evdreamer

Glenn,

Yeah the truck is a Toyota Tundra with 4 wheel drive.

Yeah my whole drivers side door is frozen. I was able to open my back door though.

Nick

evdreamer

I hope everyone is having a good holiday. My work's parking lot was horrible again. Two of my co-workers car's are stuck there. Then there had to be at least a 2 foot snow drift at the entrance.

rotarydoc

Nick,

All is good here, just got back from dinner...man, I'll bet you are glad you took your dad's truck into work, rather than your car, or you might be stuck with your co-workers...

I know where you are coming from on the snow drifts....when we had our "blizzard" here, when I opened my front door, the snow was 3 feet tall agaist the door....good thing it opens INWARD, or I'd have been snowed in, literally!

Hope you are having a nice Christmas, now that your work is out of the way....

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

I didn't get to spend much time with my family, but I had a good time while they were here.

Nick

rotarydoc

Nick,

Sorry you didn't get to spend too much time with your family, but at least it was quality time that you spent.

I am charging MSR batteries, I am thinking I may go up to the shop after work and fly it some.

Rob mentioned an indoor fun fly in Virginia coming up in Feb, so I might go to that. It's a pretty good haul just to fly in a gym, but I'd love to get to fly the Quark in there.

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

That sounds like a cool event and there wouldn't be any obstacles in the gym maybe besides a basketball hoop.

I just heard I got a 11.2in of snow and it is still snowing.

Nick

rotarydoc

Nick,

Sorry to hear that you are getting so much snow...unless you like it! Sounds like you'll need a snowmobile to get to work if it keeps up....lol..[X(]

I have a break in the weahter here, and possibly can do some flying tomorrow....today it's foggy, misty, and drizzling, but, the temps are in the low 50's, so everything is melting fast!!!

The field will be a muddy mess, but if I wear some boots or something tomorrow, I may be able to get some flights in, wind permitting. I went up to the field today, for a look, and if it hadn't been so foggy, and drizzle/light rain, it would have been very possible to fly, as there is zero wind...

I think I'm going to head up to the shop in a bit, I have to wait until after like 3:30, so I don't get stuck working on any cars...lol...[X(] I DO NOT want to have that happen, just the sight of the shop makes me not want to go there on my day off, but I'm desperate to fly something...lol!

Hope your weather doesn't get too bad...

Did ya get anything cool for Christmas???

Glenn

jroo

OK you guys have to help me with this. I'm loosing my mind.....

If you remember, I have been out of commistion for over a month. My Blade 400 Gyro went south, so I ordered an HK 401 B. After about a month, it showed up 2 days ago.

I installed it and hooked everything up.

I am experiencing the EXACT same problems I had with my default eflite gyro.

When I start to spin up, it spins out of control. This is happening at 'barely 1/4 stick'!
Its not off the ground or even close to off the ground. I had shot a video and am in the process of uploading to youtube.


Mind you, my heli was working perfectly before. Trimmed very good, would hover without hands. With NO CHANGES, I started experiencing strange behavior with the tail rudder. I was constantly fighting the tail. The next battery pack, I started to experience this behavior where the heli would do a 360 or 540 with NO INPUT from me. Eventually, the rear rudder would not respond to any input. If i just plug in the battery, it would just jitter back and forth constantly. I spoke with one of you on the phone and determined the gyro was bad.

I ordered a HK 401B
I installed it in the heli
Default settings.
EXACT same problem.
It SPINS around uncontrollably!

any help would be much appreciated. Youtube video to support this rambling is on the way.....

jroo

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIx78_bLWq0[/youtube]

evdreamer

Glenn,

Good to hear your weather is better today.

I can understand not wanting to be working today. This is my first Saturday off from work in awhile and I am enjoying it. My electronics for my glow starter came today. I finished the hardware part of it and I am working on the firmware. So I hope I can test it sometime later today.

I just got cash for Christmas, since my parents didn't know what to get me. However, with that and my savings I have enough to get an O-Scope, which I really need for my current electronic projects. I also ordered an electronic simulator, but I found out it is on backorder. It normally costs $1500, but I got it for $50 since I am a student. I hope you got some good gifts for Christmas too.


Nick

jroo

Got it.

I had to switch the direction setting from Normal to Reverse on the gyro!

This is directly from the Gyro instructions....

"If operation direction of gyro is designed wrong, danger of high-speed rotation will arise
while helicopter begins to fly. Please make sure gyro operation direction is correct again and
agaln."

Suppose I should have read them...

JPEE

Jreue,

Well done! The great part was watching your video. The first thing I looked for was the tail spinning in the right direction which is was. My next offering was to have you check the toggle on the gyro itself, but you got it. Remembe rin most cases you leave the "delay" setting down to zero. I tend to preset the gyro at like 120-140 then after that make all adjustments within your DX6i.

GOOD HOOVERING!

JPEE

evdreamer

Jreue,

Good thing you figured the problem out.

Guys,

I have my first working switching power supply!!!! I stepped my 12V lead acid battery down to 1.4V. It also doesn't do too bad at regulating it at that Voltage. Right now I am using a long piece of wire that has the same resistance as the glow plug, so I don't burn glow plugs in my experiments. I think I fried one of my transistors doing it, but I have plenty of them. Now I am getting really close to finishing my power panel.

Nick

JPEE

Hey Nick, did you get the O-Scope with a LCD or Plasma Screen? LMAO For real, "congratulations"! That will speed up your progress on projects and make things easier for you.
Really sorry to see the snow you guys have back there for you as well as Glenn. We watch TV and just can't hard believe what we see. I guess Glenn has it the best, if needed he can wear snow shoes and hoof it to work!

Bad news for me, one of my 6 cells is crapping out. They cost $257.00 and I am "not" replacing it! I will go to Hobby City for a clone. I will not throw it away but will fly shorter time lines with it, heres what happend. For the second time I set my timer for 5 min on the 600 for a standard flight. At 4 min+ and I was high up I heard the dreaded LVC. I came down without issue and whole. I checked the pack and it came in at 3.9 per cell on average. So the pack has lost is holding or charged amps I guess because as you can see I have the voltage.

My new motor came in for the 28 so soon I will put it and the new 60 amp ESC in there and see how she flies. Then the old T-28 motor will move over to my Balsa P-51 I got for free which I am sure you remember.

Glenn,
Make the 50 mile drive to the heli field when its safe to be on the road, wear tall boots and have some fun!

JPEE

evdreamer

JPEE,

I haven't ordered the O-Scope yet, but will on Monday. It has a LCD screen.

Is that one of your Air Thunder batteries. Is it still under warranty?

Have fun with the new motor.

Nick

jroo

Hola guys.

Got another video coming your way. I'm having an issue with my HS-65MG servo. When trying to set up the head, I'm using subtrim to center out the servo horn parallel with the servo case. Problem is, the servo does not respond to every increment/decrement of my subtrim. I may have to input 20-30 to get one notch of movement on the servo. When I get it all centered and ready to go, it does not keep this center as I move around the cyclic. The servo seems very 'jumpy'. Any ideas?

YouTube video on the way!

jroo

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g6hOtAB3wo[/youtube]

evdreamer

Jreue,

Have you tried hooking up another servo in that spot on the receiver and see if it does the same thing?

Guys,

I did some more adjustments on my Glow starter and everything is working like I want. I hooked it up to a glow plug and it lit up. My FET's still get pretty hot with heat sinks on, so I might have a timer to shut it off after a few seconds and turn it back on.

Nick

evdreamer

I got my engine started once with my glow starter. I think my controller is getting reset once I start my starter motor. The cold probably isn't helping either.

JPEE

Good Work Nick! I am glad it starting to come together for you.

+1 on telling Jreue to change slots on the RX, that will make a true est on both the radio and servo.


I went to fly today but is was so gray and overcast that it was hard to follow both my plane and 500 in the sky. I brought the plane in early and when I flew the 500 I did one flip and lost it. I worked hard, thumbs ah thumbing and brought it back before it hit the deck. With that near crash I packed up and left.
All of the guys were complaining about the sky too but kept flying in a limited fashion.

Also Nick, good idea, I might call Air Thunder and see what they say.

JPEE

rotarydoc

Nick,

Congrats on the glow starter progress, sounds like you are almost there, just a little more tweaking and you should have it down...

Cool on the Christmas money, that is what I got as well....that's cool that you are going to get an ocsilloscope soon, it will help out a bunch with your projects for sure.

We don't use them much in the auto industry, but sometimes they are a help in a problem situation, we have a "fake" one built into our diagnostic laptop PC, it's like a simulated O-scope, but it does the job, for the few times we use it.

I never did fly this weekend, the temps were good, but the wind was up in the 12-14 MPH range, not much fun to be had there...so I skipped it for now.

How is your weather doing now, did it stop snowing?

Did ya ever get your car door open??[X(]

Glenn

evdreamer

JPEE,

I have been trying to make my glow starter a little better. I first I found out my glow plug wasn't getting hot enough, so I increased the current. In the process I made some interesting things happen. I made two of my glow plugs make a nice pop as the filament broke apart. I also destroyed two of my controllers. I am working on making it regulate better now.

Good thing you recovered the 500.

Glenn,

Sorry you weren't able to fly.

Yeah the snow finally stopped.

Yeah my dad just let my car run for awhile and the door opened up.

Nick

Dankhead25

hey guys
how are all you guys doing hope you had a good holiday finally got some free time off of work getting to play again got the phenoix sim for xmas and was looking for some help in the right way to set up the dx6i to it i know a couple of you have it any help would be cool thanks in advance

jeremy

evdreamer

Jeremy,

I am doing good.

Guys,

I got my glow starter regulating better. I also added a few things after learning from trial and error. Right now the only thing I need to do is keep the temps down on the switching element by either a bigger heat sink or a fan. It gets up to a 140 degrees in seconds. I also got my O-Scope ordered. I am really excited to get that.

Nick

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

Good to see ya back Jeremy, hope you have been well...nice sim!

It should be easy to setup your DX6i with Phoenix, let me know how you are doing with it....

I have been OK, just not liking the sudden onset of winter too much, but OK otherwise...

Nick,

Sounds like you have the glow starter pretty much down now, just a few tweaks...

Cool on the new O-scope, what kind did you get....got a link?

Very little news here, really cold and really windy....40 MPH winds, with higher gusts...

Hope everyone is staying warm.

Glenn