'Miro' The Saga Continues......now a blown Fadec.

[Bell Bloke]

As you may or may not have been following the continuing story of 'Miro' the Wren/Predator with over 80 trouble free hours to it's credit. Well as you may know it has recently been giving me a bit of grief in the radio department ending in it going into the dirt 3 weeks ago.
This problem manifested itself at first with various radio lockouts that only happened briefly. Not taking any chances I renewed all of the radio gear including the servos, but lockouts continued. So I removed the Duralite regulators this being the only thing except the Fadec that was original.
It was at this point, on nicads that 'Miro' bit the dust.
Now this weekend he has been rebuilt and all is back to normal......or is it...because on switching on the radio gear and checking the set-up there was, after about 5 mins a very strong smell of burning, and no the engine wasn't running.
Guess what it was?....Well it is the only thing that has not been replaced thus far in this electronics runaround....yep THE FADEC!!
It's toast.....interesting isn't it.
So my question is has anybody ever had a Fadec fail, fry or cause lockouts? And do they have a finite life expectancy?
This of course is most probably a one off, and all things have to fail at some time anyway. But what we are trying to do is find out is, is there a scedule we can work to on the lifespan of these components.
Just to clarify the Fadec was not even touched in the crash and the engine has since been run for 10mins.

Anyway just posting my findings as and when I get them for those interested.......

Any thoughts?

Bell Bloke.
:)

[v22chap]

Man Bell you just don't get a rest do ya. :arggg: It will be interesting to see if they do have a expected life span.

[Bell Bloke]

Anyone reading about this saga would think that 'Miro' was aright old piece of junk just thrown together, but it's not. The mechanicals ie engine and helicopter have been great, it's just these bloody electrical gremlins. They're like a time :bomb: you :dontknow when they are going to go bang!

[Bell Bloke]

Fadec, at Wren, they are investigating..

[Laurens]

Keep us updated on the FADEC story. Its very interesting to hear what kidns of things can go wrong on a turbine heli.

[heliman53]

I have not had any lockouts on my machine but have seen one weird thing, after flying when I look at the HDT it shows total time and number of cycles correctly but at times the last flight time shows very short. For example I flew for 17.5 minutes yesterday and the last on the HDT showed 128 seconds? this only happened a few times at first but lately it has been occuring every third flight or so. When I down load flight data to my laptop, all the data is there matching the actual flight time, strange! This has not manifested itself in any other way and the engine runs fine. Craig

[Danyboy]

Heliman,

What's the maximum number your HDT can display for running time?
I do not remember by heart, but i *think* mine only goes to 999seconds.

If it's only 3-digit, then the number matches up quite close...

The counter went through 999 seconds and started allover again, that would then be 999 seconds with added 128 seconds, which would result in 1127 seconds, equaling 18.8 minutes...
Close enough?

Cheers,

Daniel

[heliman53]

Hey, that makes sense, never thought about that and when I asked Gaspeir they did'nt either. Don't know why that did not dawn on me. Thanks. Craig

[Sara]

Bell Bloke, in his usual individual style, has managed to create a fault on an ECU which we haven't seen before. It's gone out to Spain for Gaspar's assessment!

A new Fadec main unit was sent out for Miro today.

Sara Parish
Wren Turbines

[Bell Bloke]

Ok folks, Posh new Fadec arrived today, it is in a semitransparent blueish case with nice neat plug sockets. All settings appear to be the same except the plug power which is now at 040, this I'm told is the same as the old unit at 032........
Here are the other settings for those interested

Idle speed 45,000
Stop Speed 28,000
Start/Min Temp 100c
Max Temp 800c
Accel' Delay 050
Decel' Delay 035
Stab' Delay 035
Pump Start point Auto+1
Pump Start Ramp 006
Plug Power 040

Anybody know what all of that stuff means?
I mean The ones I don't know are 'Stab' Delay, Pump Start point & Pump Start Ramp.

Anyway, I've run the engine and all seems fine, I say that because I have not touched the engine since the crash. It lit first time (as always) and setted down to an even idle, couldn't throttle up as it has no blades on at the moment because, wonderful as this helicopter is I have since found after the crash that trying to get any parts out of Century is a bloody nightmare!
So if you have a Predator make sure you have a crash kit standing by or else you could be grounded for weeks.
Great, terific, fantastic, and mega reliable a helicopter it may be, but crap spares back-up does spoil things some what, or at least that's what I've found.
The official Century line on this is it's been retooling and it has moved, well I wish they'd get on with it.
Anyway believe it or not I am happy, and Wren have come up trumps as always, I just wish Century would.

[Bell Bloke]

Just noticed there is no ferrite ring on the new Fadec, I wonder if it needs one..

[dave peers]

:shock: i am at present looking at a second hand pred, with a wren with 1 hour on the clock ! that is just 12 months old, are u saying on the spares front dont touch the pred m8 may be we should talk about the pros and cons of the pred conversion or should i convert my xcell gasser :glasses2:

[dave peers]

:shock: i am at present looking at a second hand pred, with a wren with 1 hour on the clock ! that is just 12 months old, are u saying on the spares front dont touch the pred m8 may be we should talk about the pros and cons of the pred conversion or should i convert my xcell gasser :glasses2:

[Coolice]

Hi Dave,

The Predator is a great machine, ok I can be deemed biased but anyone who has flown one will tell you the same thing.

The spares shortage came about from a new factory purchase and inturn some items, namely crown gears springs to mind were very short on the ground.
Also the concentration on other projects diverted attention away from the developing problem, hence it took longer to rectify.

I was chatting to CenturyUK earlier on in the week and it is now slowly but steadily being sorted out with spares parts making their way to us. I cannot say we have a true 100% stock of parts as yet as I do not know without seeing them, but rest assured the Predator is a very viable set of mechanics with the support to back it.

As to the conversion to Turbine it is flawless! WREN have done an excellent job and thier support to any of their customers is second to none!
Plus I am always about to :lol:
.

[Bell Bloke]

I second that and I am unbiased. The Predator Wren is a fantastic helicopter!! It's performance has been faultless and considering what we have done with it that's pretty amazeing. I was very miffed when it went in after all this time due to a radio problem.
The helicopter and turbine combo' are fantastically powerfull and yet it is a very docile machine to fly. The spares back-up on the other hand has been fairly poor and this machine has been out of the air for 2 months now!! I have to say that we had considered ditching the Century part and go for a different Wren conversion, say a Vario. But we decided that for certain reasons the Century machine was by far the best machine .....even though the spares back-up is poor.
(The reason for the above assesment is that the powertrain is more simple and can handle the most power)

[heliman53]

Bell Bloke, I have not flown the Turbine Predator but I have owned a 90 nitro version which flew great! I can only imagine that with a Wren engine/transmission bolted to it the machine would be just that much better. I hope you get yours back flying soon, good luck. Craig B

[Bell Bloke]

It is fantastic to fly and has always been a 100% relyable airfame. Having never had any problems at all in the 80+ hours 1 1/2years of flying, it came as a bit of a shock when I finally had to get some parts for the heli.
And after 8 weeks of searching both in England and...America the only way it is back in the air now is because a very kind friend of mine 'Colin McGinn' gave me his Predator for spares!! He did this just to get me back in the air again, and I might add he went to great lengths to help me with sourcing other parts too. This then resulted in me tearing appart his beautifully prepped 3D machine which I have to say did hurt as I hate pulling anything that works perfectly. So as you can imagine a huge debt of gratitude to Colin and I'm still trying to get the new bits to rebuild his machine.....still no luck.
The net result of this is that I would and have been very tempted to ditch the Predator in favour of a Burgen/Wren or a Hobby Parts/Wren or even a Cuatro/Wren but I have so many special upgrades for the Predator now that this would be difficult to do. One upgrade is a custom main gear at a cost of £150 and 4CCPM set-up to list but a few.
I'm told that the problem with parts stems from a factory move to behind the iron curtain, apparently they have loads of parts in the factory but they won't ship them out to us capitalist scum...or maybe the Umpa-Lumpas have gone on strike!! We've heard all the excuses and are now very, very bored...... :arggg: :arggg: :arggg: :arggg:

[Greg Alderman]

Bloke...glad to see you are getting that bird back in the air! Now what you need to do is get some of your other UK turbine guys together and come over to the IRCHA event in August...and show us your stuff! I know we could set you all up with fuel and starting gas during the event...

Would be a blast to have a big US/UK Turbine turnout at IRCHA!
:D

[Coolice]

Hey Greg,

How are ya mate, hope you and the family are well?

Mmmm, IRCHA. Such a great event to attend from what I have seen and read in various articles. My fellow Century fliers were out there last year.

With me I just dont like the idea of flying for some reason, it's been so long since I've been on one I fear it now. My other half is nagging me that I need to ASAP ! :WOW :badair:

Could you imagine to look on peoples faces if an equal amount of nitro & Turbine birds showed up at the event!
.

[Greg Alderman]

Could you imagine to look on peoples faces if an equal amount of nitro & Turbine birds showed up at the event!


Well Ian...I think that is quite a few years off! I think I counted 10 or 11 turbines at IRCHA last year...but I would think there was well over 1500 nitro's and electrics! :D

[dave peers]

thanks guys
weeelll, ive dun the deal ,as they say
ive got a new pred plus wren picked it up on sunday after partin with a lot of wedge!!
so all i need is 10 gall jp1 and 20 hrs to spare on the build an i m away with the birds of prey! ! ! :mrgreen:

[Coolice]

Hey Greg,

Yeah your right, but we can dream for now. It'll come I am sure, right behind the electric revolution.

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the Turbine community. Have fun with the build of your new model and if you have any questions at any time just ask.
.