I seem to remember a while back that some people were having trouble with the Hitec digitals when hooke up with a "Y" harness or maybe some extensions? I tried to find the thread again, but I guess it's burried.

Anyway, are the Hitecs still having problems or are they fixed? I would love to order some of these for my next project, but I'm worried about them because I will be using both extensions and "Y" harnesses in this model.

Thanks for any info you can offer!

Rob

There never was a problem. You just can't use a miracle Y that reverses one servo. A regular Y will work just fine. If you need to reverse a servo you have to use the Hitec programmer.

CAP232CM,

Not open that can of wroms again.. but I believe many people including myself would disagree.

roboracing,

Best advice I can give is 1 buy them from a place that will allow you to return them. 2 test them thoroughly on the ground to determine their use in your specific application. 3 then draw your own conclusions. 4 Tell us what you found out.

Reason why I suggest this is that many people "experienced" problems but to my knowledge a cause and resolution was never officially announced

Thanks guys - Sounds like it's still up in the air as to whether there's a problem or not. I would rather not find out first hand, I may look into other alternatives.

Thanks,
Rob

Rob, I've been using Hitec digitals in all of my planes for two years now and have yet to have a single problem. I've also used both standard Y connectors and the servo reversing miracle Y without any problem at all. At this point, I would not use any other servo. I like them that well....RS

The Hitec digitals that were programmed before May 2002 were not compatible with the futaba recievers when the atv in the transmitter was set beyond 120%. If the travel was set between 120 and 140% in the transmitter is when problems occured.

Other than that and what CAP232CM said you will be fine. They will eventually wear out just like all servos but thats just something we all have to live with. I have their digitals on a Extra that have over 300 flights on them and don't even have play in them.

It wasn't just that because mine failed with 100% ATV and the new programming... if you want my opinion stay away from the 5600 series. If your gonna use Hitec digitals get the 5900 series, they have a coreless motor and not that 3 pole crap.

You might be on to something with the 5600's

I can't speak for the 5600's from experience. All I have used are the 5925 and 5945 and haven't had problems.

This sounds a little more hopefull! The 5925's are what I'm considering because of the coreless motor. Has there been any bad reports on the 5900 series of servos? Has this servo ever had problems with 'Y' harnesses?

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your input!

Rob

As far as I know no, everyone is going to loose servo now and then no matter what brand. Just do a lot of ground testing and you should be fine. I actually have two of the 5945's on my rudder of the Edge with a Y and they still work with 51 flights.

I think this thread is about to get bombarded with Hitec haters. Suprisingly no one has said anything yet I won't hate hitec until they take a dump on me. Hopefully they won't.

I am using either JR or Futaba servos on my 39% though so I can use a matchbox or whatever futabas is called. I think the matchbox is one of the main reasons why no one uses hitec on large aircrafts. That and sponsership.

So you can't use a matchbox with the Hitec's? Interesting.... I'm not going to need a matchbox on this particular plane, but will need them on the 40%. I expect servo failure eventually no matter what brand, but I really don't want to dump a plane because of known, avoidable problems, like the "Y" harness issues that some have had. I can't remember seeing any of the JR's or Futaba's servo's suffering from the same problems. Seems like the Hitec's might or might not work. At this moment, it seems to be too costly of a gamble just to save a few bucks.

If I decide against the Hitec's, then I will go with the JR 8411's. They seems to have a huge following. (and price)

Thanks again folks, I'm still reasearching!

Rob

The Hitec digital servos are programmable, a huge advantage over using a match box on all surfaces with ganged servos. Each servo can be perfectly matched to the other; you can set the end point, the center point, deadband, speed and direction for every servo in every airplane you will ever own. The Hitec servos and the programmer are about the same price you would pay for just the servos alone from the other guys. Compare this to possibly needing 5 matchboxes per airplane. That's $300 more per plane even if the servos were the same cost, which they are not.

There are no problems with y-harnesses with Hitec digital servos. The couple problems we saw were from inferior y-harnesses that would not allow enough current through them. Use a heavy duty 22g Y and you will have no problems.

With the matchbox though you don't have to set the endpoints which is nasty with the hitec programmer and what i like best about the matchbox is that you can plug a battery into it and that powers the servos the matchbox is using. That way each servo is still getting 6 volts instead of having 6-8 servos all coming out of a reciever. You don't have as much drain on your reciever battery that wat too. Or if you use a Lith Ion battery and have a 6 v regulator with multiple outputs you can have a more redundant system (each battery goes to both recievers and a matchbox).

Nasty? I haven't heard that before. The best thing to do is set them on the bench outside of the plane first but many are matching them inside the plane too.

If you are conserned about powering the servos directly there are many ways to do it. A $7 y-harness will do the same thing. Another good solution is an Isolator like this one. http://www.i4cproducts.com/the_isolator.htm

If you want to use a matchbox there is nothing that would prevent you from using them with the Hitec servos. At $25 less per servo you would have the extra money to buy them if you want.

80-90 bucks for a box that just reroutes wires.. <gag>

It doesn't just reroute wires. It individually trims out each servo if you have 3 or 4 digital servos ganged together on a rudder or other control serface.

you don't get one just to add power to a servo The y will work fine for that or you can just cut the power wires off the servo and run that to a battery.

Are you sure about that? It doesn't mention any feature accept power issolation anywhere on the site at all.

you guys are talking about 2 different things. The matchbox. The I4C isolator.

Peter

That'll do it =)

I was having a "freeze"problem with a hitec 5945 digital, and after contacting Hitec, they told me not to use voltage regulator with these servos. After removing the voltage regulator the servos wooks fine. I was running on 6.0 volt NiM 2000mah battery, using 24" and 36" extentions, but anywy the problem also happened even conecting the servo directly to the receiver.

Some of the thing they explained me was:

"Remove the voltage regulator and the problem should go away. The regulators don’t allow enough amperage for digital servos, which is why the servo is acting this way. Try this and let me know. You will not hurt anything by running the battery with out a regulator"

Also:
"The only explanation I can give on this is that electricity follows the path of least resistance. There fore because of the manufacturing tolerances in the electrical components used in the circuit boards could cause this problem that you have seen. i.e. this particular circuit probably has a slightly higher resistance in its components than the other servos."

And:
"The servo stopped for 2 reasons. The first reason being that there is insuffient voltage / amperage for all the servos to operate. Even if you pulled the questionable servo from your setup and continued to test the rest you would probably start to see the same result that one servo will stop. The regulators just don’t allow enough voltage and amperage to pass through them. We have tested this.
The other reason is the slight difference in the components. Voltage will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance. This could come down to something as simple as a wiring lead that has a few less strands of wire than the other. This combined with the first problem of not having an adequate power supply can cause one servo to operate intermittently as you described in you setup.
As long as the power supply to the servos is good, the servo will not stop unless for some reason you burn out the motor or amplifier. This is the same for every manufacturers servo."

Well, my final "ask & answer"with them was:

1. Does this mean that no Hitec digital servo should be use with voltage regulator? Hitec recommends not using any type of voltage regulator with our digital servos.

2. Why the instruction does not said anything about it? There is some information about this on our website in the FAQ section. We are currently working on a more thorough instruction manual for the digitals.

3. What other thing should I be aware off that the instruction is not mentioning?? This is very delicate... The biggest things are to make sure you have an adequate power supply and heavy-duty extensions.

4. Is this happening to all digital servos in other brands? This does also happen to the other brand servos.

5. Any other particular recommendation like the type of extensions, length, filters, etc, etc? Heavy-duty extensions. If you are using an extension that is 24 inches or longer use a boosted extension.

Know, to be honest I don't feel quiet confidence to use these servos. I was surprise with the problem because of the voltage regulator (Cermark by the way) and I don't know what other suprises can have in the future....and during flying my big bird


I now is kind of late to ask and guess you guys probablyh has discuss all this issue in the pass, but I'll really apreciate that anyone told me something good about this situation.

They are now recomending me to use a boosted extention. Should I really spend more money on this?

Thanks,

Miguel.-

The info from Hitec about voltage regulators makes a lot of sense. What you may not realize is that all solid state voltage regulators have a current limit so that only a maximum amount of current (amps) can be pulled through the regulator. This is to protect the regulator, of course, but it's how it limits current that causes problems with the digital servos. It limits current by reducing the voltage on the output side. Once the voltage drops below the minimum operating voltage for the servo (somewhere around 2.5 to 3 volts - someone may know) the servo simply stops working. High initial current draw, typical for digitals, would make for intermittent operation as the voltage regulator goes into current limit, then goes back to normal operation as the load diminishes.

HTH

Voltage regulators can be chained together in parallel to increase their current rating capacity and this is regular practice.

Horizon (aka JR) tells me that the JR matchbox will work with HiTec digitals. Does anyone have direct knowledge that this is not the case?

A member of our club has the 5945's in his Radiocraft 40% extra and is using match boxes on the aileron servos. No problems after lots of flights. I had problems with 5625's and they are enroute to Hitec as I type.

I have the Hitech 5645s and after I center them, they are always two to three degrees off from where I had them centered. Is this the servos or the programmer?
Also, I just installed an electrodynamics power buss isolator and it changed all control surface throws by half an inch. Can anyone comment on this. Thanks.