View Full Version : Up in Smoke!
gpach
07-20-2008, 05:09 PM
Am on holidays and its looking like I should have left my helis at home. Stupid error and I ate the drive gear on my 500 heli with the first spool up yesterday.
This morning was outside having my morning coffee and looking forward to an hour of flying or so. Put a battery through my 450 and set up to run a set through my 550. My normal start is to put the machine in throttle hold and then Idle up and then release the throttle hold. With the align esc I get a nice smooth spin up and away I go.
When I released the throttle hold today, the blades jerked about 90 degrees and then smoke started pouring out of the heli. Needless to say I ran over, ripped the canaopy off and started pulling the batteries off while trying not to get burned.
The align ESC basically self desructed. Nothing really left of it. The pictures show the results. Not sure what happened. It flew great yesterday for 4 flights. Today was the first flight and it was stored inside overnight.
mjdee14
07-20-2008, 06:14 PM
It may just have been it's time to go, but why would you want to go form Throttle hold to Idle up?
You may have just been lucky getting away with it for so long.....I mean that's like asking your car motor to go from off to 6000 rpms instantly.
At least starting form zero you can give it a short time to intiatiate the start and get the blades turning.....
Look at an Eagle tree graph on start up and you'll see it pulls a lot of amps just to get things turning.
I would forgo your procedure and just start in normal and give the esc and motor a chance to come up to speed.
It may just have been it's time to go, but why would you want to go form Throttle hold to Idle up?
I have been flipping off TH to go into idle up on take off for almost 2000 flights with various ESC. No problem at all if you have the ESC programmed to soft start.
I never take off in normal mode. I only take off in idle up and fly in idle up. The only time I switch back to normal mode is just before landing because I didn't like idea of tipping the the heli over during landing on idle up.
I have read many posts in the 600 forum where the Align ESC just burned itself either in flight or during power up.
Sircrashalott
07-20-2008, 06:59 PM
the Align 75 amp esc's don't have much of a soft start, get a castle or kontronic
mysticmead
07-20-2008, 07:46 PM
the Align 75 amp esc's don't have much of a soft start, get a castle or kontronic
you're kidding right?? because my Align 75a has a great soft start.. if it was any softer, the blades would never get spinning
xodarap1
07-20-2008, 07:46 PM
So what happens when you go from TH off in idle up? Doesn't the heli go from zero to 75% (or more) power instantly?
If so, what's the advantage to this gear lash test?
The only way i've ever done a take off is to start up in soft start mode (normal mode), then switch to idle up either on the ground or in the air.
My Align 75 has a great soft start feature so I'm not sure what you mean by they don't.
Sircrashalott
07-20-2008, 07:52 PM
My bad its the govenor that sucks
mysticmead
07-20-2008, 08:17 PM
if you go from TH to idle up, the soft start will slowly start spinning the blades until they reach their idle up speed. but it does put a HUGE load on the ESC
gpach
07-20-2008, 09:09 PM
I dont understand how the slow start on the Align ESC could put a huge load on it. Its very very slow. To put it in perspective, the blades stay put at 90 degrees (not overly tight) when using it. That is one of the reasons I like the align esc cause its a nice slow start. I have done this many times with the eagle tree on and there is no huge spike. The reason I do it is it saves me messing around changing from normal to Idle up. To land, I just hit throttle hold as it touches down or when it gets close to the ground.
This ESC has about 30 flights on it total.
End of the day, cost appears to be a $100.00 for the ESC and a few dollars for some new wire ends as well as a spektrum cable from the main Rx to the remote antenna. As well, need a new canopy as I pretty much killed the other one ripping it off in a panic ($14.00).
The money is of no corcenr, what is killing me is I am on holidays for the next 12 days and by the look of it will have that heli down for at least the rest of the week waiting for parts. I walk out the front door and have 5 acres of clear run. My brother cut a 12' cirlce of grass down to golf green height and used ground marker paint to put a big yellow H in the middle. This is located 15' from the picnic table my coffee sits on. There is ZERO wind here in the morning and its nice and cool. And I am down to a 300 sized FP and 450 CP machine!!!!! AAAAH.
Fly well.
gpach
07-20-2008, 09:14 PM
Here is an ET run with three starts......I cant seen any hard amp pulls on the start. Is there something else that happens inside the ESC that loads it up??
gpach
07-20-2008, 09:19 PM
So what happens when you go from TH off in idle up? Doesn't the heli go from zero to 75% (or more) power instantly?
If so, what's the advantage to this gear lash test?
The only way i've ever done a take off is to start up in soft start mode (normal mode), then switch to idle up either on the ground or in the air.
My Align 75 has a great soft start feature so I'm not sure what you mean by they don't.
I dont understand you?? The ESC I had the problem with is the Align 75 amp ESC. The soft start is active in all modes. You cant disable it once set. starting up direct in idle mode is the same is normal mode and running the stick to up to 70%. The esc should and normally does a 12-18 second slow spool up. I use the words "normally carefully"
"soft start mode" - is a setting in the ESC not the radio. It spools the ESC up slowly regardless of your throttle setting.
Sircrashalott
07-20-2008, 09:43 PM
I dont understand how the slow start on the Align ESC could put a huge load on it. Its very very slow. To put it in perspective, the blades stay put at 90 degrees (not overly tight) when using it. That is one of the reasons I like the align esc cause its a nice slow start. I have done this many times with the eagle tree on and there is no huge spike. The reason I do it is it saves me messing around changing from normal to Idle up. To land, I just hit throttle hold as it touches down or when it gets close to the ground.
This ESC has about 30 flights on it total.
End of the day, cost appears to be a $100.00 for the ESC and a few dollars for some new wire ends as well as a spektrum cable from the main Rx to the remote antenna. As well, need a new canopy as I pretty much killed the other one ripping it off in a panic ($14.00).
The money is of no corcenr, what is killing me is I am on holidays for the next 12 days and by the look of it will have that heli down for at least the rest of the week waiting for parts. I walk out the front door and have 5 acres of clear run. My brother cut a 12' cirlce of grass down to golf green height and used ground marker paint to put a big yellow H in the middle. This is located 15' from the picnic table my coffee sits on. There is ZERO wind here in the morning and its nice and cool. And I am down to a 300 sized FP and 450 CP machine!!!!! AAAAH.
Fly well.
Overnight Shipping..........:thumbup:
gpach
07-20-2008, 10:23 PM
Overnight Shipping..........:thumbup:
To Canada, so far the best I can seem to get is guarenteed delivery thursday night for $68.00. I need to call them tomorrow morning and see what we can do for an overnight document pack.
mjdee14
07-21-2008, 12:24 AM
I'm just starting to use the align 75a on my Z30....and guess I'm learning somethings.....the other day I had mine out....the slightest movement off zero and the heli jumped 90 deg.....guess I don't have soft start engaged.....
That is one reason I thought it would pull so many amps.....my Gaui 50a has a nice soft start.....guess I need to get out the align instructions.....
learn something new every day here....
Actually, the Align 75A ESC soft start feature works so well that if you accidentally flip TH back on while the main blades are spinning up, you would have to wait until the blades spin down completely before the the ESC would start spinning up again.
I went back and looked at my Eagletree logs for the Hurricane and T-Rex 600 again to see if there were any sign of huge spike when flipping off TH, but there was none.
xodarap1
07-21-2008, 01:10 AM
starting up direct in idle mode is the same is normal mode and running the stick to up to 70%. The esc should and normally does a 12-18 second slow spool up.
Thanks gpach. I never knew that, and I'm glad I learned something new. I figured that if you turned off TH and the mode switch was in S1 or S2 that the heli would immediately go to those high rpm settings regardless of soft start settings.
I'm going to stick with normal start up mode and then flip the switch when i'm well off the ground in a position where I need the extra rpm's and negative pitch for stunts. I don't see the reason to burn any extra power at the start of the flight or leave the ground in S1 or S2.
yaniel
07-21-2008, 01:55 AM
Thanks gpach. I never knew that, and I'm glad I learned something new. I figured that if you turned off TH and the mode switch was in S1 or S2 that the heli would immediately go to those high rpm settings regardless of soft start settings.
I'm going to stick with normal start up mode and then flip the switch when i'm well off the ground in a position where I need the extra rpm's and negative pitch for stunts. I don't see the reason to burn any extra power at the start of the flight or leave the ground in S1 or S2.
hopefully you'll never forget to switch into idle up before going inverted. thats the reason most of us who take off in stunt mode, do it.
xodarap1
07-21-2008, 02:14 AM
That has only happened to me once a long time ago and then I switched to S1 mode while i was inverted at mid stick and everything worked out ok lol. I usually toggle between all 3 modes as needed. I learned to take off in normal and land in normal so its a habit at this point. I am only running the outrage 2200's and kong 2200's so I use normal mode rpm's during most vertical transitions and only S1 and S2 when needed and it does help to extend my flight times.
gpach
07-22-2008, 10:06 PM
Parts are in Transit.......Hurray. Should be here Wednesday or Thursday. That leaves me 9 days of holidays to fly.
My trex450 has an align 35 amp esc with the slow spool up. Since my 550 smoked I have developed the habit of starting the 450 in normal mode and once the blades start to spool I flip it to idle 1.
I put the batteries from my fire episode on the charger today and found they were down to 88%. Thats about 12% consumption in 3 seconds. I am wondering if the slow spoolup feature of the ESC somehow?? got unprogramed and when I went to start it jumped to 80% throttle and overloaded the ESC.
This was the same "stunt" I did with my 500 on saturday with the scorpion ESC and it ate the drive gear.
Anyway, two more align ESCs are on the way. 75 amp for the 550 and 60 amp for the 500.
On an aside, held some nose in hovers for about 30 seconds today. Its amazing the progress I make when I fly for an hour or so every day.