misfortune to drive. The gears were low to the offside and high to the nearside.

I seem to remember the foot clutch on my Harley was counter-intuitive as well.

 

[Signed Out]

Interesting idea, but how much steerage can you get with the rudder across the vessel?

As for direction of throttle in some things like bike and plane. I have a vague tinkling in the back of my brain that there is an element of "failsafe" in there- to speed up you pull (don't know planes, but is that what you're saying?), and any surging or decelleration won't cause you to accidentally apply more throttle.

 

[duesouth68]

I read recently of someone who was having trouble with a morse-type control. He would pull it back to go forward. It turned out it was because he was used to driving an automatic car.



I always used set Morse controls up for customers forward for ahead and back for astern that would be single lever..and dual the same with throttle set forward to increase revs...it makes coming alongside if its is tricky much easier because you don't have to think about it.......

 

[RichardS]

I had similar problems in the 70s switching between British and Japanese bikes and even before then with bikes with 1st gear down and 1st gear up which varied even in models from the same country!

It was standard in those days when handing a bike over to another person to say "gears on left, first gear up" or whatever! However it was still common to crash through the gears when you needed to brake suddenly!

Switching between RHD and LHD cars has never caused me any problem but I suspect that's because the brakes are in the same place and it's the brakes which require an instinctive reaction. Gear changing is always more measured.

Richard

 

[prv]

Interesting idea, but how much steerage can you get with the rudder across the vessel?

Very little, which I assume is the point. Come in relatively fast, then bang the rudder across to stop. In most engineless boats you have no stopping facility so have to come in slower and stop naturally.

As for direction of throttle in some things like bike and plane. I have a vague tinkling in the back of my brain that there is an element of "failsafe" in there- to speed up you pull (don't know planes, but is that what you're saying?), and any surging or decelleration won't cause you to accidentally apply more throttle.

Makes sense on bikes - but no, planes are the other way round. I don't have a problem with that - you push the throttle knob forwards for more power and backwards for less. If the lever is sticking up from a quadrant that's exactly the same as a boat; many small planes have it as a plunger sticking out of the dashboard instead, but of course the direction you move the knob should (and does) stay the same.

Thumb throttles on jetskis suffer somewhat from the "surge" problem you mention - this once caused my mother to be dragged nearly the whole way across Dale bay through the water at full power.

Pete

 

[Signed Out]

Aha, sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick there, thinking Snowleopard was saying it allows you to maintain steerage as you brake. Not grasping it's to brake at the last minute. My dad had a Drascombe, but never tried this.

Thanks for the description of plane controls too.

Your mum would've been better jumping off! Doesn't help with those things, that you have to use throttle to turn.

 

[prv]

Your mum would've been better jumping off!

Letting go, you mean. She was literally trailing in the water behind it, not riding the thing at all. It was one of the stand-up type, which has to be planing before it will bear your weight, so you have to mash the throttle and jump aboard in the same movement. Or not, as the case may be.

Letting go would have been the right thing to do, but she'd forgotten that if she let go it would drop to idle and circle round back to where she was. She didn't want to let the thing zoom out to sea unattended. She only let go when it looked like they were about to run up the cliffs at the other side of the bay.

Then she turned it round in the water and trailed behind it all the way back!

This would have been nearly twenty years ago. It's one of the stock family stories now

Pete

 

[snowleopard]

Yes, the idea with the Drascombe is to head in at a faster pace than you would normally, then give it a bit of port helm and slam the helm hard to starboard. The port helm is to cancel out the small amount of turning effect while you're putting the helm hard over.

The mobo I use is a real pig to handle when beaching. First there's the twist throttle, then the separate gear lever and if that's not enough you have to reach right over and feel for the power tilt switch on the far side of the engine to avoid grounding the prop. While you're fiddling with those controls you have to bring it onto a concrete ramp dead slow to avoid damage, angling to the inevitable crosswind until the last moment. And all that with a completely flat bottom and slab sides.

 

[Leighb]

I have only been aboard as crew on a yacht which had the morse control at the aft end of the cockpit set transversely.

Move to starboard for ahead and port for astern, or was it the other way.

Very tricky as there is no instinctive way to decide which is which.

I have also seen in a marina a yacht with the control at the forward end, this however had very large arrows marked F and A

 

[Signed Out]

Bit of a thread drift, I apologise, but this got me thinking about Proas. I believe that on some you have to lock off the forward rudder. There must be a great potential for confusion on those. Especially if you jump from one type to another (Atlantic/Pacific- please don't ask which is which though...). OK, maybe totally unrelated.

 

[nortonmotors]

My very first boating experience was a hire cruiser from the yard at Acle Bridge on the Broads, some fifty years ago . First job after taking over was to go round to the fuel berth and fill up.
Gingerly astern out of the berth, then ahead towards the pump and close the throttle to glide slowly to a stop.
Not so! On my then employer's tractor, the standard grey Fergie, the throttle lever under the steering wheel is moved back to increase speed and forward to slow. Without thinking, I slammed it forward.
Vrooom! The boat rode up the pontoon and nearly had the yard owner off the other side. Definite YouTube material.

My current sailboat has the lever athwartships on the bulkhead and I sometimes get that wrong too. For the last twelve years, logic has said "Make a name plate!" - but then, logically, I'd need a light to be able to see it at night too.

 

[Bosun Higgs]

Anyone used to British big bikes and switched to Japs with the brake/gears on the wrong side? I had problems switching between BSA and Triumph with their reversed gear sequence.

And how do F1 drivers manage to avoid problems switching to left foot braking and hand clutch - or is the whole situation so different you automatically shift into a different mode?

Didnt find the right side / left side gear lever a problem when I had both a Commando and a modern bike at the same time. But I once bought an 85 Harley Iron Head Sportster that had as standard a twist grip throttle where you rolled it forward to accelerate and I couldnt get on with that. Apart from anything else, applying the front brake tended to roll your hand forward and speed up the engine!

Our main car is an auto and I always left foot brake. My second car is a normal manual. No problems swapping back and fore. But oddly enough I recently sailed a friends boat with a tiller and found that very strange despite previously having had a tiller boat myself.

 

[mcframe]

Interesting.

I also dislike o/b twist-grips 'cos they go the wrong way :-(

On bikes and windsurfers, I'm slightly better/happier on left-handed corners† & port tack - I /think/ that's 'cos my (dominant) right hand is more relaxed at controlling speed (& hence lean angle) when extended & relaxed.

WRT bikes, my oldest Italian one has the shift on the right, but upside-down (race-pattern, 1-up, 4-down) so you can change up a gear when cranked over - I can usually remember that...

With boat tillers and wheels, I used to semi-consciously face to the side with a tiller, and forward with a wheel, but now I can swap between them more easily when thinking of up/downwind rather then port/starboard.
(The *bottom* half of a wheel moves like a tiller, but IME the towards-me/away-from-me soon gets hard-wired according to whatever your using.)

<whisper> Have you tried a jet-ski? The lack of steerage when you're off the gas is very strange, but a bit like a dinghy with an o/b - mind you, nothing can beat oars for precision docking ;->

I've never helmed a powerboat with separate gear/throttle levers, nor driven a vehicle with manual advance/retard - or even a bike with a lever throttle and shift on the tank - that would be too weird.

† Easy to get my knee down on the left, but much harder on the right

 

[snowleopard]

I've never helmed a powerboat with separate gear/throttle levers, nor driven a vehicle with manual advance/retard

I've dealt with separate gear & throttle levers, even one boat with twin engines where the gear change involved turning a big cast iron wheel that moved a wire linked to the gearboxes 50 ft aft & 2 decks down.

Manual advance/retard wasn't too bad - retard to start then shift to full advance as soon as it was running. The sneaky trick was to park it on full advance. If some tow rag came along and tried to start it the spark would fire it well before TDC and it would kick back like a mule. It was said that a Velocette 500 single could break your leg.

 

[Seajet]

I found constantly swapping between a mate's British bike and my sadly jap example a recipe for disaster, stomping on the rear brake to change gear and vice versa.

When flying a Cessna light aircraft I found the throttle - which looked like a choke pull knob - anything but instinctive when under pressure at low altitude in turbulence ( I'd had the controls thrown to me by a drugged up idiot pilot, 'you take us in' ).

The Harrier aircraft is unique in having a 3rd lever in the cockpit, for the angle of the nozzles directing the jet thrust; back for vertical lift, forward GENTLY for forward flight; I filmed a 'future projects' idea where it was all combined on the throttle lever, fore & aft for throttle, twist it for nozzle rotation ( aided by a nozzle angle guage in the Head Up Display ).

A few Harrier pilots came to grief when grabbing the nozzle instead of the throttle lever they were hoping for, the much awaited F-35B is much more user friendly via computers.

When converting to a wheel steering yacht I had a little trouble for a few minutes getting used to 'left hand down, turning to Port', while of course it's the opposite with a tiller.

Big clear mechanical not electronic ( likely to fail at critical moments ) rudder angle indicators are a godsend !

I feel all throttle and similar controls ought to be configured ' push forward, go forward, or forward faster'...

 

[Signed Out]

I guess having learnt to sail in dinghies, tiller comes naturally to me, while I first used a wheel helm after learning to drive, so again was an easy switchover, and can do so easily any time... I just don't like wheel. As Seajet semi suggests, you need something to tell you where the rudder is, and that to me is not intuitive. OK in open water, under way, but in harbour or similar, trying to maneouvre gently, ugh. Had a wrap of line around the centre spot of mine, but glad am back to tiller.

My 625 single (KTM 640E) is a killer when I need to kick it (coming home from a job any time other than summer when it wasn't garaged), it is a nightmare. Glad it's got a leccy. 400 I had before (KTM SC400) didn't and nearly did for my shin numerous times. But these at least were modern bikes... My 990 Adventure (yup, KTM again, my 7th!), no kick of course, woohoo. (Norton, forget the SMT barge). Ooops, distracted by bike talk.