Markocaster

As I piece together my tiger 1 I have a decision to make. I just got a spektrum-dx6 radio & br6000 receiver and have asiatam recoil HL turret rotation and a DBS battle system all to use. So as I don't want to use the HL stuff which board would you recommend? A local guy has a ELmod pro he may sell me or I was looking at the Clark boards on immortal hobbies site. Any thought and recommendations would be much appreciated. Cheers Mark

Strato50

Both boards are popular and run well. I know Clarks will run the equipment you have just fine, I enjoy mine.

Hope some of the ElMod guys chip in, my experience there is limited

cleong

For the users of Clark TK22 boards, how reliable are they? What's your setup like?

Our guys in Singapore have had fairly poor luck with them, and I was wondering if it is heat-related or that we are pushing it over its limits with upgraded motors that draw more current.

Darryl Usher

I have both, they work fine except, nether has enough volume. The Clark is a bit smaller.
Don't know about heat, about 90 f is are max.
Darryl

Strato50

I run 7 Clark tanks, in 2 years I've "broken" one in a heavy KV-2 (right-side track would not reverse, but drove forward fine and everything else functioned fine) and I've also had 1 fail to emit cannon fire brand new. Both were replaced.

Club members have had good running with a few duds in the mix as well. I've had good support from Clark while others have had to wait.

Clarks take about 5 minutes to install into a HL-based tank and are small.

I recommend them & really enjoy driving them.

YHR

You asked so


Both my Clark's quit working, but I have been reluctant to say anything, as I haven't heard much about the failures, and I push RX18s, and didn't want to come across as sour grapes so I haven't said anything

I do know no one is too shy to comment on the much maligned RX18 though

YHR

The DBC is the odd man out in this list of equipment? If you switch to Clark or El Mod then the DBC is redundant. Not sure what DBC this is, but if it is a 2 it can be upgraded to a 3 and allow you to add a Benedini if sound is what you are looking for.

MAUS45

So did your Clark boards fail completely? Did you let Clark know about the failures?

YHR

First one was an IR issue that was repaired and returned to me second one was a power FET issue. When the second one failed I emailed Clark and he said send it back for repair, but I just put it aside, as I have my own agenda with respect to tank control, and didn't really need this board. Again I never posted anything as I push RX18s

All electronics are prone to failure, and I am not out to slag the Clark board. For less then a $100 it is quite a value. I also had an IBU 2 go up in smoke, and that was much more money. I just find it weird how when a $25 RX18 goes up in smoke they are called Junk, and when $100 boards do, no one says anything.

No board is bullet proof is what people should take away from this. If the faulty ones are being replaced and the consumer is happy then you really can't ask for more. A lot of Clark boards have been sold, and not much has been said on the reliability of the board. I was assuming I got a couple of early ones and perhaps was just unlucky, and I will leave it at that. I have always been straight up with this RCU forum , and try not to let any bias creep in. I like to act as a hobbyist first. If I didn't have a vested interest in this I would have posted a question like this myself, as I have been really curious to how the Clarks have been standing up and how they have done in IR battling. No one seems to say much either way?

cleong

I hesitated to post secondhand information, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of Clark boards within the Singapore clubs have been fairly problem free. A brief run-down of problems I've personally seen:

- Power cable short-outs, resulting in sparks and smoke;
- Blown drive FET to the track on one side;
- Blown turret rotation drive to one side.

We typically fight outdoors in the sun with ambient temps of 90+ degrees and 90+ relative humidity. The tanks run on grass, maneuver often and aggressively. Some tanks run aftermarket motors for various functions in order to bring them up to historical performance values.

I am unsure if the thin gauge wires used contribute to these problems, or the small connector pins that are used. To be fair, the flash capacitors on Tamiya MFUs are prone to failure, and they don't take kindly to being given reversed polarity (poof). When I get a Clark board I intend to swap out to larger gauge copper cables to hopefully forestall potential problems. Probably more cooling is necessary - one only needs to look at the number of FETs the Tamiya DMDs have in comparison to guess that the Clark ones are probably working harder.

Our local Clark distributor has been doing well in returning these Clark units for repair, but the next step Clark needs to look at is improving the robustness and reliability of the product now the general function and performance is up to market expectations. By sweeping the problem under the carpet, the end-users' feedback don't get to help shape future Clark products.

As I said earlier, I look forward to owning a Clark board so I can begin to learn the characteristics and limitations of the product.

Strato50

Cleong those do seem to be the most common issues although I've never seen or heard about a turret drive going. I have seen elevation only work one way though.


I think right now what sets Clark apart is the pretty good support & the right price... I'm pretty happy.

Green Amphibian

The only problems that I have experienced with the Clark boards have been an elevation problem where the barrel just waved up and down, and a power lead pin burnout. The elevation problem was resolved by Clark and the power lead problem is in for repair as we speak. Other than that, I am happy with them.

Herman

CountChocula

I'll be battling a TK35 here come the fall when DAKs season starts back up. Since my power demands are quite less (small FA130 motors) and servos, I'm hoping it works out ok. Can't beat the size of this board let alone the price.

Dave

Markocaster

Thanks for the replies. I ordered a Clark tk22 from immortal
hobby.

cleong

One of the odder problems that we encountered with a Clark-equipped tank was the sudden occurrence of enhanced IR sensitivity to hits. The Heng Long Leopard was taking hits beyond the 10 foot radius no matter what the orientation of the battle unit was. Here's what we tried:

- Swapped between three different Tamiya battle units and the result was the same
- Placed two other tanks in between it and the firing tank and it was still taking hits where the other two tanks were not

The only thing we could imagine was that the tank was running a 2S LiPo pack which might have been over-driving the IR circuitry to become extra sensitive. It was frustrating for the owner and we could not figure out what else could have been causing the problem. We however did not swap to regular 7.2 volt batteries to check it again.

Strato50

The battery being tied to IR sensitivity is interesting... you must explore that :P

I generally stick to nice big stable 5000mAh NiMh packs... solid as a rock, easy to maintain and go all day long.

FreakyDude

being a biased guy here as I am selling the boards I go with clark. For one reason that falls into several categories.
Value
I mean if you look at the board against some competitor products it may not be the absolute best but If you do a comparison in each category that matters the Clark scores in the top 3 regardless of how its measured.
The problems people have are usually caused like everything else by people, I mean yes there are some issues at times with each different batch but hey that is manufacturing and everybody has issues regardless of what it is or the quality level it purports to have.
I myself have cooked a board or two and next to Clark himself i would bet I have run more boards than anybody.
But look at it this way, the product it scores 1, 2 or 3 in every measurable category with the best score being the most important category - Cost. You just can't beat value

Markocaster

Cool , I ordered one from you can't wait to get this tank running