Gyro acting strangely due to Van de Graaf Generator effect

[bboy711]

I have been informed by a gyro manufacturers tech help staff that there is a known problem with belt driven copters such as the raptor 30. The belt acts as a V de G generator and creates a powerfull electrostatic field. Needless to say the consequence of this is intermittant uncontrollable tail spins whilst flying normally other times. The field induces currents in conductors and plays havoc with the electronics ie gyro, servos and even the reciever. The solution, all though I havnt tried it yet, is to release the boom, scrape off the paint and then run an earth wire to the motor (most easily done through the glowplug earth point). I was advised to reinitialise the gyro after this proceedure. The gyro is a (solid state) CSM SL310 smart lock.
I hope this is of use to some of you guys as it had me scratching various parts of my anatomy for some time.
I must highly recommend the support staff at CSM for resolving this issue over the phone in less than five minutes (helps if like me you have a physics degree to understand what they are telling you, but Im sure they can use laymans terms for those without).
Weather here in Blighty is far too bad to test so I will update as soon as we can try it.

[BarracudaHockey]

I've never had a problem with a belt drive and a 401 or 500t gyro.

Put a teaspoon or 2 of fabric softener in a plant sprayer and fill it with water, mix it up and spray your belt if your worried about it.

[flyinfool]

I have never heard that one before either and five of my six helies are belt drive.
I am not sure what grounding the boom to the engine is supposed to help since the engine in not grounded to anything.
Would you not also have to ground the electrical system to the engine for this to work?
I am not an EE, I know just enough to cause trouble. :arggg:

[phaed]

doesn't sound that plausible. i examined my raptor 50, and even though it has a belt and 2 rollers, the rest of the components for a vdg aren't there.

i don't see a repository for charge buildup to make a strong electric field. there are no combs/needles nor hollow conductor. some might think the aluminum tail boom could act as that, but aluminum, while a decent heat conductor, sucks at conducting electricity.

you'd also see a bit of plasma between the belt and whatever were acting as combs or needles. this would be very noticable in night flights, and i haven't heard of anyone reporting this (i'm still new to the hobby, however).

if you are really concerned about it, electrically shield the gyro by placing it in a hollow conductive cube. the electrons in hollow conductors freely align themselves with an external field (generated by your supposed vdg effect), but this leaves the field inside the cube at 0 (what you want).

my bet is that it wouldn't make any difference, and you could call the tech back and tell him to find a real solution to your gyro issue.

thinking about it, the main shaft would have a much better chance at being the source of an electrostatic field (generated from the blades) than anything by the belt. every chopper has a main shaft, and if it hasn't been a problem by now, it probably doesn't exist.