Long Range RC
Well-Known Member
On 04-02-2014 I had the strangest thing happen on a new build. This is a post of what Happened and how I fixed the issue. I built a new H4 Hornet V7 and at idle-up while on the ground the right rear and left front motors stayed completely off until the Hornet lifted off. The strangest thing of all is when it did something I never thought was possible. While hovering at 6 to 8 feet high I was checking it for stability and it was dialed in perfect but the rear motor on the right side shut completely off but it didn't fall from the sky. It stayed locked in position in perfect balance. Then the motor powered up slowly and the front left motor shut off completely. I watched the two motors battle for balance as the other two motors were pretty much carrying the whole weight of the Quad. I could plainly hear the other two motors working overtime. It slowly started to turn in place but it still stayed level and true as to was turning in place. I let it do this for about five minutes and then landed it.
I lifted off again after a quick restart of both the transmitter and quad. I put it in the air at the same height and waited about a minute and it did the same thing. Perfectly locked in and balanced but the same motors did the same thing. I was always under the thought that a quad would come crashing down when a motor shut off but in some very, very rare cases on a completely calm UN-windy day you could see this phenomena take place.
My fix: I took the quad inside and re-calibrated each ESC with my transmitter for throttle range. I then checked my Naza board for calibrations. I checked each motor to make sure that I hadn't accidentally set them to engage the brake setting. I turned my rudder gain up by 20 points as well.
I ran it outside and engaged the motor start-ups. All motors now idled up at the same time and my hover worked perfect and no more motor shutdowns were seen.
In closing I would say the fix was adjusting the ESC's to the throttle of my transmitter one by one. The second fix was the rudder gain adjustment. Sometimes we have to redo setup steps and no reason can be given as to why.
I have also read from website providing my ESC's that a firmware upgrade to the ESC itself can sometimes fix idol issues.
I lifted off again after a quick restart of both the transmitter and quad. I put it in the air at the same height and waited about a minute and it did the same thing. Perfectly locked in and balanced but the same motors did the same thing. I was always under the thought that a quad would come crashing down when a motor shut off but in some very, very rare cases on a completely calm UN-windy day you could see this phenomena take place.
My fix: I took the quad inside and re-calibrated each ESC with my transmitter for throttle range. I then checked my Naza board for calibrations. I checked each motor to make sure that I hadn't accidentally set them to engage the brake setting. I turned my rudder gain up by 20 points as well.
I ran it outside and engaged the motor start-ups. All motors now idled up at the same time and my hover worked perfect and no more motor shutdowns were seen.
In closing I would say the fix was adjusting the ESC's to the throttle of my transmitter one by one. The second fix was the rudder gain adjustment. Sometimes we have to redo setup steps and no reason can be given as to why.
I have also read from website providing my ESC's that a firmware upgrade to the ESC itself can sometimes fix idol issues.
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