I just picked up a Blade 400 RTF today and am having issues fresh out of the box.

First off, a question. What servo is circled in this picture?



My heli is having issues with this servo. The first time I hooked the lipo up, the swash was sitting tilted backwards. The servo horn was not 90° to the body of the servo. F / B cyclic was very limited. I unplugged the lipo and went through the settings on the TX and everything seemed to be ok. I plugged the lipo back in and it straightened itself out. I did some small hops in my living room to check trims and set it down quickly from about 6" and moved the heli to the center of the room and tried to lift off again and the swash was jacked backwards again. The servo was not centered once again. I picked up the heli and heard the servo move and it was back centered once again. I did a couple more hops and it got jacked once again. I picked the heli up again and it would not center. I unplugged the lipo and plugged it back in and the servo centered once again.

Any ideas whats going on with this thing?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

That’s the elevator servo. It looks as close to 90% as you will get with the stock servo. You can fine trim it in the sub trim section of the transmitter. I would also rebind the receiver/transmitter just for the helli of it. Than may or may not correct the problem and it wouldn’t hurt anyway

I have diagnosed it down to a bad TX.

Mods, please delete.

Check your DX6i for this : This was a just put out not long ago by Horizon.


http://publications.horizonhobby.com...com&x=bead1e5a


http://ns.horizonhobby.com/nscontent...ceBulletin.pdf

It is not exactly the issue they are referring to. The movement of the indicator on the "monitor" screen is smooth and reacts to the movements of the stick. For some reason, the TX limits all the movements to a small range off to one side of the servo travel.

Hey 9sec,

Man, does this problem sound familiar! Had the exact same failure on my B400, on it's 3rd battery pack out of the box...went to fly it, and noticed that something didn't sound right, and then noticed that the rotor disc (the name for spinnnig rotor blades) was tilted way back.

On closer inspection, the swashplate was tilted back...and I had just gotten done with the 2nd battery pack with no issues....so something had happened to that servo (same as yours, the elevator servo), it was just whacked out, and acting in a very similar manner.

Not knowing any better at the time, I simply took the servo horn off, and put it back on in order to level the swash again. It flew OK after that, but after consulting the forums here, I realized what many do, that the stock servos on the B400 are VERY PROBLEMATIC, even right out of the box...(just look at all the threads/info on replacing B400 servos)

The issue seems to be the internal potentiometer, the part of the servo that sends feedback to the receiver, so it knows the position of the servo...when it fails, the servo loses it's centering position, but the motor, etc will still work.

You have to replace that servo. My best advice is to replace it with some decent metal gear servos from Hitec or JR, which both seem to be doing well. I went with JR DS 285 MG servos, and have not looked back since...I have not had a servo issue since, and that includes a couple of very hard crashes...

Sure, the servos set me back $160, but it was the single best improvment I made.

In the meantime, if you want, you could get a stock replacement, and try that, AT YOUR OWN RISK, but there have been reports of centering loss in mid flight, which could get ugly!

I don't know if you bought it brand new? Horizon has excellent warranty service, and you may want to go that route as well if you go the stock servo route...

Good luck with it, hope this helped!

Glenn

I replaced mine right out of the box with hitech 65's never had a problem. If you replace one you should do them all. If you change just one you will have different torque and transit times on the swashplate.

I bought a B400 on the 02/13/09 and had basicly the same problem, could not even get it off the ground. Swashplate was tilted to the back. With the cyclic stick full forward the forward servo never moved. I replaced the servo first with no joy, then bound a different DX6i transmitter to the aircraft and it worked fine. HobbytownUSA then replaced the whole unit. Flew the replacement last night, it's great.

DRBo
Blade 400, AXE CP, Blade CX2

Just got the B400 saturday that servo was bad when we plugged in the battery.

Probably not the servo. Check the monitor screen on your DX6i for model 2 and see if the indicators are centered and if they duplicate your stick movements.

didnt you just have a problem with the radio last week
wasnt something with the tail servo not centering????

im wondering how many problems your going to ask answer for before you send the radio back
if seen you ask these question`s here and on helifreak

i believe you said you have been in contacted with horizon hobby on these issues

Who are you referring to?