Need help on first 2 motor plane

[SEEBO]

Update: Used my hobbywing programming card, tweaked a few settings, plugged everything back in, did a throttle calibration and shes fine.

Hey everyone I finally got my big brick batteries for my Twin Legacy. As I built the plane I bench tested and confirmed both motor rotation and general function. All was well so I installed everything in the wings and nacelles. Unfortunately she sat for a while why I weighed (pun?) my options for getting my CG correct, eventually settling on some big old 6000mah batteries instead of wheel weights. Well since I finished it up I decided to get it prepped for maiden and discovered only 1 motor spins while the other just beeps. I am skipping differential thrust for now so both my esc are on a y harness on channel 3. I'm running tx16s mk2 and elr8 receiver. Any ideas as to why only one motor spins? I realize there's many ways to test and pinpoint the problem but unfortunately I ran out of time last night and I'm currently at work scratching my head as to why it just beeps.

 

[tomlogan1]

Check and make sure all three wires are connected to the motor that is not running. Do this before connecting the battery.

 

[SEEBO]

Check and make sure all three wires are connected to the motor that is not running. Do this before connecting the battery.

I did check that. Unless there's a break in the wire that's not obvious I think I'm good. Ill do a continuity check this afternoon to be sure but i did pull the power pod out and check connections and they looked good.

 

[Piotrsko]

Try swapping esc / motors. Got to eliminate all the variables, first.

 

[SEEBO]

Try swapping esc / motors. Got to eliminate all the variables, first.

yeah luckily I have extras at home for my Twin Otter project so as soon as I'm home I'll be doing some further tests. Just seems odd that the esc and motors all checked fine on the bench and now one isn't working. Oh well I realize this thread is a little premature and dumb to ask when I haven't even done much testing myself, was hoping it was just some goofy setting I had to check or something.

 

[tomlogan1]

It's been proven that bench-tested ESCs, motors, servos and receivers can actually fail riding from home to the field and magically be restored by taking them home and testing again.

 

[SEEBO]

It's been proven that bench-tested ESCs, motors, servos and receivers can actually fail riding from home to the field and magically be restored by taking them home and testing again.

Haha well theres definitely some black magic afoot cause I just had it working on both my servo tester and with just channel 3 plugged in to the receiver. Unplugged it to reinstall the power pod and both are just rapidly beeping again...

 

[SEEBO]

Think I sorted it out. For whatever reason simple throttle calibration was not enough. I grabbed my hobbywing programming card and adjusted 1 or 2 settings and saved it. Reinstalled everything in the plane and shes spinning up mean now! Have connected and disconnected the battery 10 times now and she works every time. Never had a TX calibration issue before but theres a first time for everything. Thanks everyone!

 

[quorneng]

SEEBO
Rapid beeping is the ESC telling you it is not receiving any (or the correct) signal so from your description I would be rather cautious of that Y lead to the ESCs. It could be a poor connection at the soldered joint in the Y. The white (or yellow) signal wire only carries a few milliamps so it only needs a connection to touch to work but any flexing and it will stop working again. Unless you can demonstrate where the failure is there is no guarantee it is really fixed. The one thing you can be sure of is it will fail again and just at the wrong time!
The best advice apart from actually replacing that Y lead is to gently tug at all the connectors and joints, preferably with the motors running (no prop!) to see if a motor stops.

 

[SEEBO]

SEEBO
Rapid beeping is the ESC telling you it is not receiving any (or the correct) signal so from your description I would be rather cautious of that Y lead to the ESCs. It could be a poor connection at the soldered joint in the Y. The white (or yellow) signal wire only carries a few milliamps so it only needs a connection to touch to work but any flexing and it will stop working again. Unless you can demonstrate where the failure is there is no guarantee it is really fixed. The one thing you can be sure of is it will fail again and just at the wrong time!
The best advice apart from actually replacing that Y lead is to gently tug at all the connectors and joints, preferably with the motors running (no prop!) to see if a motor stops.

Thanks for the reply and I ultimately ditched the Y lead and am running off two separate channels. Initially I wasn't concerned with having differential thrust but considering I was having no luck with a simple Y lead I said screw it and she's ripping along now. Also learned how to program diff thrust so win-win. She just needs some new servos as I discovered my flap servos (which were salvaged from a wrecked plane) are kinda shot. As soon as I get some replacements she'll be airborne again.