Mirage 180 Drive..... forward or rev how to tell at a glance

Hi everyone, this is my first post so please bear with me. I'm not sure if this is the best place to post as other Hobie models use the Mirage 180 drive as well. Also, I couldn't get an image to load but the link should work

The Mirage 180 is a great development but this trick you may find helpful. Because of the way the pull levers work, it's not intuitive at a quick glance as to whether you are in forward or reverse. Obviously pedalling tells you, but when fighting a fish that has taken you into the brush every second counts. Using this trick you can tell whether you are in forward or reverse immediately without having to pedal.
You will notice when you select forward or reverse the corresponding Dyneema control cable rises up, and the other control cable lays flat. All I did was to bind on some red and green knitting wool to the respective control cables, it's that simple. If the red wool is up you are in reverse and if the green wool is up you are in forward.
I used wool so it would last, but I guess electrical insulation tape could work as well.
Hobie could even fit red and green heat shrink tube at the factory while assembling the 180 drives

http://imgur.com/a/ezWZt

Hope this helps someone.
Ross

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Opened the image in a new window... copied the URL... pasted it in the post... selected the entire URL... pressed "Img" code button.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/DJuQqeK.jpg[/img]

I disabled BBCode in this post so you could see the code.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)