Old Radio
I am helping someone get back into the hobby. Ten years ago they built a PT 20 and flew it once or twice. The plane has set intact for 10 years in a basement with absolutely no use. They gave me the plane to go over. The radio is a Futaba FP-T4L with a 4 channel FP-R4F receiver and 4 FP-s48 servos. I cleaned the engine,( OS MaX .25 ) and it started as soon as I hit it with the electric starter! I charged the batteries and to my surprise the radio did quite well in a range test. Everything works fine.
Here are my questions:
1. All plugs are the old G? plugs. The switch harness, where it plugs into the receiver has 3 wires, just like a servo. It has red black and gray. I was thinking that the third wire was just not used, and Futaba didn't want to bother with modifying the leads, but the battery has three wires coming from it too. Anybody know what is up with that? Don't all modern radios have two wires on the battery and switch harness?
2. The radio is AM. I am only partially familiar with the current regulations on that spectrum. I do not see any "gold stickers." We were planning on flying the plane a few times just to see if he was still interested in the hobby, or if it wasn't something that he wanted to do.[&o] If he does decide to go for it, I would definitely suggest a new radio, or a thorough checking and gold sticker approval of the current equipment from a qualified source. That way, he can join our club.
Also, I will be replacing all of the batteries in the system. I only used the originals because I did not have any compatible ones on hand. I do not think the old ones have a satisfactory capacity anymore, but they worked well for testing.
Thanks