newbie question about flight time

[silverarrowtip]

Dear all,

I have a storm 450 with a WFLY (WFT07H) transmitter. I kinda accidentally resetted my transmitter to its default settings. By research i was able to rebind it with my heli and followed most if not all of the instructional videos w/c i seen. And now i can hover it and fly to some degree. However, it seems that my flight time is kinda short... like 2-3 mins only... so my question is, is there something i miss? or my battery is defective? or my transmitter setup is still wrong?

Thanks...

Reo

[rhodesengr]

what size is your battery? The mAh rating. The flight time depends on the motor and the head speed. I can tell you that the Blade 450 3D gets about 6 minutes on the 2200mAh battery in normal mode but more like 5 minutes in Idle Up. The Blade 450X has a bigger motor and gets about 4 minutes. You can play with the pinion gear and drop a tooth or two which trades head speed (stability) for flight time. On my X2, I changed the 15T gear for a 13T gear and flight time went from 3.5 minutes to about 5 with 1100mAh batteries.

[silverarrowtip]

I have 2 batteries of 3S, 1st battery is 2700mAh with 30C and 2nd battery is 2600mAH with 20C. i have a motor of 3800 Kv but i dont know the headspeed. As for the gears its the original/ standard size of the storm 450 ( no idea what size, can i count the teeth of the gears ).
thanks

[rhodesengr]

those batteries sound a little big. Just stuffing a bigger battery into a heli does not necessarily give you longer flight time because they arte heavier. What brand? You could try some Turnigy 2200's and see what flight time you get. That is what im using.

[silverarrowtip]

KDS 2600mAH 20C and Storm 2700mAh 30C.

I have a next question. I'm experimenting with my transmitter last night (bec of flight time reason) and when I tried my heli today... my tail seems kinda wobbly... and then after 2 mins of flight... my servo (elev, pitch, aile) got crazy... lucky i was not in the air and i kinda notice that my ESC is rather hot (is this normal?)

Thanks again.

[wanderer56]

Originally Posted by silverarrowtip

KDS 2600mAH 20C and Storm 2700mAh 30C.

I have a next question. I'm experimenting with my transmitter last night (bec of flight time reason) and when I tried my heli today... my tail seems kinda wobbly... and then after 2 mins of flight... my servo (elev, pitch, aile) got crazy... lucky i was not in the air and i kinda notice that my ESC is rather hot (is this normal?)

Thanks again.

How old are your batteries? Did you possibly over-discharge them by flying too long? How were/are you timing you flights? The servo glitching could be from low voltage.

A hot esc is not normal. You may have had a lower Throttle Curve before you did the accidental reset. Lower HS would give you longer flight time.

Also, how is your pinion gear mesh. If it's too tight, that could put a bind on your motor and cause it and the esc to run hot and cause shorter flight times.

[silverarrowtip]

Thanks for all of your replies.

Unfortunately, i think my "storm 450" is gone. I mean this morning when i tried playing it after changing another battery all of my servo gone wild. They moved by them selves now... and my tail servo is not responding also. I think one or more of the electrical parts got busted. Every time i plug in the battery i can feel my ESC is heating up. is it possible if i change the ESC, it will run again?(trial and error, this will cost me an arm and a leg to fix it) do any other ppl have this similar experience?

The arm of my servo for elevator, pitch and aileron are erratic now. All three arms are moving on its own and my servo for the tail is not responding. I'm wandering now how can this be? what caused this error (so that i will not repeat it again)

so now the question is how to repair it. i'm open to any suggestions. i think should change my subject to "newbie, how to diagnose and repair a broken RC heli" hahahaha....

Many thanks again.

Reo

[rhodesengr]

a bad servo will cause the ESC to overheat. This happened to me during my X2 build. I had the servo arm in the wrong place and when the servo centered, the arm hit the frame. This blew out the servo and made the ESC get very hot.

You need to trouble shoot all the electronics from scratch. Disconnect everything from the ESC: motor and receiver cables. Disconnect all the servos from the receiver. Then attach the battery ro the ESC. It should stay cool. Get a cheap volt meter and check the BEC voltage. Next connect the receiver (with no servos connected) to the ESC and check again. Then connect the servos one at a time checking after each one. This way you can find which component is bad.

[silverarrowtip]

thanks for your reply.

I will try my best to check all of the electronic parts and give you feed back...

Thansk for your suggestion by the way.

Reo

[rhodesengr]

I understand when things are not working, it can seem overwhelming to work through a fix but there are only so many thins that can go wrong. Going back to your original post, you started with what appeared to be a TX problem. Since you are using a "not exactly name brand" TX/RX you might consider going more mainstream Spektrum/JR/Futaba with the TX/RX. You'll get better support both from the manufacturer/vendor and on forums because there are more people using these brands with experience. If the airframe is bascially ok and you liked the way it flew, a new RX/TX pair might be worth your time and money.

[wanderer56]

Another thing you might try is unplugging one servo at a time and power it up and see if it still has the same symptoms. If one servo is shorted, it could cause strange behavior.

[silverarrowtip]

Thank you rhodesengr and wanderer56 for your kind response.

I will take all of your suggestion and hopefully fix my heli at a reasonable cost.

Reo