The Plus drive has the most powerful motor of the three SwiftPaws home lure kits we offer.
The 750 feet maximum that Home Plus is stated as capable of - was intended for our customers to be able to run a 100 yard straight line course for something like FastCAT. Because all our equipment is continuous loop - more than half of the course for this straight line run is not part of the course. This would mean a single pulley opposite the drive in a straight line over a level surface.
Adding corners and turns to a course also adds "drag" which simply means the motor has to work harder - so to compensate for the additional drag, you would make the course smaller. So a maximum course with three pulleys is closer to 500 feet under ideal conditions. Other factors that come into play is grass that the line is dragging through - so if the grass is tall and the line is moving through the grass, it will be adding drag. If the ground is uneven where there are high points that the line is dragging over - this will add drag. If the terrain is on an incline - gravity adds drags. All these factors and more contribute to the actual course size you are able to successfully set up and run.
The more drag you have the harder the drive has to work. The harder the drive works the hotter it will get. If you run the motor for several play sessions before allowing time for the motor to cool off you will experience overheating. All of these factors have to be considered and address if you are encountering overheating issues.
Some tips to alleviate this:
Be sure to allow time between 90 second play sessions for the motor inside the case to cool down. The controller is programmed with a 90 second (one minute, thirty seconds). This is a safety feature to remind you to give your pup a break - but it is also necessary to allow sufficient time for the motor to cool down.
Be sure the line tension is dialed in just right.
Check your course setup. It may need some adjusting for optimum performance. The more strain on the course (ie the larger the course; the more terrain the line has to drag through; the more pulleys) the harder the machine has to work.
500 feet is the upper limit of what the Home Plus is capable of.
Make sure the grass is short and the surface is relatively flat, basically the more the motor has to work, the more likely it is to build up heat throughout the day.
When running a larger course with Plus you also have to really dial in the tension, not too much, not too little, and make sure your pulleys are spinning completely freely & that the line isn't encountering too much resistance from grass/terrain.
In a square course the line is at a 90 degree angle at your machine and each pulley. With a larger course we recommend a tighter angle at the machine. See the image below which requires an additional 2 pulleys - the kit ships with three - but we sell the pulleys separately in sets of two on the website.