mattcraven

Oh dear, after recieving/ setting up my new ABX i set about sending it of on its maiden flight. A couple of seconds (after straight and level flight) the aircraft power cut out and i lost the engine and all surface controls!!!!!.....causing it to spiral (albeit a few feet) into the ground. This caused minor damage but now i find it hard to even get things to behave as it should.
The elevators often judder or dont work, and/or i have no power. It takes continuous shuffling/moving of wires and then "hey presto" it works, till i try again.
Now even I, completely useless with electrical appliances, thinks that this sounds like a dodgy/loose conection, and also I am not sure if hobbyzone would care as they could easily wipe there hands clean and say "crash damage". Which i dont believe it was!
Anyhow, i cant work out how to remove everything safely (i.e. the whole circuit thingy) and "have a look", before possibily taking the circuit board to university (i do engineering), and having whatever needs soldering sorted out (if thats the case).
I would appreciate any help as i was looking forward to dog fighting with my friend dammit!!

stevennh

HobbyZone is very good about making things right. Give them a call and tell them what happend and I would bet they will send you a new one. I know they have replaced planes in pretty tough shape in the past.

Steve

Arznek

I've noticed the cheap connectors on the batteries sometimes get pushed back too far for the female end to make a good contact to the battery. I've had to push them back into the connector many times. That might be your "wire shuffling" problem.

Troglotech

Hello Mattcraven, sounds like you got my old one! Send it straight back to the supplier, they might ask you to send it Right back to Helgar Distribution (which is where they all come from in the UK). I've had two of them and they both did the same.....start of fine...about 100M out and all control is lost. I sent the first one back to Helgar with the 'V' tail torn in half and the main wing cut to ribbons...no problem they said and gave me another one. The second one worked for one batteries worth and then did the same...that went back with a 2!QUOT! hole in the main wing. I eventually decided I'd had enough of the Extreme and got them to exchange it for a Challenger....no problem, flies nicely and carries the video stuff etc. Here is the posts that describe the same problems as you are having:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Anot...2178697/tm.htm

I got mine from Wonderland Models, they have been brilliant and would heartily recommend them for HobbyZone products in the UK......Tim....

mattcraven

Cheers all for the help, its now on its way back to the suppliers...... now to see if the next one works!!!

SaulOhio

That happens to my ABX, but usually only at one particular park where I fly. I strongly suspect that it is caused by radio interference with a cell phone tower. Is your plane on channel 6?

SaulOhio

mattcraven

yeah it is! the supplier is sending me back a different channel, so hopefully it should work alright

mattcraven

woohoo, the replacement aircraft arrived, so far workin fine....just to see how it fly's!!!!!!!

Troglotech

It will be a while yet mattcraven...looking at the weather for the UK!.....Still they fly OK in wind...but not this strong......

Donkeywaffle

i just got a new ABX fuse after mutilating the original, and after about 10 min of flight (first flight for the new fuse) i landed it and the right flap (from rear view) just started to bend down while i could hear the servo turning for a long time. all of this happening while I'm not touching the remote.

Now when ever i tilt the stick on the remote down the right flap goes down and the left flap goes up (this should happen when i tilt the stick right, not down)
and if i put it in pro mode the make it fly normal i actually could rotate the remote 90 degrees cw and it could work OK.

i don't know what the crap happened but do any of you know?

also while trying to diagnose what is wrong, one of the servos randomly started to turn and turn and turn almost breaking the tail, then returning to normal.[sm=confused.gif]

SaulOhio

Check the control horn on the tail. Is it bent? I replaced the cheap control horns with some I got from a hobby shop and this doesn't happen anymore.

Saul

stevennh

I have had this ocurr with mine. It seems that the servo can get turned far enough that it thinks it is centered and it is not. To fix mine, I just powered off the plane and moved the servos to center again and then powered back up (I pulled the circuit board to center the servos). It has been fine ever since.

Steve

Donkeywaffle

but the weird thing is that the servo just started turning it turned like 900 degrees and then back again did yours do that?

TerryE

My Feedback: (12)

I have had the same problems with the servos (plus many moe [:'(]). Near as I can figure, it is a flaw in the actual servo board since soldering in other servos does not produce this behavior.

I finally e-mailed Hobbyzone, and, after a long conversation with customer "care"[:@] they said to send it back and they would TRY to fix it!

I am totally UNimpressed by the plane. It is too heavy, underpowered, fragile and a pain in the ***** to fly!

Ok, now that I got that off my chest I feel much better When I get the new fuse, I will do all the mods first, try it out and let y'all know how it does.

Heres hoping...

Troglotech

I reckon Stevennh is right on this one....the servo's have a 'start' position (technically an 'absolute') which is found when the plane is powered up after a new battery. Start too far away from the right place and it will find the 'home; position 360 degrees out (or more importantly, a near-busted tail out!). I also agree with TerryE (and it seems most people do on this forum), overweight, underpowered and horribly unreliable....I had two of them and managed one batteries worth of flying!

Donkeywaffle

stevennh, how many problems you you have with your abx? a saw your video of the 600mw system and it seems you fly the thing all the time, like how many flights until something goes wrong?(not counting crashes)

just curious to know if i have wasted my money with this thing.

Ercoupe N99879

Hi,
I had a similar problem, receiver quit functioning, and airplane drifted off in the wind, went out of sight in river and wooded area, lost airplane altogether, so without an airplane, guess I'm jost SOL.

Ercoupe N99879

By the way, this was my 3RD Aerobird Extreme, first one the joystick literally jammed on about the 4th flight, airplane crashed and was destoyed, hobby dealer replaced it free of charge. He himself is a very experinced RC flyer and couldn't repair jammed joystick, and couldn't get it to release, said he never saw anything like it.
Second airplane, quit responding at about 400 feet up, airplane dove into ground, airplane totally destroyed, dealer replaced it again, free of charge, third airplane , receiver quit in flight at about 500 feet, airplane simply flew away with power still on, climbing and drifting away with the wind, went OUT OF SIGHT , never saw it again!
So in my opinion and I have been flying RC for 27 years, Aerobird Extremme "ELECTRONICALLY is JUNK!!!!" good flying airplane if it had decent electronics in it.
Too bad such a nice airplane is CRAP!!!
My recommendation, is if you buy one, REPLACE the RECEIVER and SERVOS with good quality ones, then it will be a good airplane.
From factory it is JUNK!!!!

chuckconrad

After having 'bad luck' with electronics on the Challenger and Xtreme, I replaced them with 'real' radio and servos. I works great.

On the Challenger, I just cut holes on the side of the fuse, stuck the servos in, and ran the fishing line on the outisde of the boom. It was great to have the servos visible and this worked well.

On the Xtreme, I bought an empty fuse. I fashioned a peices of balsa wood in two layers to epoxy onto the peice of plastic that holds the HZ electronis and landing gear. Then I carved a place for two JR sub-micro servos. The servos are mounter side by side, control horn side facing up, and the two control horns facing away from each other. Also left a space on the balsa wood to mount a JR 700 RX using velcro. It's tricky to thread the antenna wire out the back, but doable. Then thread the fishing line in from the boom and tie it to the servos before lowering your pro gear into the fuse and mounting the plactic peice with the same screws from an original Xtreme. All this requires a tail mixers or a radio, like my JR 632 which accomodate mixing and servo reversing.

There are way too many weaknesses with the HZ electronics. First, 27 MHz is much more suseptable to interference than the standard RC frequency allotments (36 MHz here in Australia). Two, the servos are cheap and not that accurate. Third, the phyical weakness of the board is bound to lead to breakage around the screws that hold that board.

Oh, while your at it, replace the control horns on the tail with some good, strong Dubro horns.

Good Luck..

Chuck