Hey CG
He is at the hospital today, hoping to have some more pins taken out of his arm. It has been a long haul for him. Got about 4 flights on the gasser. Sure looks good in the air.
egg basted soft, dark rye toast, 2 strips not crisp bacon, hickory cured and of course chock-full-of-nuts coffee.
Been to the field with the sea plane, lots of fun.
I even switched my tx batteries to 2500 mAh on all of them.

Sorry to hear about your son in law. Which gaser did you get. I have one as well (my first). How do you have your Kill switch setup? I have the SPE 26 in a Giant scale PT 19.

They have reduced the re-boot time but I don't know of any threshold lowering. Brownout isn't a real problem unless you are inverted, diving, flying level or taxi-ing. Can't really think of a good time to lose control of my plane unless maybe when it's in the trunk of my car.[:@] Futaba has a much lower threshold. Their servos get sluggish before losing lock.

Hey Billd76
I have the RCGF 26 in my 1/4 clipped wing cub. Flys great. Son-in-law was involved in a roll over accident in his big truck. Left arm went out the window and was sliding along the pavement.. Ground off the elbow. 6 months ago.
You will llike the gas engine, starts easy, no mess, runs forever on a 16oz tank.
woops!!!! forgot the kill switch. I have the choke on a servo and I kill it that way.

I lost a plane to the Spektrum brown out last year......I was flying low when it happened, not enough time to recover. Worst part is, the battery seemed fine.....even after the crash. Had a momentary drop in voltage while flying the plane pretty hard?

I found one of these for $5 at my LHS. Called a "Voltage Protector", sounds like it might eliminate the brown out issues? I guess we'll see! (as soon as it quits raining).

That's NOT going to help. According to the JR/Spektrum rep (Danny Snyder) it's designed for small electric cars and the like (carpet racers). It's been the topic of many threads and simply can't store enough energy to be worth the price. It's designed to suppress the spiking caused by electric motors. It's NOT intended to prevent brownouts.
Your best bet is proper batteries for your project. I wouldn't even try a 4.8 pack. I'd get a 6v pack with good capacity (varies by project) or the new A123 batteries. And ALWAYS monitor your batteries and recharge before they get too low. 4.8 batteries get too low too soon, even bigger ones.

As I understand it, brown outs can be caused by to much temporary demand from servo's... So I've been told during my search for an answer, As I have experianced brown outs on freshly charged packs. That's what I'm told these "Capacitors" do, keep servo demand from dropping a packs voltage below the Spektrums "reboot" tolerance...

...I'm not talking about flying on dead packs.

Capacitors... the key part here is "capacity". They can store small charges (depending on their size) that are usually not voltage specific, for small surges in power such as in small power supplies. They most likely will not have enough capcity for the purpose you are wanting to use them for. They absorb small spikes caused by electric motors or can keep current flowing when there is a momentary (read momentary) changes, increases, in load requirements. A capacitor large enough to help out would be pretty large in comparison to a battery pack.

Best bet.. higher capacity battery pack or a six volt pack.

Hey Gene.. glad to hear he's doing better. Nice gasser, indeed!!! I've not move up that far yet. Still at the 1.20 / 1.60 two stroke OS stage.

CGr.

Exactly! It is indeed meant to deal with "momentary" voltage drops due to electric motor usage (servo's). I do indeed hope it works, I didn't just pick that thing up at Radio Shack, it's a Spektrum branded part sold to deal with this very problem. AT least that is what my LHS is telling me.....

I have had issues with brown outs all last summer, only one resulted in a lost plane...to low / not enough air-speed to recover. I pulled the 4.8v 1100 mah pack out and had 3 more flights with it in my Eagle 2 on 72mhz.

I agree 6v packs are the way to go when you can, but I have way to many perfectly good 4.8v packs that are comfortable inside .40 - .60 size planes to just throw them away. I do hope it helps, because if it doesn't I'm going to dump all my Spektrum equipment and get that cool looking Aurora 9 / Hitec recievers!

I'm not even sure how that Spektrum capacitor works exactly...is it constantly storing and releasing power? Perhaps it's just enough to level out those voltage fluctuations due to servo load? Either way way we will find out! It's mounted and ready to go.....as soon as the field dries out a bit!

Actually..............after reading more about it.....I think your right.

"Spektrum's new Voltage Protector prevents a DSMâ„¢ receiver's voltage from dropping below the proper operating level in lower voltage applications such as 4-cell 1/12 carpet racers. Installation is as simple as plugging it into an open channel slot on the receiver unit."

Apparently my LHS is full of



I think perhaps I will not dump any more money into Spektrum, I've not heard of any other manufacturer having these wide-spread brown out issues...or have I missed something? I replaced most of my 72 mhz receivers with Spektrum because it was easy to convert my Futaba 8UAP to 2.4 ........

<font size="3">In the case of the Spektrum DX7 and the DS821 servos, going to a 6 volt battery will also provide a higher torque.  I believe it's 72 Oz torque at 4.8 and 88 oz torque at 6 volt.  So if your airplane requires a higher torque, you really should be using a 6 volt battery anyway.  Just make sure to get a higher capacity as well so as not to shorten your flight time.   My latest project requires 80 oz torque so guess what voltage battery I'm going to use.  4.8 is what the manufacturers provide because it works for most applications but ...</font>

You know what, Skylane? Ford stopped building the Edsel many years ago but no one talks about not buying fords because of that. Spektrum radio systems work just fine. I have two: DX7 and DX6i. And several of their receivers. Not one of the planes I fly with these receivers have suffered a so-called "brown out" and I've owned the DX7 since they first came out. The AR7000 receiver that came with the aircraft is installed in my Venus II and I fly that plane on a regular basis.

A prudent flyer will take measures to prevent any sort of problems from happening. Basically, if you suspect or even feel that you MAY have a problem, what's the sense in tempting fate? If you already have the radio system, then take the proper steps to avoid that possibility. SWITCH TO 6 VOLT PACKS!!!! Problem fixed. Gone, No problem.

What cracks me up is when someone knows that there may be a problem and just lets things go saying that it probably won't happen to me. Murphy speaks.. if it can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune time, during a landing or while doing a low altitude inverted pass, or some such thing.

Spektrum fixed the problem. Move on or move to Futaba or Airtronics, or Hitec, or whatever. They NEVER have problems.
CGr.

I'm with CG. I have had my DX-7 for some time now. I have never had a brown out problem. I fly it all the time, both outdoors and indoors. I do have a 6v system in all of my planes. I also have a 2500 mAh battery in all of my transmitters. Futaba, airtronics and DX-7.

Mornin, Irish. Yeah, I'll just stick with what I have and fly with it (them.. both the DX7 and DX6i) I just don't understand the logic of going back to old issues that have manufacturer fixed problems and making decisions not to support a particular product.

All of the posts about so-called brown-outs for Spektrum systems go back several years now. Why bring up issues that have not popped up in the recent past (recent being several years now). Just doesn't make sense. Then to base a decision not to support a system based on a problem that happened years ago... well, I guess I make my point here.

Anyway, breakfast is going to be fast this AM. Nothing special, just some oatmeal, a banana, and a cup of Dunky-Do decaf..

Later.

CGr.

I'm not bad mouthing JR/Spektrum (too much anyway). I simply said the capacitor had a different usage. Carpet racers won't fall out of the sky during a brownout either. Get appropriate batteries and monitor them is what I said.

I know you wern't, Bruce.

CGr.

Actually ALL my Specktrum 2.4 equipment has been purchased within the last year (New). I HAVE experianced these "fabled" brown-outs as have many others apparently with-in the last flying season 2009. I have experianced this with AR7000's, and AR500's.

I think perhaps you assume to much. My decisions to not support a system is based on my experience with a system. It's personal preference (I think it's funny you assume everyone has been using these for years). I'm fairly new to 2.4 and now I'm finding Spektrum has rendered 4.8v batteries obsolete? I have to run 6v "monster" mah packs in every plane I own? Why stop there? I hear it's much safer to run 11v lipos with a 6v regulator in every plane!

Perhaps instead of throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of perfectly good 4.8v packs.....then spending hundreds more on 6v just so I can reach your level of "oh my god I'm awesomeness!" I think I might prefer to spend that money on silly things like....planes! And products that work better for me!

Enjoy your breakfast, ask for the humble pie...I hear it's good for you...

Oops! sorry - Double post....

I noticed the 4.8v brownout on planes I had just finished putting together, particularly when purposely restraining the control surface movement ( to check for servo draw ). The current draw of the servos drops the voltage, causing the problem...

I switched to 6v batteries and the problem is gone.

I don't understand why the anger over this fix though?

People are always opting for "unobtainium" servos, 2.4gHz ( when 72mHz still works fine! ), higher nitro content than they need, etc. why is this different?

Also: If you're spending "hundreds" on 6v packs, you may want to look at much cheaper alternatives...


If your 4.8v packs work fine, then use them in applications where you can employ them, or wire two together in parallel ( all it takes is a "Y" cable ) to prevent voltage drop and you're done.

Instead of behaving like an ingrate you could listen to some of the advice offered by those wiser than you. Instead of "throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of perfectly good 4.8v packs' you would prefer to spend hundreds of dollars on a new radio system. Not too bright IMO. I personally am not a Spektrum fan but for different reasons. Did they blow it on the reset voltage? Without a doubt. But there is a practical cure. New type or bigger batteries or maybe even rebuild the packs you have into 5 cells. Many options that don't include developing an attitude. Most here don't REALLY care how much you spend or what you crash but were willing to offer good advice. Take it or not - your choice. I'm signing off this thread before I get mean in my replies.

It does all make one wonder. Ah the good ole days, when all one had to worry about was a frequency tag! I guess we can thank Henry Ford and Bill Gates (IBM) for giving us so much the talk and argue about. Aint life grand!! IMHO I'm certain that will crash, regardless of what Tx and Rx I'm using, and the majority of time it will happen because of pilot error, even if the Rx,Tx and batteries were to blame. I for one sometimes go weary of the issues, and sometimes the complexity of issues such as these. When I flew FM, I must say, set-up and flying seemed much simpler. I think the more we get used to 2.4 it will eventually become just as second nature as FM. Anyway just some IMHO's

WOW SKYLANE 182Where is all that coming from. You don't have to agree, but you don't have to be nasty either. Buy what you want and fly what you buy. Problem solved.

Advice dipped in arrogance and sprinkled with insults is hard to absorb. "Yes sir! may I have another?" But thanks for stopping by with your wisdom...

This is something I hadn't thought of, very good idea. And you'll notice opjoses' post wasn't dripping with arrogance or insults... Thank you!

Seriously? Did you read any of CG's responses? Did I just take them wrong? Are they not rife with arrogance, innuendo and clever insults? If I did indeed miss read his posts - I apologize..

Remember that if you do wire up two packs like this, you will need to separately charge them.

One added advantage is that they effectively behave like higher capacity packs.

So if you start out with a 900mAh pack, then wire two of them together ( make sure they are of identical capacity ), you end up with an effective 1800mAh pack, that can sustain higher servo draw to boot, without the voltage drop that affects Spektrum RX's.

I just finished taking out all of my NiMH and NiCD packs out of my planes, running them through several automatic discharge, recharge, top-off cycles, then checking their capacities. I write the results on the packs, so I can track performance degradation over time.

I can then select which tested packs are more similiar in capacity for pairing.

-

BTW: I'm glad I caught all of this on the ground... I didn't quite understand what was happening at first when I installed my first AR7000's.

It would have been nice to have had a more vocal "heads up" from JR/Spektrum. IMHO, as it is the warnings have been played down too much for PR purposes...