Powering the Warp

[kineticheli]

Well after finally getting the Warp tuned to my liking, it went in this morning. The motor shut down and lost cyclic control. I am pretty sure I browned out. I will test this over the next couple of days and see if I can get it to do it on the bench. I am using a CC 10a bec with RJX servos, VX1e with one satellite. My question is, could I have browned out with this setup? and if so what can I do to fix it?

I have a couple of ideas.

I have a S9650 tail servo, so I have the bec set a 6 volts. I was thinking if i upped it to 7 or 8 volts and get a step down for the tail servo. 7 or 8 volts would give more head room before i reached low voltage.

Buy a new higher amp rated bec. This would be the easiest, but space is tight on the Warp, so mounting is difficult.

Let me know what you guys do to power your Warps.

[simplechamp]

I don't think upping the BEC voltage is the right way to go. If the BEC browned out trying to hold 6V it likely won't be able to do 7-8V any better, and more likely will be worse. At the higher voltage the servos will be working the BEC even harder and increase the likelihood of browning out.

How many flights did you have before this? Was this flight any more aggressive? Usually if the power source is insufficient it will show up pretty quick, not like 10 good flights then all of a sudden brown out. I would think 5A/10A constant/burst BEC would be enough, but sometimes even properly sized regulators can have voltage sag. It only take a few milliseconds for some of these things to occur. I usually add a capacitor to a spare port on the FBL, just a little extra insurance to help deal with the very short duration spikes.

Other thing besides brown out that comes to mind is loss of radio signal and going into failsafe. I'm not familiar with the VX1e but if it can accept 2 sats I'd suggest using 2.

[kineticheli]

I would think 5A/10A constant/burst BEC would be enough

The Castle bec is rated for this, but like you said, it only takes a millisecond for the brownout to occur.

I usually add a capacitor to a spare port on the FBL, just a little extra insurance to help deal with the very short duration spikes.

I will add the capacitor to my parts order.

Other thing besides brown out that comes to mind is loss of radio signal and going into failsafe. I'm not familiar with the VX1e but if it can accept 2 sats I'd suggest using 2.

It can use 2 sats. Is the a way to tell if I had a brownout or a signal loss? Spectrum is still new to me.

It went in at about 20 feet up and maybe 40 feet out in front of me.

[simplechamp]

I know my Vbar has a log that records things like high vibes, brownouts, and loss of radio signal. Again I'm not familiar with the VX1e so not sure if it has a similar feature.

For the Spektrum sats the orange LED should always be lit solid (except during binding of course). If you land or crash the heli and the LED is blinking this indicates a brownout during flight. The problem is if you brownout and crash usually you are in such a hurry to unplug the battery and flustered from the crash that checking the LED is often overlooked.

As far as placing the sats you don't want the antennas hidden behind the CF frames. This can make placement kind of a challenge on smaller helis but usually you can figure something out. If running dual sats you want the antennas to be in different orientations offset by 90deg in either axis. If you could see a graphic of how the antennas "sees" it looks like a cone extending out from the antenna. Offsetting the antennas helps to give better coverage when the heli is in different orientations.

[kineticheli]

I got a some time to pull the Warp apart and assess the damage. When I went to unplug the motor bullets, one of the male bullets stayed in the female bullet. So, I think the motor had shut and I mistook the non responsive cyclic as lack of head speed. I will still make sure that the bec is up to the task. Thanks for all your help.

[Inverted2112]

Just as a note, DSMX sats don't do this, only the DSM2 sats will blink in these situations..

Originally Posted by simplechamp

....
For the Spektrum sats the orange LED should always be lit solid (except during binding of course). If you land or crash the heli and the LED is blinking this indicates a brownout during flight. The problem is if you brownout and crash usually you are in such a hurry to unplug the battery and flustered from the crash that checking the LED is often overlooked.
.....

[Ah Clem]

The Castle 10 Amp BEC puts out 5 amps with 6S.

I used one on my Warp with no problem before upgrading to the WR Hercules Super Mine BEC G2. I run JR 285's, which are pretty conservative from a current standpoint.

If you can either get the specs on your servos or test them under load with an ammeter, you can determine if they are drawing more current than the BEC is rated for.

It sounds like the bullet connector issue was probably the cause of your difficulty, though.

[Scream]

Using ds92a+ on the cyclics and I was having brownouts on the bench so I added a $15 20A yep BEC. Doesn't go below 6.1 even if you forget to remove the swash leveler and try to test max pitch

The yep bec is small enough to sneak in under the radio tray.

[weelee]

I think I may have had a brownout yesterday
During an inverted hurricane, rolled out, but it continued to roll when I stopped giving input.
Servos were all fine before and after the crash.
Just after a rebuild as well. Boom, Blades, Tail and Main hubs bent.
DSMX sat so LED was still lit when I picked it up.

My batteries are getting tired. I can here the motor struggling now in moves it didn't before.
Do you think this could have been a possible cause?

[Ah Clem]

"My batteries are getting tired. I can here the motor struggling now in moves it didn't before.
Do you think this could have been a possible cause?"

Probably not.

Your BEC (if external) should work at well below the threshold where the motor would go into LVC. It is more likely that the BEC did not have sufficient current capacity to handle the servos (a byproduct of some of the newer servos which provide spectacular performance, but at a price).

[weelee]

The servos are the same that I have been running for two years without issue.

I have had some other issues lately.
Servos not initialising, DSMX sat loosing bind.
Its been flawless up until this week.

YEP45 using internal BEC
Ikon

[Luigi_tuga]

It's the cold, my friend

Sorry to hear about your crash

Could be some wornout wire/conector.
My YEP is happily feeding the MKS hunger for 2000 flights already, and before spinning on the WARP it had already large hundreds of flights doing the same in the 360 SPORT.