When I insert my starter wand into the adapter on my heli to turn the engine over, all the servos jitter a bit... is this normal? The jittering stops immediately one the engine starts and I remove the wand, and my antennae wire is NOT in contact with the heli frame anywhere (I ran it thru a piece of golden-rod by Sullivan until it get's back to the carbon fiber boom support).

It makes me uneasy when preparing to start-er-up, ya know? []

- Michael

If you are sticking a metal start wand into a metal start adapter with a PPM radio then metal to metal rubbing causing a little jitter isn't a big concern. It probably does it when you put your glow drive on or pull it off as well.

I don't fly nitro heli's, but I drive nitro monster trucks and that happens all the time when the batteries in the reciever are low. I don't have that problem at any other time. So, try replacing or recharging your batteries in you reciever and see if that works. Hope this helps.

Nope, my batts are all fully charged when this happens. Everything returns to normal as soon as the starter is removed though. I presume it's just extreme short range RF interference being generated by the starter electrics when it's in contact with the aluminum frame of the heli.

ps. There is a very small servo jitter that occurs for just a second when the glow plug igniter is attached to the glow plug, also.

- Michael

I used the little hand held battery starters for a long time then I got a Radio South Pro-Driver II (the big orange brick). Started using it a year and a half ago. Upon first usage, it would cause my servos to go wild but only when it was activated (applying current to the plug). I wrote Radio South about the issue and they said to switch to PCM.

After making the switch to PCM, never had the problem. Using the Pro-Driver III now and still no issues. PCM might be able to clean up some non-flight noise generators but if you have something generating noise during flight ... it's best to find the source and fix it as opposed to potentially masking the problem with PCM.

Good Luck,
d.tipton