RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

[8D]I have had this problem with all servo's. What I have found is, one or more servo's is giving one or more servo's a feed-back causing eratic behavior more pronounced with your antena in, and engine running. Also in flight the wings or rudder,elavator, throttle will tweak unexplained and only with digital radios I will add. I advise you to not fly with this problem!! My cure has been to single out the servo with the lowest (growl) and swap it out, put a long screwdriver to your ear (handle) and place on the servo case single it out and swap it.

Just my 2cents

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

I agree that this problem should not be considered stable enough to fly with. I wonder if the errant servo in your case could be found by simply unplugging servos one at a time until the symptoms stop, plugging it back in if they did not before unplugging the next?

I do not believe this to be the problem in my case as I have split these servos on different planes and they all still do it on a control surface. I may try one on the throttle for an experiment.

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

My Funtana was acting the EXACT same way. After reading this thread i was going to remove the ds811 servos ended up not doign that tho. After looking around a bit checking this and checking that i discovered i had a week receiver battery. It would charge fine and even act fine, The only way i found it was i hooked up a volt meter and left it on there for 5 minutes after charging fully. Guess what after 5 minutes it would fall off to 4.3 volts and the servos were goign crazy. Put a new 2000miah battery and the problim is solved. Now they work fine. Check it out might be your problim.

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

I just lost my CG Tiger 60 yesterday to these same issues . I was coming out of a hover and on the up line at just over 1/2 throttle the DS-811's started to to do thier "normal operation"
( quote for Horizon Tech) wild flutter. I pulled the throttle down and they still kept up the un****rollable fluttering. The right aileron servo decided to jam at full right deflaection wich in turn caused me to lose the airplane. I had previously sent these servo's back to Horizon for this same issue and was told they were repaired by Joe in Tech. When I called them today, Joe told me this was the first they have heard of any issues with these servo's. I explained to him what happened and he said it must have been something I did wrong. Well that is just pain B&**S^$& . I range checked these with motor on and off. I had no binding on any surface and my batteries checked full before and after the crash.
Now after reading several posts on these sub-standard sevo's I realize there has been an issue with these things all along, and they are not compatible with the reciever I bought from them.
I am left with a brand new $400 engine that is now packed full of dirt, and a bag full of covered toothpicks. I really think that JR and Horizon owe me somethig for this crap!!!!
They need to back thier product when it's bad the same as they do when it's good.................

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

I have talked to several people since I posted this. The chattering is obviously ok, but, if you are talking about shaking while just sitting still.. that meant for me that there was play in the gears somewhere. Not when flying, but, when just sitting still.. any time I got close to center the would shake the control surface. It looked like flutter on the ground really. I was flying one day and all of a sudden my right elevator on my ucd started fluttering wildly from about 25 degree deflection up to about the same down. I was like.. OK.. that is NOT ok. I sent all of the servos in and they replaced the gears on them... that was all that was wrong. Unless they fixed something else w/o telling me (the pots etc).. maybe even unintentionally fixed something by switching something else out too and not even giving it a second thought... Anyways.. it started with the rudder, then the elevator, then the ailerons started the shake. That is pretty much the order in which the most torque was being applied on my ucd .60. A ds811 was not enough for the rudder anyways.. I was pushing it with the elevator.. the ailerons said they were ok..but.. they needed strong servos too really.

After talking to a guy who has been flying for years.. he was like... oh yeah.. all servos do that when their gears start going out. Basically I think it comes down to these servos are not strong enough for my ucd and the customer service reps not fully communicating and making sure of the difference between servo "chatter" and this... I call it ground flutter or servo epilepsy. I can see where the customer service reps would get in a habbit of hearing, "My servos are making noise" all day and all the descriptions that come with that..where they would get confused over the phone. I know it is hard b/c I have tried to help people on computers in a help desk type scenario.. picking out the problems that are real and the ones that are not... They can sound the same and when 99% are not real problems.. you tend to get relaxed and just default to that. They need to learn the sound of this one though. It happens a lot and fast in these weaker digital servos.

People kept telling me to do things like make the hole bigger where the servo sits, make sure there is not slop in the linkage, back out the screws and don't overtighten.. none of which worked. As soon as I got the servos back with new gears stated as the fix on the invoice.. no problems even in my ucd for about 3 more flights.

I put the servos with new gears in them in my twist. I had about 10 flights in flying it a little too hard really and did not see any of this. I got a 36% katana.. so.. I am going to sell the twist and ys63s.. so.. I have not flown it any more, but, I suspect on that smaller plane.. these servos would have been fine.

Sorry about your plane.. I know it sucks!!

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

You were hovering the Carl Goldberg Tiger 60? That does not look like a plane that would be easy to hover.

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

IMHO the DS811 is crap. JR/Horizon customer service on this issue, the same. Neither gears nor battery are my problem with the DS811s. They are just a poor product for which there are too many units sold for JR/Horizon to address without loosing a lot of money. What really steams me is the attitude from JR/Horizon concerning this problem. It's like "If we ignore it, maybe it will just go away". After all of this I really can't believe that they have not been discontinued yet anyway.

Jstyme4, I feel for you man. Crashing sucks bigtime. When it is caused by a "known issue failure" and not pilot error in controling the plane, that is just wrong. One could argue that it is still pilot error for putting a plane in the air that acts erraticly on the ground but after all JR/Horizon are telling us to do so. If these DS811 servos were being used anywhere that the feds thought safety was an issue, we would see some action. because they are for a hobby, it seems like anything goes.

Put your DS811s on a nice oak base for an artistic paper weight. That is a far better use for them.

Bud

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

I agree.. I think both are crap too. I didn't intend that they were ok. Just that if you have waisted money on them.. there may be hope to get some kind of use out of them.

I think whatever they did was likely only a temp fix, but, would happen again very soon if put back in the same situation. I am curious if they would do ok on a smaller .40 sized plane, but, will probably never have the chance to test it. I plan on using the servos for throttle servos as I like the digital accuracy and the small amount of movement that you can get out of them (digital servos). I am shocked they can still claim that they don't know about this at jr. I have seen several posts where they said they talked to jr about it and I know I talked to at least 3 reps about it. The fed me full of the same crap too. Either they are fogetting, not paying attention, or not being truthful. None are good.

I personally think they should upgrade your servos to like 8411's. That would give you some decent servos, not cost them a ton b/c they get them at cost, and replace some of your lost money. Or course.. who am I to say.

RE: Digital servos chattering?
 

c016Y,

I have only had the DS811s on .40 size planes. They were ok on my .40 H9 CAP 232 because the leverage ratios and control surface sizes were more advantagous to the servo and there was some resistance to control surface movement in that aplication. As soon as I built my Flip 3D and CG Extreme 330, I had larger surfaces, was asking for more throw so less servo leverage advantage and had super free movement of the control surfaces. All of those conditions point to the need for a digital servo. The DS811s could not find and hold center with a road map and a funnel. "Servo Epilepsy" is the perfect term for what happens to them. I may consider the servos for throttle control but they are a bit slow for that in a 3D application. Maybe a nice Boat or Truck servo just to wear them out before mounting them on the oak plaque? Mine probably won't see the air again.

JR/Horizon really should acknowledge the problem and buy back the servos that are in applications where they don't work or someone is unhappy. If someone is happy with them, fine keep them. If I blew off just one of my customers the way I and others have been blown off by JR/Horizon over the DS811 issues, I would not be able to sleep well. My philosiphy for my business is, "If for any reason you aren't happy with anything, you get credit for something else or your money back, your choice". That covers not only what I make but what I sell by other manufactures as well. Maybe I am the exception in the hobby world but I wouldn't have it any other way.

You may loose a few bucks on the odd return but in the long run the money lost to customer satisfaction is an investment in repeat business. It has been proven to me time and time again. BTW, I don't buy JR stuff any more. A $200.00 investment in my customer satisfaction would have netted litterally thousands of dollars in repeat business. A 3 year warranty is worth nothing if the responsible party doesn't first acknowledge a problem exists and then take positive action to correct the situation.

Bud