Eraptor tail kick

[cainebean]

Out of the blue, I'm getting a small tail kick every couple seconds. And I mean small kick. Everything was cool until I loaded it up with my video camera which is the odd part. If it was a nitro, I'd sware it was a tad to rich but it isn't. So anyone have any "look for this?"

I'm going to check the belt for missing teeth
Check my gain on my gryo
belt tension etc....

Well I guess I should say I've quickly checked the above but now I'm going to spend some time. I searched here and other places and didn't see much except a rich motor, and a weird thread about the gy401 needed to be moved away from the servo. With the CCPM kit I have my gyro mounted right next to the tail servo but I assumed that was standard. Plus this only started happening recently when I added my video camera. This was more of a weight experiment than anything. Still haven't took it up with live video yet so I doubt one has anything to do with the other.

I've got a bid on a video shoot for a local sporting good store. They are wanting an 8 second clip from a bridge that has water on all sides. Needless to say, I might be passing on this one if I can't track this problem down. I'm going to spend tomorrow trying things I think might be the problem so I thought I would ask you freaks as well.

Caine

[dreslism]

What motor and esc? Any surging in the motor ?

Sometimes I have found that dialing down the esc can make it surge the motor and make the tail kick. Playing with the CC gain setting or cranking the ESC back up made the kick go away for me.

[cainebean]

Hacker motor and CC 85 Esc. I did have a surging motor but I dialed the CC gain down and that pretty much took care of that. I did dial the ESC back just recently, thanks for reminding me, so maybe I'll jump that back up tomorrow first and go from there.

Thanks Scott!

Caine

[AZ ChopperCam]

yep.. dialing the esc down too far will do it but also check your pinion bearing and main shaft bearings. I've found wheen worn that they can cause RF noise that excites the tail servo/gyro and manifests as small "kicks"

EDIT - i see that you said Hacker motor.... I found that my Hackers ran so hot that they cooked the pinion bearing in short order.

come on..... you know you need to drop that hacker like a cheatin' girlfriend and get an Actro :twisted: :D

[Motions]

If your using governor mode, DON'T. The CC gov mode is terrible and it will kick the tail as the gov cuts off and on. Set throttle curves and forget it.

[Tonystott]

Caine, it might not help but one of our guys suffered from the exact same "kick" with his Trex, and just about replaced >everything< to try and track down the problem. Eventually it turned out to be a dodgy one-way bearing.

You never know, it might be the source of your problem.. good luck!

[cainebean]

Dj,

As soon as I can afford to make the switch, I'm following your lead once again. But I've got less than 15 total flights on this motor so I'm going to have to make it work for a little longer. I'm also going to take your advice and put the hacker in a Jungmeister I have hanging on the ceiling. Right now it has a 60 size nitro with 2 extra pounds added to the nose to make it balance. I figure it would be a great Emoli plane since there was so much weight added.

Motions never really thought about that. But I assumed that would definately make the hacker and esc run hot. Anyone have any comments on his statement. Right now I'll try just about anything to get through this job.

Thanks for the possible problems everyone. I'll start at the top and move my way down to see what happens.

Caine

[Motions]

Trust me. I tried the exact same thing (against expert suggestions) and I had the same thing happen. Turned governor off and never had another problem.

[dreslism]

I don't know, there are a lot of folks running in governor mode.

Motions, did you have the latest CC firmware where you can set the gains?

Caine, if you do try out throttle curves, be very careful on startup or you can strip your gears. The governor does a smooth spoolup for you.

If you're jamming a stick on startup you can strip the gears, and it sounds like you don't have time to deal with that right now.

[MLaBoyteaux]

I found with the latest firmware in my HV85, setting the gov gain down to around 40% seemed solid. Above 50% and I could see a little "wiggle". Above 60% and it was bad.

I could also see the pulses in the voltage and current from the EagleTree data recorder.