Tail belt causing servo glitches

[jack_clarke]

Banging my head against the wall trying to figure the cause of the hiccups on my 450se. Servo glitches started after crashing and replacing the tail boom and tail shaft and main shaft and feathering shaft. Closer inspection revealed servos were randomly glitching every 10-20 seconds when rotors turning. 2.4 GHZ spread spectrum receiver and transmitter - doubtful it was outside interference - tapped and thumped and banged on the receiver - no sign of intermittency. Defective receiver? Antenna too close to motor? Motor noise? Tried rerouting motor and ESC leads – no help. New thought - belt going around and around inside metal tube - Van-de-Graaff generator effect? Disconnected belt and throttled up - hiccups were gone. The question still remaining - what was different? Why didn't it have hiccups before the crash? The new tail boom was a “generic brand” instead of the Align. Half price – both aluminum - looked identical. Generic brand fractionally less in diameter required 10 mm strips of masking tape on each side of the tube for tail boom housing to tighten down on. Was the tape acting like an isolator and letting the boom build up a static charge ? Or did it always have the hiccups and worsened over time and just never noticed it? Are drive belts sensitive to static electricity? Replaced the drive belt with one made of Kevlar and retested. Hiccups were gone. Same question remaining - why didn't it have hiccups before? In any case the new belt cured the hiccup problem. Re-did all the servo cabling to make it pretty again - retested - and passed with flying colors. Anyone else have similar problems?

[Slyster]

Are you using silicone spray on the belt?

[climbing-n-flying]

I have had problems with static from the belt, I just use Silicon Shock Fluid for RC car shocks. I just put a little in a zip-lock bag with the belt, after the belt is installed, I use a small paint brush to re-apply periodically every few flights.

[jack_clarke]

Haven't used before - don't even know where to buy it - but sounds like I better find out.
Thanks for the tip ..

[Slyster]

Just any auto or hardware store will have silicone spray lubricant. I bought the "Gunk" brand.

Oh.. and I spray it inot a cup first then use a small paint brush to apply as I spin the main blades.