shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Hi guys

I had a weird thing happen with my HV85 today. I use fixed endpoints on my setup. I also have my right slider on my tx mixed to throttle so that at the midpoint it will be at my low throttle setting. Today I was putting in my 6th flight of the day when I armed the pack. All seemed normal. However the throttle settings seemed to have jumped upward by about 25%. As soon as I turned off my throttle cut the thing jumped to quarter throttle! I had to drop the slider all the way down to get it to shut off. I unplugged and rearmed, same thing. It was fine up until now. Weird. Anyone seen their endpoints mysteriously offset like this????

burtona

My Feedback: (50)

I had the same thing happen last week. I have an HV85 in a Focus Sport I had not flown in several months. On the first flight the motor went to 25-30 % when I switched to idle mode. Had to go back and reset the thro to thro mix points to get it to idle. I didn't think much about it at the time since it was the first flight and it didn't change the rest of the day. Now I wonder why as I don't remember changing the TX program for the airplane.
Dave

woodie

Is there a way on your HV85 to go into the ESC and see if the end points actually changed/reset in the ESC?

Woodie
Team Acme LG

burtona

My Feedback: (50)

I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

This evening I will hook it up via castle link to see what it reads. I'll repeat the arming experiment first. I'll also check my passport with my other hv85 (brand new) to see if it is ok. I'll also measure the pulse width going to the ESC to see if my TX didn't somehow change.

I've never had this issue before. I took this esc out of my passport in order to save some time in getting my Visa airborne. It has a couple hundred flights on it with the same setup on TX.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

OK
I first checked my passport which has the same setup. Neu F3A and HV85. It worked fine. Then I tried my Visa with the suspect HV85. It did the same thing as yesterday. The low endpoint was shifted. I should clarify that I mean it was as if the low throttle trim was advanced to about quarter throttle. I reprogrammed it with the latest castle firmware and went through their manual endpoint setting procedure. I also did the same thing on my other HV85. They both indicated high throttle by beeping at the same point and also indicated low throttle and armed at the same point. However my suspect HV85 still had the biased low throttle offset. As soon as I advanced throttle it jumped up to about 25% power. So I installed my good one and I guess I'll contact Castle. Very strange.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

I swapped the Esc's. All was well then my brand new hv85 wouldn't arm any longer. I tried several things and finally just went home. I put the bad one back in and it armed, but did the same as before. My new one seems dead. So I will ship both of them to Castle. It's disappointing. My new one had less than 10 flights on it before it crapped out. I put my old Jeti Opto 90 in. I hope it will last until my third HV85 Arrives from Tower. Of course, I've got a contest next weekend....

I double checked temps on the ESC after each flight prior to it dying. I was getting low to mid 120's with ambient air around 95. That should be fine.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Tonight I installed my new HV85. All seems well. While doing that I realized that I never uploaded the settings on the ESC that mysteriously changed the throttle endpoints. So, after my new one was all set up I went ahead and connected the original one via Castle Link. Much to my surprise it turns out that the one which shifted the throttle endpoints had actually reset itself to factory defaults! Yep, everything was set to default settings. Auto endpoint setting is the default. That explains it. That also explains why it didn't respond properly when I tried to set manual endpoints. I uploaded my standard config file to it and it worked fine.

So, how, exactly did this thing reset itself? I have a very strict ritual I go through when I turn on and arm the ESC. There is no way that I went through the stick motions to reset the settings manually. I had hundreds of flights on that thing without ever reprogramming it. Maybe the arming "spark" is causing a random problem every now and then?

I hope that if anyone notices this kind of thing then they should check the settings first.

I will send my second one back in for repair. Funny, when I compared it to my brand new one I noticed that the heat sink wasn't really covering the output FET's very well and there was no visible thermal conductive compound on the FET's.

Hopefully my saga is over. After all is said and done I'll have an extra HV85 that I will probably sell. I didn't need to buy a new one. I did notice that there was no LED flashing on my new one. I'll check it over......

Jason Arnold

Have you had a mobile phone near the controller?

Mobile phones are not permitted in the pits or on the flight line here in Australia. Mobiles can actually alter the programming in your transmitter i.e. reversing channels etc... I see no reason why ESC's wouldn't be prone to the same issues.

Cheers,
Jason.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

No, I always keep my phone in the car.

lectrictech

My Feedback: (2)

Would you please explain you experiences or whomever had a problem. I routinely leave my cell phone in my Xmtr case while at the field so it will not bother me while flying. In light of this info I will leave it in my truck from now on. I always check flight controls while taxing before takeoff but it may change something less noticeable. I have wondered if cell phones /cell towers could cause a problem. I have been offered a sod field to fly from by a local farmer 2 Mi from my house but there is a cell tower in the field behind it and I don't know what would happen when the plane is in the air and closer to the tower than the transmitter or at a higher location. A little late once your 2M plane goes out of control and I don't plan on being the test dummy for that. Could the cell tower over power the receiver as with AM or FM radio? I am reluctant to fly in areas that have cell/radio towers and or HV power lines near their location. What if someone walks up while your flying with a cell phone and it rings or they make a call? I know my cell phone drives my computer speakers nuts if its with in 20'. I can here interference on my speakers just before the phone rings. I'm sure some electronic guru on this site will have the answers good or bad. It is something to consider is it not?

Mastertech

My Feedback: (31)

We fly with a cell tower at the right end of our field, 6 years now and no problems. In fact I use it for the right side box marker.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

I doubt that this has anything to do with Cell towers or Cell phones. I think it may have more to do with the latest version of software. I previously thought that this unit had never been updated to the latest version 3.26, but now I'm not so sure about that. I may have updated it when I configured my other controller. It is at 3.26 now for sure since I uploaded the latest software into it after the problem occurred. Castle recommended rolling it back to version 3.2. I don't have that version any longer. So, if I get it from them I'll roll it back and move on.

lectrictech

My Feedback: (2)

I have a HV85 in my Intergral and a HV110 in my Impact but I need to connect to my computer to see which version I have in each. Other than the 110 failing on its Inital takeoff run (replaced by CC). and the 85 almost burning up sitting still (replaced by CC). I haven't had any recurring problems once the units survived the inital flight. Apparently there were some problems in a few runs of the product. Castle has been great to deal with. I did have a ticking sound at full throttle that was due to the data log portion but when I changed the sample rate it went away. Always more to learn than just the sequence.

Jason Arnold

Have a read of this document the MAAA created. http://www.maaa.asn.au/maaa/mop/poli...ept%202004.pdf

I have had servos mysteriously reverse for no apparent reason. I used to fly with a modeller that ignored this ruling and he is someone that should be leading by example.

Cheers,
Jason.

elan120

My Feedback: (1)

Steve,

Are you refer to the Castle Link firmware version or the ESC? The Castle link is now at version 3.26, but the firmware version for HV ESC is at 3.24, and the notes on their website has this information "Update: Added further protection against uncommanded settings erasure on Phoenix Ice series". Since you are using HV85 rather than the ICE series, this may not help anything. However, FWIW, I have been using firmware 3.20 on my HV85 since early this year without any issue.

Kevin

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Thanks Kevin,

I rolled mine back to v3.2 (I was using Castle Link v3.26 and esc firmware 3.24 beta (or it may have been 3.23, whatever the latest beta version available). However, it may have been too late for my brand new controller. I went out this evening to test fly the new controller setup and after 4 flights it fried. I put my old one back in (the one that reset the settings) and it worked fine.

I am a bit frustrated right now. I have lost two HV85's in the span of 3 days. If it is bad firmware (not sure how that could be) then Castle owes me 2 new controllers. It seems that the controllers blew up on arming. I had just flown and let things cool down. It was hot out, about 98F. I checked the temps after each flight and the highest temp that the heat sink on the ESC was 127F. That was immediately after one flight with a lot of verticals. The other flights were at 120-123F. Certainly not hot enough to be causing any damage. The motor was running fine as I taxied back in and shut it down. Upon arming for the next flight, I got no response from the ESC. That is exactly what happened to my second unit.

I brought it home, rechecked the settings, reprogrammed it, redownloaded settings and it was indeed dead.

As a precaution I rolled my only remaining HV85 back to v3.2. I hope it holds. I'm really trying to make it to the Miramar contest this weekend but I am not very confident that this thing will last.

I'm not a happy camper right now.

Steve

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Oh, and the reason that the LED doesn't work on the brand new one is because the LED is displaced. It looks like it was bent and broken by the heat shrink tubing they put over the controller. Either that or it wasn't placed on the PCB properly.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Well, my third HV85 died this evening. That's three in a week. This was the original one which reset to default settings a while back. I was flying this afternoon and noticed that the motor sounded a bit odd when I started it up for a flight. I can't describe it but it just sounded a bit different. I took off and made a few passes but it seemed down on power. I landed and thought "here we go again, maybe it changed settings". I hooked it up to castle link and read back the settings. All looked OK. I noticed that it still had v3.23 so I rolled it back to v3.2. I also uploaded settings again just in case.

I plugged the batts in and heard no beeps. Uh oh.. I tried to throttle up. Nothing. Dead.

It's starting to look like these are popping when I arm the ESC. I arm by first plugging in the pos wire then the neg. I've done that hundreds of times in the past. The only difference is that now I plug the esc directly to the batts. In the past I had another "jumper" inline with the neg wire for external arming.

I almost packed up and went home and blew off the drive to San Diego for the contest this weekend. But I had my Opto 90 and I dropped it in. All was well. I put in a couple flights, loaded the truck and drove to SD. I hope the trusty Opto 90 hangs in there

I have no idea what is going on with my HV85's. I've had great luck until now... I'll send all three in for service Monday.

bjr_93tz

Hi Jason, don't laugh at this but I had my Futaba 14MZ connected to the plane via the DSC cord when I fired up the 170cdi to perform some tuning in the shed at home. The CDI was and still is on a separate battery from the RX and servos, but when I turned around to grab the set I was looking at the model naming screen.[sm=confused.gif]

You don't get to that screen by accident, and it only ever did it once. Needless to say I double checked everything before taking the plane out to the field...

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

Castle has my two newer ESC's which failed. I'll let everyone know what they find

by the way, I asked their tech support "how hot is too hot?". I was just curious to see what max temps you should avoid. I measured mid 120'sF at the heat sink. They said to stay below 175F at the heatsink. So it really doesn't seem to be a temperature issue at all.

shannah

My Feedback: (5)

I received my replacement ESC's from Castle. They sent me two brand new units with "new stock" labels. That's great, and I'm happy their warranty service came through. However, they had no reply or explanation as to what happened or what exactly failed. I guess they probably just pitched the failed ones out and sent me new ones. It's pretty normal these days to do that with electronics.

I'm not sure what to do with these. I will probably put one in after the season is over and see how it goes. I will check and see what firmware version they loaded into them and I won't update them. It seems that all my issues started after I updated firmware on the three that failed.