My 14MZHP died?!!!!! :( -- RESURRECTED! ... and dead again!

[RCfan]

Went flying yesterday and had a great time. Came home planning to go out again today, I charged all batteries and prepared everything last night. Last thing I did was verify that the radio and helis were talking to each other (which they were), so I go to sleep.

Got up today (great morning in Florida), packed everything in my truck and headed for the nearest field. Started prepping things for my first flight and when I go turn on the 14MZ I noticed the power switch was on. I don't recall whether I switched the radio off or not last night (must be getting old ), but I was worried I had left it on with the Tx enabled. The antenna was plugged in, but not extended (although you get the first part out on the 14MZ).

I turn off the radio, wait a few seconds and try powering it on ... no juice. Take my backup battery and swap it out. Turn the power on, screen lights up blue, the Futaba logo starts doing its disco dance and during the yellow flashing (which happens just before it's useable) ... nothing! The logo keeps flashing yellow and the Futaba intro banner doesn't get displayed (screen simply remained blue). Waited a few seconds and when nothing happened turned the switch off. Waited a few more seconds and the radio wouldn't shut off. Tried the reset switch in back, nada! Removed the battery.

At this point I'm worried about the module, but I recall seeing that module problems would cause the Futaba logo to flash red. Anyway, pack everything up and head back home. Unfortunately I didn't take my backup 14MZ since everything was fine the night before. Get home and the first thing I try is to see if the radio works with the backup radio's module ... NOPE! I check the "dead" radio's module on my backup radio and it worked just great. So the Tx module is okay.

Guess radio will be taking a trip to Futaba this week; will try calling them tomorrow morning to see if they know of anything that could be causing this. Anyone else experience this problem with their 14MZ?

[WayneBrown]

something to be said about windows maybe??
I would consider taking the battery out for awhile.. 5 minutes and slap a charged one back in. Perhaps the bane of older windows OS's has reared it's head in the CE variant and needs to reboot from a dead cold state.
Do you know if there is a lithium backup battery in the tx? If so, maybe remove it as well, then restart. You'll lose your programming most likely.

[RCfan]

I've tried leaving battery out for a while, still no joy. I'm starting to think it's a windows issue as well since the banner page never shows up. There is a battery in the Tx, but it's soldered in and I'll let Futaba deal with that one.

[RCfan]

Not being one that leaves broken things alone, I decided to get in and see what I could find. Since the internal battery is soldered, I didn't want to mess around with it directly. Instead, I took a paperclip, shorted the internal battery connectors and powered the radio up ... VOILA, thing came up without a complaint; after putting it back together found none of the settings had been lost (incl. the name pin). Still going to call Futaba in the morning to see what may have caused this (will probably end-up sending it in anyway just in case). Bottom line is make sure the 14MZ is powered off and NEVER allowed drain its battery.

[WayneBrown]

shorting the onboard battery made it cold start huh? Might be good to pass around in the event it happens again to someone else.
Glad it fired back up.

[RCfan]

Learned that trick a long time ago when computers used to come without jumpers to reset BIOS and such. Longshot, I know, but I'm glad it worked. At least gave me a chance to backup my model files to CF. I'll post back what Futaba says in the morning.

[RCfan]

I should have known to wait ... It's dead again, this time the "workaround" didn't do anything so I decided to check the 3V battery voltage; it was at 2.85V. The real scary part is that when it "died", I was in the middle of checking the thing out with a heli ... I LOST COMPLETE control of the heli (thank god it was on the bench) and all the radio did was start flashing the Futaba logo in yellow and locked me out!!!! Glad it happened now and not while I was out flying.

So much for that I guess; I'll send in to Futaba for the opinion, but first thing I'm doing once the warranty period expires is add an onboard base to the battery so it can be changed.

[WayneBrown]

that's scary!
At least it didn't cost you a chopper!

[matthewoconnell]

yeah that was lucky.... A HA Windows... its probably a virus

[RCfan]

Called support and they've never heard of this happening (call lasted about 3 minutes, incl. hold), so this PM I'll ship out radio to the Futaba service center. Hope they come back with an answer.

[Phaedrus]

Did you try the reset button on the back near the battery?? Page 26 of the manual shows it and talks about screen freezes. Seems to be what happened to you. Trying that before opening the radio and shorting stuff out might have been interesting.

Not sure if it would have done anything, but it certainly could not have hurt.

[RCfan]

Tried the reset switch in back, nada!

That was the first thing I tried, as I wrote in my original post.

[RCfan]

Radio has been repaired. They replaced the main board and lit battery; I'm waiting for a response on what caused the lockout after main battery drain. Parts changed:
HSP79112 9M30A03502 14MZ MAIN PCB ASSY
HSP79064 AA0171 L BATTERY BR2023

[WayneBrown]

Mainboard doesn't sound too encouraging for a $2000 radio.
Maybe I'll wait until you 'beta testers' are finished with the testing before I lay out my cash..

[RCfan]

So far the radio has performed remarkably well! Had it not been for my stupidity of leaving it on with transmitter enabled, I problably would never have seen this problem.

[Russ McC]

Just so you know sense you first posted this problem I was flying at a friends and got home and found I left my 14 on, I turned it off and replaced the battery and turned it back on with no problems and have been flying it for the last week with no problems. I don’t thing this was your fault, you should be able to leave your TX on by accident without scrambling it. I’m glad I seldom listen to those who say weight tell others test it first before you buy. I seldom weight and as a result am always flying the most cutting edge stuff and seldom regret it. The 14MZ compared to the 9Z is like the 601 to the 401, so much better I would hate to go back. My MZ like the majority has been perfect in every way, thanks to everyone involved!

[RCfan]

Hey Russ, was the transmitter enabled at the time? I think this was just a case of that, but don't understand why it would fail to boot at least the windows portion. I'm still waiting for an answer from the tech folks. All I know at this point is that they replaced the main board and on-board battery.

On the Display menu, how long did you set it before auto power off? What was the charge when you stopped using the radio? I had mine on 30 min. which probably didn't help. I've changed this now to 10 min on my backup radio. Wondering if this could have had something to do, although the battery was full in my case.

[Russ McC]

Hi RCfan,

Sorry I have been busy for a couple days. Yes the TX was transmitting, it had to be as I was not doing any setup, just flying, got done flying and loaded my stuff and went home. I bet I could have turned it off and then back on but I did not remember how my auto shut off was set, I only just now looked, it was set for 20 minutes. So I transmitted for 20 minutes with no antenna and caused no damage, and in my opinion it shouldn’t cause damage, I did however reduce it to 10 minutes. I also am using the case properly so I know it did not turn on by it’s self in the case, I had to have left it on, if you put the TX in the case facing toward the latches it will turn it’s self on, on the case divider, so don’t do that :glasses:

[RCfan]

Got the radio back, no info on what caused the boot problem. I'll try calling tomorrow.

Radio arrived with a new version of part of its software (Encoder v 1.13, from 1.09). Also found that the H/W Reverse button under System menu had changed to Hardware Setting. When you select it, it now opens a screen with two buttons, H/W Reverse (with identical settings as before) and a new Stick Setting for assigning gimbal response (1-32, default 4) and hysteresis (1-32, default 1) values. Haven't played with them yet.

[Tomas Ahl]

Originally Posted by LameBird

Mainboard doesn't sound too encouraging for a $2000 radio.

I really don't think you can draw much conclusions from the fact that they swapped the whole mainboard. I think they will do this as soon as they realize that the problem at hand isn't something well know and easy to fix, doing the board swap to get the unit back to the owner as quickly as possible. Then they can diagnose the swapped out board as time allows without pressure.

But I agree, I also find it discouraging that equipment in this price range exhibits these kind of issues at all.