It's worse because I don't know why

[chargerSE]

Trying to fine tune my EB Intrepid this morning with my 14mz and everything was going fine,untill :dontknow I did a few minor adjustment and lifted off for the 3rd time. Started to spool up and check all the control and everything was responding correctly untill :dontknow I broke ground contact and 2ft off the ground all hell broke loose :arggg: ,The heli shot about 100ft up out of control :shock: I hit the the engine kill,no effect :shock: I tryed to drop throttle and pitch, no effect :shock: , Hell I even had time to start dropping the trim on the trottle on the radio as it did flips and loops and rolls in the air, yep you guessed it ,no effect :dontknow. The radio never went into fail safe mode :( aand all I could do was watch her rip her do a boom stike and rip apart the V 810 mains, as she came down into the soft muddy field I could only be thankful that it was over :Slap Wrong :arggg: now I get to watch her rip what is left of herself apart because the engine is still at full throttle as she starts doing a nice little chicken dance, Mind you I had anuff time to put the radio down and start walking to the heli until I realized why would I get near that think until i stops moving aroung :FThat ,The photo's are large but I still can't believe how much of the main frame and the gears and skids are still intact and luckly I didn't have the canopy on

[lperagallo]

Man, that really sucks. Sorry for your loss. I've been there, but not that bad. I had a lockout caused by a bad antenna wire on the Deans base loaded antenna, but failsafe just brought it down hard, not as bad of a crash compared to yours! :arggg: . I have also plowed it into the ground because of bad flying skills. :bomb:

To eliminate any possible lock outs, I bought a DX7. Seems like cheap insurance for such a good ship. :D

I'm fighting some tuning issues because I mounted a new muffler and radio now, but I love the way the heli flys. :mrgreen:

[chargerSE]

That's the problem is I don't know why it happened, Everything was fine the first 2 fights and everything looked good on the 3rd untill lift-off.
The radio didn't go into failsafe but I didn't have any control either :dontknow

[MarkD]

Where were you flying - at a club, home or park etc. Don't rule out the possibility that someone else nearby turned on a Tx on the same freq. They can have a range of about 2 miles

Get hold of a freq checker just to see if there are others in your area

[broncoholic7]

Man that is rough and sorry for your crash.

Just a thought on this...

Did you lose your RX crystal? I have read a lot of posts about this type thing happening? It sounds like what happens when the RX crystal comes loose.

[chargerSE]

It is possible that someone hit my freq, but no I was all by myself in the fair groung field in town, As for the RX crystal, I wish I could find the problem that easily but its a 14mz radio with a G3 receiver so there is no crystal.
We were going to have the wake and funeral service tonight but so far things aren't looking too too bad :( .
damage so-far is of coure the blades,paddles,tail boom,and :arggg: the complete head block and grips

[broncoholic7]

My bad! :D

I do not know that much about Futaba TXs/RXs so I was just guessing.

Hopefully you can get it figured out so you do not experience this again.

Good luck.

[v22chap]

chargerSE

Sorry for your loss and problem ... I just hate these kind of crashes ,,, I dumb thumb it ,,I can accept that and do something about it... fly more careful or get on the sim and practice more. :oops: But this just boggles the mind.

I think I see in that mess what I would guess as a wire antenna,, I think that most recommend that we use a revolution base loaded one on gassers ,,this really don't sound like the problem ... would be nice if it were that easy though and may be something to consider on the new build .

Still you would have thought that somewhere through that fairly long time frame it would have found the signal at least long enough to idle down and or at least went into fail safe .It actually sounds more like a battery failure or switch maybe ?????
How are they or did they get destroyed in the crash ???
Good luck on the rebuild

[chargerSE]

The G-3 receiver can't use a base loaded antenna I was told, but that might have changed by now. The batterys are twin Nh 4500aa packs with seperate switchs routed threw a battery backer and had full charge. I wish it was a case of stupid thumbs on my part :arggg: It that was the case then I could accept the crash alittle more easier, but to not know what caused it is the hard part.
The total damage is a lot, but it is rebuildable :) Yes Dear the parts are cheap because there made smaller with less material :roll:

[v22chap]

Yes Dear the parts are cheap because there made smaller with less material


Atleast your sense of humor is still intact and that is good.

Boy I guess broncoholic7 and I have a lot to learn about these new futaba radios :oops: :? :roll:
Don't sound like the batteries or switches ,,but then again with all that in place it always just makes me feel like there is so much more electric to go wrong. I hate electric gadgets.. I just don't get along good with them .
Hope you can find the problem .
How many flights on this bird .... I take it that this was probably the maiden ?? or just trying to get a better setup on the system ???

[chargerSE]

The engine was done by Hanson several months ago,about 2-3 gallons through it now,The heli was rebuilt when I installed the engine because I purchased it used from another pilot. I was flying it with my Futaba 9chp then switched it over to my 14mz two month ago. I have flown it about a dozen times with the 14mz and was still trying to fine tune it (should have left it alone :arggg: ) I've broken( I hate that word now :!: )most of it down and the full head,lower frames and small tail drive shaft(and that sucker is solid steel) are junk and the usual innocent victims of a crash

[v22chap]

should have left it alone
This is where the old saying ,,if it ain't broke ,,don't fix it ..comes into effect . :roll: :idea: Although I got an idea this would have happened any way .

O.K. so the bird has some time on it and you hadsome good time on the TX and bird.

I still think you had a battery or switch problem ,,even more now that I know you had some time on it. Something in your electrical system had to quit to make it just lock out like that and go full bore into the ground.Gassers are also hard on electrical switches ... make sure you have the heavy duty ones ,,,as with the extra percautions that you took I am sure you probably already have.

[cbergen]

IF you had Failsafe setup, and IF you got hit or lost signal for some reason, the heli would not have done what it did.

IF you had lost the battery or a switch, meaning a power loss, the heli normally just dies. By that I mean it would not have jumped 100 ft in the air, not increased pitch AND throttle, and not going hard over in aileron and elevator.

I would suspect the transmitter, On the right model? What exactly were the "minor" changes you made? Did anything work after the crash?

These are certainly difficult ones to solve, but if you think about how the system works (The PCM radio system), it helps to narrow things down.

The G3 rx can use base loaded antennas, I have mounted 4 or 5 of them so far on Industrial birds and a Turbine. No discernable loss in range, both in testing and actual long range flight (at least as far as I could see it!!)

Where and how did you have the antenna mounted?

[chargerSE]

We after talking with Chris Bergen and going over the heli piece by piece, I'm still not any closer to finding out what happened except that either the radio got spiked by something like a cell or pager tower and failed to go into fail-safe mode or the problem is internal in the radio itself.

[v22chap]

chargerSE
Don't know if the coil on the g260 would cause enough static electricy to cause your problem ,,but I was reading on another forum where a guy with a belt drive micro heli was having the same problem as you are . He was flying and landed to check something and went to power back up and everything locked out and another was setting up things and saw the RX lock out and turn off the motor and servos jitter . He is finding that with carbon fiber side frames and a drive belt and a spectrum radio that he was getting static from the drive belt that was causing the spectrum radio to go bannas . He moved the antenna and rx away from the tail and it was somewhat better and now he is making a steel belt idler to be able to ground the tail belt ,, to see if it completely goes away.
Here is a quote from one of his post .




It certainly has symptoms consistent with a static hit (resetting the RX, motor not restarting, servos twitching uncontrollably - various and inconsistent symptoms).

And another that he must have found in his radio insturctions.

One interesting specification is the electrostatic discharge (ESD) ratings, which are only 500 V on the RF (antenna) pins and 1,500 V on all other (power and control) pins. The de facto industry standard for silicon devices is 2,000 V minimum, with 4,000 V being typically seen. A static charge of 500 V can easily accumulate on the human body simply by walking across a carpeted floor or even combing the hair with a plastic comb. If such a charge finds a discharge path through one of the two antennas, the even could (and likely would) cause a failure in the IC. Accordingly, extreme care should be exercised to avoid contact with the ends of the antenna wires. Placing a small dollop of silicon (e.g., tub caulk) on the ends of the antennas will actually provide a little extra protection since it will prevent direct contact with the copper wire inside the insulat

Hope this maybe helps ,,,good luck and let us know what you find.

What do you think Chris ????

[rbort]

You need to break down the seemingly complicated problem into simple questions: I'll ask the questions and then answer them as well with my thoughts.

a) Did you have failsafe set. And if so what were the settings? Did you test it on the ground? Proper testing would mean you power up the heli, give it some inputs on the sticks and then turn the TX off and see what happens. A properly programmed failsafe for a Bergen machine would:

1) center aileron
2) center elevator
3) center rudder
4) move thorttle to idle
5) leave collective alone (hold)
6) leave rudder gyro alone (heading hold).
7) leave governor along (hold) but throttle to idle will override.

By testing on the bench, you verify these settings and then they will explain alot to you during an emergency. Lets pause here for a minute and evaluate your situation.

If you had failsafe set (at least throttle to idle), then what would have happened if;

1) you got hit by someone turning on your frequency
2) your TX was shutoff or died
3) your crystal fell out (initiates failsafe but does not apply here (14mz)).
4) your heli encountered noise from on-board due to antenna routing for example

Then, your heli would have gone to idle and even if you were 10 feet high you would see this and KNOW that you are failsafing. Failsafe happens most often from #4, and in that case its an in and out thing and the heli would go to idle for a second and then power back up and you would realize what is going on.

Let's continue. Based on this and what happened, you:

1) did not have failsafe set or
2) something else happened (will give theory later).

If you did not have failsafe set to throttle to idle, the machine CAN go into failsafe due to 4) above but will not go out of failsafe and will stay locked. You could have been increasing collective to climb out and it would have continued to climb. But in this case servos would have held there position and there would have been no rolls, only a climb into a drift into a gradual dive to a crash.

Having said this, failsafe is eliminated as if it was set or not set you saw neither symptom so now we go to 2) something else happened theory.

About the only reasonable explanation would be a loss of power to the receiver. If the receiver loses power that last "gasp" of electrons (call it last breath) can move the servos one last time and can cause the collective change to initiate the climb. With the servos unpowered the swash can drop to one side and cause a roll. I don't expect rolls then loops then tail slides but you could get roll/flip is the swash drops to one corner. It would basically continue to do the same thing until it hits the ground which sounds like what you witnessed.

With the duel power source you would have expected not losing the power but there is no other reasonable explanation to what happened. Is it possible you didn't charge the batteries enough and they died on you as that would cause exactly the same thing and as I think about it is more likely than a sudden "cut" in power. I had a battery die on me once and the heli get spasms before I lost total control. Luckily for me I was low in a slow circuit over the runway and I was able to get in that last command of throttle hold before the battery croaked and I got a boom strike but no chicken dance.

By the way, Bergen now makes the generator mounts for his helis and I just got some in stock. Not trying to sell you a mount or anything (I know you already have a generator mounted from before), but figured I'd mention it as the mount you had made was less than perfect when I saw it at our funfly.

I'm really sorry to hear what happened to your machine and I hope the above step by step diagnosis/explanation helps you understand better what happens and perhaps what happened to you.

For the future make sure failsafe is set as indicated above and test it before you go flying. With that you will prevent crashes more than you think.

-=>Raja.

[chargerSE]

Thank you for the reply rbort. The radio was set-up for failsafe with the throttle drop to idle and the aileron and elevation on center position hold, the pitch was set at 33% a hair below hover to drop her slowly. Unfortunately she never went into fail safe mode :arggg: .
I have been checking everything during the breakdown, the battery and switches are still working fine. I've also tested the radio and receiver several different ways to try to duplicate what happen with and don't see anything wrong :dontknow . only 2 servo's have striped gears but all are going in for service with the radio.
This is a nice radio and the only thing that I didn't like about it so far was the throttle stick doesn't have full travel like my 9chp.
The only referrence to a crash like mine was a similar post on the Futaba club site under the general forum listed as stick pots
I'm inspecting every part as I disassemble whats left of her and I'm not seeing anything that would explain what happened.
If I did this much damage trying 3D or a new trick then I could accept it, but to not know what cause it is the had part. Hope to have more info when the tech's get the radio.
If anyone has had a similair experence with a 12 or 14mz please let me know