Radio Show Blinking LED, Not Working?

[SyntaxError1986]

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Hello! I just signed up to this forum to ask this question. My father-in-law was gifted an RC helicopter and radio from one of his friends, and he asked me to see if I could figure out why it's not working. Unfortunately, I can't find ANY information out there, and from what I have been able to piece together, a lot of other people can't find anything on this particular manufacturer.

Anyways, the problem.

When I turn the radio on, all the LEDs light up, and the red LED on the left starts blinking. It doesn't control the helicopter at all. Pictures attached for reference and information.

I was able to gather this is an Esky Hobby ET204D radio, and it's transmitting on 27.145MHz. Batteries are brand new. Chopper is charging just fine.

I don't know much about RC things, I have a background in RF communications from HF through UHF, home electrical, and some miniature/micro-miniature electronics, but I have zero tools to really test anything. Any help at all is appreciated!

 

[wafflejock]

Basically if you can figure out what receiver is in the thing you can lookup the "binding procedure" for the given receiver and controller. Binding is notoriously a pain in the butt (the bad kind), as a general set of instructions you would hold a button on the receiver (on helicopter itself) while plugging in battery power this would get the receiver into "binding mode" then on the transmitter you would either use the menus/controls on a screen or hold a switch (usually trainer momentary toggle switch/button) while powering it on to get into binding mode, if both things the transmitter and receiver in binding mode then they should "find" each other and "pair" or "bind" so they are connected and the receiver is listening to signals sent by the transmitter at that point (have negotiated a connection protocol/band etc.). This is usually a one time process so long as the EEPROM/memory on the transmitter and the receiver doesn't get wiped out somehow.

Good news is if the Heli is worth "recovering" you can always put a new receiver in it and get a new transmitter/controller that you know will bind with it and should mostly be in good shape (finding out what protocol the receiver uses to transmit data to the flight control board in there would be only tricky thing about doing a swap... well and getting power to the new receiver but 99% of them use 5V and GND connection and one line for the signals to be passed down.