JustDucky
New member
Last month my wife bought a Hookll PT-17 Stearman for my birthday. Absolutely beautiful bird. I had recently purchased a FT Aura 5 Lite and a Spektrum satellite receiver for a different project, but I decided to shove 'em into the Stearman instead. Things seemed to be going well with this setup and the flight stabilization was doing a good job of masking my relatively novice flight skills. Until today...
On my first flight of the day I noticed that the 6 axis stabilization mode was not working. I double checked my assigned switch and it was in the correct position. But, I figured I do need to advance my skills, so I continued the flight. After a few minutes, I brought her back down, opened the hatch, and began to investigate. Eventually decided to just reset the board and try again. Still no 6 axis mode. Again, I figured that I need to push myself and made the call to continue on with the second battery. Foolish, foolish me.
After completing my usual ground checks, I proceeded to take off. Things went wrong remarkably quick. I immediately noticed that my ailerons were almost completely gone and she was pulling left pretty bad. The ailerons had so little effect that I had to use rudder instead for my turns. "Okay, I can handle this. I have practiced on the simulator. I still have enough control to get her around and land" I thought to myself. Soon after it felt like the rudder was starting to lose control to one side. It was abundantly clear that I needed to get her back on the ground as quick as possible. She put up a fight, but I soon had her (roughly) lined up with the runway. I made the worst approach I have ever seen. Then, while still about 6 to 8 feet up, she tip stalled. There was nothing I could do. She hammered in with a sickening POP sound. I knew a lot of glue would be in my future.
I picked up the pieces and returned home. Once there, I began my accident investigation. First, I hooked up a servo tester to the ailerons. Full travel. No problem there. Plugged them back into the Aura. They hardly moved. Next, I borrowed an AR6100E from another plane, installed it in the mangled Stearman, and confirmed that all of the servos were fully functional. I then took the wing from another plane and plugged that into the Aura board. Limited travel. Further scrutiny relieved that there seemed to be some unintended mixing between elevator and ailerons. I know I never programmed that, but I double checked my transmitter anyway. I even turned off all mixing just to be sure, yet this problem persisted.
I only had around 5 or 6 flights on this airplane, so it really hurt to see it get smashed up so badly so soon. Initially, I was pleased with the Aura 5, but with this sudden problem, I am no longer so sure. Just wondering if anyone else has had problems like this with the Aura 5. Any recommendations as to how I might fix this issue (or a good alternative RX)?
TL;DR: My Aura 5 was working fine then suddenly lost almost all aileron control and seemed to add an unexplained mix with the elevator. Unable to deduce why.
On my first flight of the day I noticed that the 6 axis stabilization mode was not working. I double checked my assigned switch and it was in the correct position. But, I figured I do need to advance my skills, so I continued the flight. After a few minutes, I brought her back down, opened the hatch, and began to investigate. Eventually decided to just reset the board and try again. Still no 6 axis mode. Again, I figured that I need to push myself and made the call to continue on with the second battery. Foolish, foolish me.
After completing my usual ground checks, I proceeded to take off. Things went wrong remarkably quick. I immediately noticed that my ailerons were almost completely gone and she was pulling left pretty bad. The ailerons had so little effect that I had to use rudder instead for my turns. "Okay, I can handle this. I have practiced on the simulator. I still have enough control to get her around and land" I thought to myself. Soon after it felt like the rudder was starting to lose control to one side. It was abundantly clear that I needed to get her back on the ground as quick as possible. She put up a fight, but I soon had her (roughly) lined up with the runway. I made the worst approach I have ever seen. Then, while still about 6 to 8 feet up, she tip stalled. There was nothing I could do. She hammered in with a sickening POP sound. I knew a lot of glue would be in my future.
I picked up the pieces and returned home. Once there, I began my accident investigation. First, I hooked up a servo tester to the ailerons. Full travel. No problem there. Plugged them back into the Aura. They hardly moved. Next, I borrowed an AR6100E from another plane, installed it in the mangled Stearman, and confirmed that all of the servos were fully functional. I then took the wing from another plane and plugged that into the Aura board. Limited travel. Further scrutiny relieved that there seemed to be some unintended mixing between elevator and ailerons. I know I never programmed that, but I double checked my transmitter anyway. I even turned off all mixing just to be sure, yet this problem persisted.
I only had around 5 or 6 flights on this airplane, so it really hurt to see it get smashed up so badly so soon. Initially, I was pleased with the Aura 5, but with this sudden problem, I am no longer so sure. Just wondering if anyone else has had problems like this with the Aura 5. Any recommendations as to how I might fix this issue (or a good alternative RX)?
TL;DR: My Aura 5 was working fine then suddenly lost almost all aileron control and seemed to add an unexplained mix with the elevator. Unable to deduce why.
Have you used the configurator to do any config, or just the buttons on the Aura? If you have the configurator, it would be easier to look at the configuration inside the aura by taking screenshots of the various config pages.
