GY401 and DX7

[Henry]

GY401 "On" LED
...on my gyro sometimes blinks when the system is initiated and sometimes it goes solid as it is supposed to for AVCS mode. This is happening with a DX7 and the AR7000 RX. The intermittent aspect of this really has me stumped. The 401 manual is not really clear on this blinking thing at least not to me.

Yes, I am cycling the TX on-off-on when the RX is turned off.

The manual mentions several times about the AVCS/Normal switch on the TX(?). Since I have my gyro on the Gear channel, does that mean the Gear switch on the TX is the switch I should be concerned with? Flipping it from 0 to 1 doesn't seem to make any changes. Do I need to do a dual rate thing to get into Normal Mode or AVCS or ABCD...what the hell? Sometimes it just seems things are bit overly complicated and there is certainly a lack of cross reference when it comes to one radio manufacturer to another.

I have been in this hobby for 41 years and doin' helis for 20 of those off and on. Never have had so much trouble finishing a model until I switched to Spectrum. I have yet to actually fly with it so I will hold back on any further, potentially negative comments.

Wish I had my 9Z back...

[phantom1500]

the flashing led indicates that the center trim of the servo channel has changed and the gyro dosen't reconise the new center. make sure the trim in the different flight modes are all the same for rudder. set the gyro up in rate mode if it's a larger heli......
have the gyro switch (gear) in hh mode (1) with a gain around 70 if using gyro sens mode on the dx7, have (0) lower than 49. with the gear switch in hh mode turn on tx and then rx, you should have a solid or flashing led, go into rate mode by flicking gear switch to 0 and led will go out. test hover heli untill you have a near solid tail in rate mode, if using trim to get tail holding..once you have a solid tail, land and check tail slider and tail blade pitch and remove all main trim and then mechanicly adjust tail to where the trim was and retest hover....repeat this untill you have a solid tail in rate mode with no main trim and some sub trim to get fine adjustment.

Then go to hh mode with gear switch and make sure the trim indicator is identical to rate mode for rudder, check your 3 flight mode rudder trims all stay the same and REBIND the rx to the tx. When you switch on always make sure tx is in hh mode first otherwise you dont get a solid led. Now there will be little to no tail drift when switching rate mode to hh and reverse.

the mechinical setup dosent matter on small electrics to my best experience but it made a massive difference on my nitro, the 401 went from being a royal pain to a joy to fly with, the manual didn't convey this part well for me.

[BarracudaHockey]

GY401 "On" LED
...on my gyro sometimes blinks when the system is initiated and sometimes it goes solid as it is supposed to for AVCS mode. This is happening with a DX7 and the AR7000 RX. The intermittent aspect of this really has me stumped. The 401 manual is not really clear on this blinking thing at least not to me.

Put your gyro switch in heading hold and rebind. The gyro is booting before the receiver.
Problem solved.

As for blinking there's 3 possible blinkings.

Fast flash (several flashes / sec) happens for a few seconds while the gyro is booting.
Slow single flash (about 1 / sec) is an error condition. It means the gyro was booted in rate mode and didn't initialize properly. This can be a radio setup issue, or the single wire is hooked up wrong.
Slow double flash (2 flash, pause, 2 flash, pause..) this means the gyro is getting a rudder input. It can also be caused by a trim input after the gyro has booted, or one flight mode having a different trim but in the end it means the gyro is getting an input on the rudder channel thats different that what it saw during boot up.

Steady light means AVCS (Angular Velocity Control System or heading hold) is properly booted.

Light off means its in rate mode.

[Henry]

BacarudaHockey:

Rebinding didn't do anything. The problem is still there. Again, I am puzzled by why this sometimes happens and sometimes all is well... I'm only using normal mode for the time being.

[Henry]

Phantom 1500:

First of all, thanks a for great, thorough response!

Originally Posted by phantom1500

the flashing led indicates that the center trim of the servo channel has changed and the gyro dosen't reconise the new center. make sure the trim in the different flight modes are all the same for rudder. set the gyro up in rate mode if it's a larger heli......
have the gyro switch (gear) in hh mode (1) with a gain around 70 if using gyro sens mode on the dx7, have (0) lower than 49. with the gear switch in hh mode turn on tx and then rx, you should have a solid or flashing led, go into rate mode by flicking gear switch to 0 and led will go out.

I think my radio is set up in reverse of yours which may be a "cross the pond" thing. The numbers 0 and 1 next to the gyro settings in the gyro sense screen, in my case 72 (next to 0) and 32 (next to 1), are reverse of yours which should not be a problem. We here like to make sure all of our switches are pushed away from us before initializing everything, hence the number difference, I guess. So when I am in HH mode the gear stick reads 0 not 1 and visa versa. Keep in mind that my gear switch makes no changes with the gyro so I am now wondering if there is a problem with my yellow sense wire on the gyro...and this whole problem is intermittent

test hover heli untill you have a near solid tail in rate mode, if using trim to get tail holding..once you have a solid tail, land and check tail slider and tail blade pitch and remove all main trim and then mechanicly adjust tail to where the trim was and retest hover....repeat this untill you have a solid tail in rate mode with no main trim and some sub trim to get fine adjustment.

Then go to hh mode with gear switch and make sure the trim indicator is identical to rate mode for rudder, check your 3 flight mode rudder trims all stay the same and REBIND the rx to the tx.

I have dual rates set up but have not used them since the heli has yet to make a maiden voyage and all trims are equal anyway.

When you switch on always make sure tx is in hh mode first

I do...

otherwise you dont get a solid led. Now there will be little to no tail drift when switching rate mode to hh and reverse.

Please remember that sometimes when the everything is switched on the gyro goes to AVCS and sometimes the LED slow blinks. This is am intermittent problem.

the mechinical setup dosent matter on small electrics to my best experience but it made a massive difference on my nitro, the 401 went from being a royal pain to a joy to fly with, the manual didn't convey this part well for me.

The heli is an SJM430V2 which is a 500 electric sized heli with 430mm main blades.

[phantom1500]

sounds like centre trim issuie as the gyro dosen't see the saved trim. I had mine doing this untill I had the gyro/heli setup mechanicaly so I didn't need to use the main digital trim, only a little sub trim.
It's now on my trex450 and the setup was very different. I got the tail servo arm 90 degrees with no main trim, only minor sub trim to get arm @90, then moved the servo on the boom to get the tail slider arm central on the tail shaft. Set the trim pot for servo throw on gyro and it works fine in HH mode but drifts in rate mode but I never fly the 450 in rate.
Only time it flashes now is when it see a rudder input from tx, when stick in recentred it will stay solid.

Not sure what else to suggest

Cheers
Darren

[traeside]

if someone said this sorry i did not read the whole thread but all of my 401s do that with my 6200 recivers. the reason seems to be that the reciver does not lock in as fast as the 401 so it does not see that the signal is telling it to be centered. if you power up like you normaly do then pwoer just the reciver down for a second and then power it back the light will be on solid on the 401.

[Henry]

I reset my model and started over. All is now well.

[cbflys]

When you bind, you need to make sure that the gyro sense channel is outputting a Heading Hold gain value (pulse width greater than 1.5 mSec). All DSM2 receivers (with the exception of the AR7100/R) output the channel values as they were at the time the receiver was bound to the transmitter until it syncs up with the TX (which may take longer than it takes the gyro to initialize).

By doing this, you can guarantee the gyro will receive a Heading Hold pulse width during initialization - even if it initializes faster than the TX/RX link up.

[arfwrecker]

This forum ended my hostility towards my jr radio. I was not getting a solid light on my 401. To accomplish this plug gain control wire into aux 2. turn off the auto in gyro sensitivity screen this will enable the rudder dual rate switch. Set your gain values low to around 35 for flight mode and hh mode about 71. Make sure your rudder manuel trim is in the center with no correction You should have it here mechanically before initializing the gyro. THen set your rudder dual rate switch in heading hold (HH) position and rebind your reciever. turn it back on after removing the bind switch and hopefully your light will go solid with no blinking. Thank all of the previous posters for helping me through this. The futaba instructions are very bad and also product support from horrizon was certainly no help knowing it is a rate gyro took me down the auto road which spun me for about 4 hrs. hope this helps a fellow rcer

arfwrecker. thank you cbfly

[arfwrecker]

cbflys post above was my road to recovery.

THANK YOU

[mgrande11]

Originally Posted by traeside

if someone said this sorry i did not read the whole thread but all of my 401s do that with my 6200 recivers. the reason seems to be that the reciver does not lock in as fast as the 401 so it does not see that the signal is telling it to be centered. if you power up like you normaly do then pwoer just the reciver down for a second and then power it back the light will be on solid on the 401.

This is exactly what I did to resolve this problem the only thing is my recievers LED blinks when I do that but I can deal with it.

[cbflys]

Originally Posted by mgrande11

This is exactly what I did to resolve this problem the only thing is my recievers LED blinks when I do that but I can deal with it.

OK - but you won't know if you had a brown-out, which if it happened is something you definately would want to know.

[traeside]

Originally Posted by cbflys

OK - but you won't know if you had a brown-out, which if it happened is something you definately would want to know.

ah this is true! let me see if i can power the transmitter down as well in the same time frame.