Need Help please

[hjscm]

OKay i bought an ion from someone. it has the hacker 77, koolflightsystems ubec and a gold motor. he gave me his 9z program and everything was working fine for about a month. usually in normal mode at low stick the blades don't spin up. 2 days ago they started spinning at low stick. i have no trim or my throttle curve is at zero. so now what i do is put it in throttle hold and plug the batteries in. put in normail the blades start then i go into idle up and fly. when done hit throttle hold. today i flew one flight no problem go to second flight and now throttle hold doesn't work blades are full spin up. i can't shut them down. about 2 minutes later it stops. i take it out of throttle hold and same thing. now in or out of throttle hold no spin up. the motor and speed controller where super hot. what do you think is wrong? why doesn't throttle hold or low stick work.

thanks sorry so long

[Russ McC]

hjscm,

Boy it kind of sounds like you have a problem with your TX or motor controller.

Assuming for a moment that every thing is ok, check to be sure that your low throttle ATV rate B is 100% in normal and that your hold is set to bottom stick position.

I have never had these things just change on there own for no reason, you better get some local hands on help to get it straightened out. Pleas let us know what you find out :!: :!:

[hjscm]

everything is the same in the tx. i double checked it all. i have another rx that i am going to put in it to see if that might be a problem area. my friend has another speed controller i might try and see if that is anyting. i called the hobby shop who has a guy that flies an ion and he never heard of anything like that before. figures it would happen to me.

thanks

[Russ McC]

Also I always plug in the receiver power with the TX in hold so I can’t accidentally get the controller into programming mode. As far as heat goes you could be in the wrong timing mode, it should be in timing mode one pretty much no manner the motor you are using. Also it should be in brake mode, not heli mode. What motor are you using? You said gold. Does the outer part of the motor turn/out runner? Or is it an internal rotor?

[Russ McC]

P.S. are you now saying you can't get it to go at all?

[MinAirChris]

I have seen this on one or two of the 77-3P controllers, You'd land and the motor would keep turning for a while. Next time you try to fly it either starts turning as soon as you plug it in (still has slow start) or won't work at all. If all else fails with the Tx stuff, send the controller to Aero Model and let them take a look.

Chris

[hjscm]

it has gold on the outside. it was flying fine, only thing that changed is when i was in normal mode it would spin up at low stick. now it spins up at low stick and in throttle hold. i could not get it to shut down. once it shut down it would not spin up again. i have not tried it again. i am going to the field tomorrow morning where a couple of guys fly ions. i will change the rx tonight if that doesn't work than i will send in the controller.

thanks for the replies guys

[Ninjak2k]

I agree with Chris, this sounds very much like a speed control issue. Someone had a Castle Creations controller go bad and his motor would start up when the batteries were plugged in for just a second. Castle said that wasn't right and replaced the controller. No more problems. I know where talking about a Hacker controller, but if you still have positive control of everything else and your Tx programming hasn't changed, it has to be a speed control issue.

~Dan

[hjscm]

thats what i am thinking too. you guys are great. i will try the rx tomorrow and then maybe monday when i see my friend try the speed controller

thanks

[hjscm]

well looks like i have to try the speed controller. put the new rx in. plugged in first battery everything worked fine. plugged in second battery and everything was working fine. thought i had it with rx. throtttled up and then i had no controll at all. radio was dead. fail safe did not work either. now it is spinning full throttle. it sat there for about 15 minutes and finally batteries started to die. when blades stop i unplugged one battery and my radio was working fine. i had full controll. did a ange check and even did a fail safe check and it all worked. seems like the speed controller is somehow screwing up everything. does this sound wierd? kinda scary no controll or fail safe.

[misskimo]

sounds like a ubec problem , I had a Sbec fail while spooling up my old Joker I use to have, flew it inside a shop when it started acting funny , choped power , and still it wouldnt stop hovering , after 3 seconds it sat down on the floor and started spooling down , motor would kick on and off utill we cralled under the blades and unplugged it , plugged RX battery to it , and all servos moving everywhere , took out the rx chip and changed it , still acted up , changed out bec , RX with chip , and been running ever since

also about 2 1/2 weeks ago had a slight problem shutting down my Fury conversion , brand new 40-160 esc on aux 4 , knob , while I would open wide open throttle and then plug in lipos , then in 2 moves I would rotate back to low throttle , too hard to rotate in one move , ran the heli , come down landed , waiting for complete spool down , and it stopped at about 100 rpms , and stayed there , huh?? I had to crawl under there , and unplug , so now I dont open wide open throttle anymore , esc can do it its self

Tony

[Russ McC]

hjscm,

If you had to weight tell the batteries died I bet they might be ruined. Did they puff up? If not how many mha did you put back in? If you had no control of anything then Tony could very well be right, assuming you spare RX is good. Vary scary! If you UBEC or your controller caused you machine to run tell the batteries died I would go after who ever had the problem for a new set of batteries and they should thank god no one got hurt!

[hjscm]

but the strange thing is while it was spining the gyro was still working so the ubec must have been on. when it stopped and spooled donw the batteries were at 16.56 and 16.35. when it spooled down the servos were working fine. seemed like after it spooled up the servos stopped working or the rx stopped working cause the gyro was holding the tail fine in the wind. the rx is brand new. i am building an extreme that it is going in. just very scary

[BobbySmith]

hjscm
double check youre trim i had a schulze controller do the same to me it would start then it wouldnt spool down



Bobby

[hjscm]

yeah trim and sub trim all the way down. losing control really scared me and fail safe not to work isn't to good either. just glad i wasn't flying. i think i might order a ubec and hacker 77 new and put them both in. try one at a time.

chris

[misskimo]

my bec wasted the rx and the chip , and also I tind to think since the esc are opto maining there isnt a loop through the esc

Tony

[Russ McC]

Hjscm,

Sorry been busy all afternoon and evening flying!!!! You definitely have something bunk and you will get to the bottom of it soon, it can only be about one of three things discussed hear already. I recommend doing all further testing with no main blades so you might have the chance (still not recommended) to un plug the battery/s, also don’t plug them in all the way so you can get them un dun easy.

As to you battery health after that last episode the Thunder Power batteries come with a guide (yellow sheet) on it, it says to “never attempt to charge any pack if open voltage per cell is less then 3.3V. One of your packs is at 3.27V and the other is at 3.31V this is very bad, these are fully discharged. If you do attempt to charge these packs proceed with caution out side! I bet they puff after a cycle or two be very careful. I wish Chris S would comment on this as he has tested packs to the breaking point and might be able to tell us how big a deal this is and what the risks are. Chris what you think???

[MinAirChris]

Well...the 3.3 volts per cell thing is a little new and brought on because Charlie did not feel there was good accuracy going from one meter to another in the field...which makes sense, how many have calibrated equipment?

Originally, the numbers were 3 volts per cell unloaded and 2.5 volts per cell loaded. You may be O.K. I would take the first few cycles carefully, charging at C/2 and discharging just a little at a time, gently. Once you have a couple cycles through the batteries, then start to work them a little harder, but always watch that charge cycle, DON'T walk away from them.

If you have a CBA, use this to cycle them a few times.

I know a guy here that has taken his batteries down to this level, made me cringe, but he got away with it...so far.

Something else to think about, is this a 3P or O control? If it is the O control and it came from us, I set all the LVC's to 3 volts/cell, so assuming that the LVC still worked, you may be O.K.

Chris

[Russ McC]

Thanks Chris for clearing that up. I did not know these had a LVC. The 3P does not correct? I still have the 3Ps in both my Ions; they work so I don’t plan on changing.

[hjscm]

thanks for the replies. it came from you chris and has a lvc. thats what shut it down. i called hacker and they think the ubec is going bad. but wouldn't the fail safe kick in? with one batteryt pluged in and i turn off my rx the fail safe kicks in. they are out of stock on the controllers. i wanted to order one and a ubec and chnage one out at a time till i figured it out. i will definetly spool up without mains in and not plug the batteries in all the way. when i put the batteries on the charger they read 17.25 and 17.85. i charged them fully and i discharged them back down to 18.5 each and charged them again. i will watch them when i fly and charging them the first couple of times.

thanks guys for the help

[misskimo]

you need all three wires , there was a time when dealing with schulze like the 18 something that we had to disconnect the red wire , but now you need all three

Tony

[MinAirChris]

The 3P control does not have the LVC.

Yeah the speed controls you had to disconnect were the ones with a built in BEC, and only when you were using an alternate source to power the receiver.

I'm guessing your batteries are O.K.

Chris

[hjscm]

so do i need the wire or no? i talked with hacker and they said there must be something wrong cause that wire should not be need. i am so confused.( but that is easy to do for me) yes my batteries seem okay. i will get another speed controller tomorrow and report back
thanks

[ChrisS]

Hmmmm....

Well...here's my take on it. To program the control, you have to have both power on the programmer through a receiver battery and power on the speed control through the main source in order to get the thing to actually change (beep through the motor). So it would seem that the control does indeed need both power sources for full function (or at least to change it's EEPROM or whatever it uses). We also know these controls are optically isolated, does that mean that either side of the opto isolators and circuitry run from two different power sources? Dunno. But, the control does come with three wires hooked up and is optically isolated, so why disconnect it?

Now, if the BEC is goofy, this raises another set of issues.

Years ago, I set out to design my own switching regulator to do pretty much what todays BEC's do. It's not terribly hard to do, what with all the nice power chips that one can easily buy off the shelf today that have all the tricky stuff done for you. The real problem is getting rid of the ripple that is present on the output. You tackle this with the proper application of capacitance. And the capacitors have to be of high quality, big tantalums... Anyway, to cut this tirade short, I found out that that ripple can cause all kinds of issues with the radio gear. It would not surprise me a bit to find that a noisey BEC circuit could cause speed control issues. So definately look that direction too.

I do have the speed controls in stock, if needed (probably the most useful thing I've written in this whole post).

Chris

[hjscm]

I don't know what is wrong. on one hand the first thing that happend seemed to be a speed control issue. it would spool up at low stick which it never did before. then all of a sudden it would not shut down in low stick or throttle hold, but all control surfaces worked fine. that seems like the ubec is working and the rx is working. then it went to spool up and i had no control surfaces working and it would not shut down. but the gyro was working cause it held the tail in the wind. now this seems like the ubec might be bad. but as soon as the heli spooled down i had all control sufaces back and i did a range check and a fail safe check and they worked. so i went home and plugged in a rx battery tetherd heil down and it would spool up at low stick but throttle hold would work this time. so this tells me i think that the esc is bad. well i am going to try and get an esc and ubec today and replace the esc and see if everything works fine. might have to replace both but i am doing one at a time to see what the problem is

thanks guys