an adventure through the 3D helicopter world.

Nightmare.  Total and utter.  Followers of the previous post will note that the Mini-Titan crashed recently whilst I was trying to learn inverted circuits.  I thought it would be a simple repair job and then I could get back into the skies for more fun and learning.  Far from it…

After putting it back together I went for a trim flight, 20 seconds after being airborne it lurched to the left and would not respond to stick input.  It therefore crashed into a wall fairly hard shattering the carbon blades and left me sweating.  Even though I had hit throttle hold it didn’t respond and thus did the “chicken dance” on the floor.   Worried me as it could of hit anyone.

Despite this I put it back together and tried again.  Didn’t do much just trimmed the heli and then left it for the night.  This evening I thought I should get to the bottom of it so I went up to the field and spooled her up.  After taking off I noticed lots of vibration on the tail so I was just monitoring it when it flipped inverted and hit the deck hard.  However when I got to the heli I noticed the receiver was flashing indicating a brown out.

Hmm.. this got me thinking so I put re-plugged the battery in an started wiggling the wires. Nothing happened and then suddenly it resets itself!  So I try again at the same point and nothing! I keep trying for a bit and then I touch around the front again and it resets itself.  For those that know the Mini-Titan then speed controller is at front and this all indicates a loose wire in the ESC (speed controller).

I have just spent the an hour or so in the cellar trying to create it again, by waggling everything but I can’t make it do it again.

Conclusion: We have to assume something in the electrics is causing a brown out and re-setting the on board electrics. It has to be said that this has been the heli I have had from the start and has so many crashes it’s hard to remember.  Maybe the ESC, Receiver, servos need replacing?  I had to replace the gyro and tail servo 3 months ago because they had started playing up. Either way the Mini-Titan is grounded until I can find the exact component.   My gut feeling in that I should get a new ESC (£40) and a new Rx (£65 for the 11ms frame rate) to be safe.  I mean after all the crashes I guess things wear out?  Problem is I want to practice my inverted stuff and the 450 size heli’s are the best for this.