Tweet
WARNING: SOLID G - Check your cables
I have had two incidents of late where my SOLIDG has resulted in lose of control of my heli.
The first one was a lucky escape, managed to notice something was wrong coming out of a loop and auto'ed in - heli started to piro as soon as it touched the ground.
This was eventually traced to the signal wire broken inside the heat shrink next to the servo plug on the gyro lead as it plugs in to the amp.
The second crash was yesterday; heli started to piro "wildly" in air, hit throttle hold but could only adjust the rate of fall as it was spinning so fast. When I brought the heli back to the pits, the tail was full over in one direction and moving the rudder didnt have any effect. A power down and up again and the rudder was operational.
My G-view operated with no problems.
Upon inspection I initially thought it was the tail servo, but noticed that the gyro heading hold was not moving the servo when I rotated the heli.
I had checked over everything and eventually bit the bullet and opened up the gyro case.
Each wire has at least one break in the insulation; these were inside the entry to the gyro. I assumed that these were shorting each other out, but when I separated the wires and powered up there was still no gyro operation.
So I proceeded to look further, when I took the PCB out of the gyro shell I found the power disconnected from the PCB.
I have since re-soldered the cables back on the PCB and hot melt glued it back in the case. The outer insulation of the cable bundle now is firmly secured in the case. I think if this had been like that from manufacture, i.e. using the outer insulation as part of the cable strain relief I wouldn’t have had this problem!
Please guys, check you gyro cable so you can avoid a similar incident, it is easy to miss in a normal pre-flight as the first break was under the heat shrink.
I hope this saves someone a few quid in crash damage!
The first one was a lucky escape, managed to notice something was wrong coming out of a loop and auto'ed in - heli started to piro as soon as it touched the ground.
This was eventually traced to the signal wire broken inside the heat shrink next to the servo plug on the gyro lead as it plugs in to the amp.
The second crash was yesterday; heli started to piro "wildly" in air, hit throttle hold but could only adjust the rate of fall as it was spinning so fast. When I brought the heli back to the pits, the tail was full over in one direction and moving the rudder didnt have any effect. A power down and up again and the rudder was operational.
My G-view operated with no problems.
Upon inspection I initially thought it was the tail servo, but noticed that the gyro heading hold was not moving the servo when I rotated the heli.
I had checked over everything and eventually bit the bullet and opened up the gyro case.
Each wire has at least one break in the insulation; these were inside the entry to the gyro. I assumed that these were shorting each other out, but when I separated the wires and powered up there was still no gyro operation.
So I proceeded to look further, when I took the PCB out of the gyro shell I found the power disconnected from the PCB.
I have since re-soldered the cables back on the PCB and hot melt glued it back in the case. The outer insulation of the cable bundle now is firmly secured in the case. I think if this had been like that from manufacture, i.e. using the outer insulation as part of the cable strain relief I wouldn’t have had this problem!
Please guys, check you gyro cable so you can avoid a similar incident, it is easy to miss in a normal pre-flight as the first break was under the heat shrink.
I hope this saves someone a few quid in crash damage!
Comment