This saturday I was about to make the first flight of the day on the F-15I and when I checked the commands while taxiing for takeoff I found something strange .. while the elevator throw seemed fine, the aleiron movements looked like 1/3 of the usual travel!

Ok, I aborted the flight, shut off the engine, and checked for the dual rates, atv´s, mixes looking for something that could made this happening.. nothing was found, and after doing this the elevons travel returned to normal! of course I packed everything and didn´t flew that day (it was a spectacular sunny saturday here.. a real pity).

Later at home, as the problem was happening in a elevon setup, I discarded a problem in the airplane.. so I disassembled the radio (a Futaba 9C) and found this killer detail: The yellow wire (signal) from the aleiron stick potentiometer was almost broken!!! (sorry for the cell phone crappy pic, but you can see a spot in the wire, as the broken part). This broken wire was messing up the voltage reading from the potentiometer, and almost cost me a plane.. fortunately I was lucky again and didn´t crashed the F-15. A interesting thing is that this radio is not old at all (bought it in 2005) and it was not heavily used.

So, I have a suggestion for everyone reading this:

1) Check the flying surfaces carefully before every flight. (not just moving them.. watch very carefully if something didn´t look right)

2) Check for the TX potentiometer wires if you have a Futaba radio bought earlier than this or about this same year.. of course, sending the radio for a checkup could be a
good idea. I also suppose that this applies for any brand...



Hope that this may help someone,
Enrique