'Miro' my beloved Wren/Predator turbine is dead!

[Bell Bloke]

Well chaps looks like I'm getting off to a bad start here.
I'm starting on a downer...literally.
'Miro' my old faithful Norfolk flyer of over 90 flying hours is 6 feet under. This was not a great surprise as I had been having radio lockouts for the last 6 weeks and having explored all the possible causes clearly I missed what was ultimately to prove terminal.
So here's the story from the start.
6 weeks ago at Wills, Miro goes into failsafe very briefly but recovers.
I land and shut down the motor, the cooling cycle finishes and whilst sitting on the pad Will and I see the heli go in and out of failsafe again, so suspecting the regulators I switch them off and plug in a nicad, we wait and watch and about 1min later another failsafe. After that noting for over 30mins. So thinking it was the radio I purchased a new set, JR syntesised this time with new digital servos.
So now everthing is new except the Fadec, giro, tail servo and regulators.
I fly again at Wills and again it goes into failsafe and out again before the turbine shuts down. So now all that's suspect are the regulators, which on checking on various forums have been shown to cause lockouts.
So I removed them being almost certain that was it, and indeed 2 hours of logged flying later only seemed to reinforce this as there was not a glitch.
So back to Norfolk and flew 2 tanks with no problem on Sunday.
On Monday however, in a 15 foot hover a total lockout and in it went, the engine not even having time to shut down.
So that's it really, now I'm left with not know ing what to do.
If all of the glitching was in the air then one would assume it was bearing noise or something but the ground lockouts with the Futaba radio go against this I think.
Has anyone got any ideas, because I don't want to rebuild it only to have it go straight in again, because it will.

[Sara]

So sorry to hear about your loss.

One theory you discussed with Roger from Wren on the phone this morning - he thinks that since the common factor in all the problems is that they happened on the same site, there is some sort of local interference. He trained as a TV/Radio/Video technician and worked in that business for 20 years, so he knows a lot about signals, frequencies etc, and as he explained to you, there are types of signal which could create enough noise to block or confuse the receiver's data stream.

Sara Parish
Wren Turbines

[chopper jockey]

did you have a mobile phone in your pocket?

[Bell Bloke]

No mobile phone in pocket, Chopper Jockey.
What about static discharge from the engine, ever heard of that one? Could that be a cause?
I'm thinking about switching over to 2.4ghz just incase it's some local radio ham of or something.
I do have a little pocket scanner but I don't think it's much good really.
Any thoughts?

[Heli_jack]

Wellll being the parnoid individual I am, I do have some about the stray signals.

All the following information is condensed from 3 seasons of flying into just this short (as possible) post.

Field is situated next to industrial park, manufacturing, heavy equipment. One day flying along in my favorite plank over the field it just dove straight in and married Mother Earth. I knew I had nothing to do with it, and the only other person at the field was talking to me.

I bought an ICOM scanner, programmed it, and had some interesting results. I even had voice traffic over the 72 mhz band! Not just one time either.

The ICOM is a very powerful scanner and can pick up all sorts of stuff that will not bother your receiver. Just so long as your TX signal is the strongest everything is OK. But when you get blown over by voice or anything else on that freq., the RX has interference and bad data that is more powerful than the TX data and you go down.

Last summer I also learned that we pick up some (not enough for lockout) stray extra signals in the same areas of the field over an intersection of wire fences. Can't explain that, but I get about 100-200 extra frames if I just fly a wing over the spots.

So, there are many ways lockout or loss of control can occur. Hope this helped a little. I am by no means a radio expert.
Jack

[Laurens]

Is it a total loss or is the damage just to the airframe?

[v22chap]

Man Bell I feel your pain ,,,and not knowing just makes it all the worse.
Good luck on the rebuild and finding the culprit
Larry

[Bell Bloke]

Many thanks for your thoughts here chaps, the airframe is junk but the engine is OK. The more I think about it the more I want to move over to 2.4ghz. Has anyone heard anything bad about this system? The reason for this is, supposing it was metal to metal or carbon to carbon, I don't want a system that decks the heli everytime there is a little rattle somewhere, and with the 2.4, I'm told this will not happen. So on that basis alone it is a good reason to make the change I think, unless you folks know otherwise. What I'm afraid of is that there is something that we have missed in the area and that we will go and stuff another turbine helicopter.

[v22chap]

Bell
I haven't heard of any problems with them ,,, Peter Wales ,,scale buff swares by it .

[Peter Wales]

If 7 channels is enough, buy a DX7 Ross, and say goodbye to glitches, interference and channel chasing. Every one of my helis over here is on DSS and I'll be converting all the english ones when I get back in the summer. 5 mile range with a turbine or big electric scale is enough, and a heli I loved but was forever going into lockouts, is now glitch free and the control link is as fast as an 14MZ

If you need more channels, a better radio will be out.......later this year and will be backwards compatible with your 7ch receivers. I cant say any more than that, I'm sworn to secrecy. :D

[Bell Bloke]

Now that's a great endorsement chaps. Peter many thanks for your input there, can you let me know when you are back, I think you can probably guesss why. :)