Spektrum flight controller failure during flight. Is this a common issue?

[Aaron0984]

I purchased a habu sts 4 weeks ago.. got maybe 10 flights out of it before the a3230b receiver shut down and caused the plane to lose all power and crash..

The take off was normal.. edf powered up full and off the jet went.. made 2 turns and then somehow the plane lost all power. I could hear the edf shut down like it just turned off. But as I walked up to my crashed habu. The esc blue light was on. But the a3230b flight controller had no lights on.. which it's usually blue for beginner , white for intermediate and red for expert. But there was no light at all on the flight controller. Me being new to rc planes . I anticipated I'll probably have a crash or 2 due to me being new to flying..but I never ever thought that a flight controller shutting down mid flight with a fresh battery would be the cause of a crash.. im just tryin to see if this is a common issue with the a3230b controller.. because I also have a brand new twin timber that hasn't been used yet " waiting on my dx10e to get here". But as of now, I don't really trust spektrum controllers because I've already lost one plane due to unknown shutdown reasons and I don't want to lose this timber too. Nothing sucks more then having a controller failure mid flight causing a new pilot to not want to fly.

With all that being said that me being new I expected to have a crash or 2.. I purchased a fuselage so I had parts on stand by. So I installed all the electronics in the new fuselage, after thorough inspection of course so I could see what the root cause was that caused my habu to lose all power and crash.. and 5 battery packs later of running the esc, flight controller and edf fan at full throttle trying to replicate what happend to the habu.. but to my surprise there was no problem at all.. so im at a loss for words..

I'd really like to kno if this is a common issue for the a3230b shutting down 1min 25 seconds into a flight, because like I said , I have a brand new twin timber and as of right now I won't put it in the air until I figure this problem out. As of right now I don't trust the controller.

Anyways sorry for the long winded questions/rants.. I just don't understand what would cause this problem.

 

[Bricks]

First thing I would do is rebind the radio and recevier make sure you are at least 6 feet away radio pointed away or what I do is put my body between the receiver and transmitter. When you bind with the radio and reciever to close together you can get a weak bind as your flooding the receiver. Everything will work great or at least seem to but you loose distance, seen this many times, can be very erratic on the receiver side.

 

[Aaron0984]

First thing I would do is rebind the radio and recevier make sure you are at least 6 feet away radio pointed away or what I do is put my body between the receiver and transmitter. When you bind with the radio and reciever to close together you can get a weak bind as your flooding the receiver. Everything will work great or at least seem to but you loose distance, seen this many times, can be very erratic on the receiver side.

The tx/rx are bound.. when I installed the electronics into my other fuselage. The controller and receiver worked just fine.. im pretty sure I explained that in my original post. Did a bunch of torture testing tryin replicate the problem but closes thing I could get was powering off the TX. But even then the receiver was blinking, after the crash there was nothing. Not even the mod light.. so ya theres that.

 

[Bricks]

The tx/rx are bound.. when I installed the electronics into my other fuselage. The controller and receiver worked just fine.. im pretty sure I explained that in my original post. Did a bunch of torture testing tryin replicate the problem but closes thing I could get was powering off the TX. But even then the receiver was blinking, after the crash there was nothing. Not even the mod light.. so ya theres that.

? did you read my post and understand it?

 

[Andy.T.]

First thing I would do is rebind the radio and recevier make sure you are at least 6 feet away radio pointed away or what I do is put my body between the receiver and transmitter. When you bind with the radio and reciever to close together you can get a weak bind as your flooding the receiver. Everything will work great or at least seem to but you loose distance, seen this many times, can be very erratic on the receiver side.

Maybe I didn't need the big long post I just made about a similar event I had, but with a DX6i and a LemonRX LM0080; I had no idea the distance between TX and RX made a difference when binding. I've always just...stood at my workbench with the plane on it. at most a few feet away probably. HMMM Yet another possible cause to my loss of control issues

 

[Bricks]

Maybe I didn't need the big long post I just made about a similar event I had, but with a DX6i and a LemonRX LM0080; I had no idea the distance between TX and RX made a difference when binding. I've always just...stood at my workbench with the plane on it. at most a few feet away probably. HMMM Yet another possible cause to my loss of control issues

Could very well be when ever binding any radio system if the transmitter is to close it swamps the receiver and it leads to a weak bind, which usually denotes itself as lost signal at distance..

 

[Erasmus80]

I agree with the risk of saturating the receiver. I've learned to step back 2-3 steps when binding.
I've not had a "weak bind" nor lost bind in flight, but I have learned to listen for the proper sequence of tones and, if the receiver is visible, I always look for lights.

Did you leave the bind plug in?

I will have to test something.
Consider two setups:
A) Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX)
B) Another TX and RX B.

You bind up setup A but leave the bind plug in RX A after binding.
You start operating setup A.
While operating A, bind B at a notional flying distance (about 100 meters).

Will the Setup A RX be overwritten "in flight"?

 

[Andy.T.]

I agree with the risk of saturating the receiver. I've learned to step back 2-3 steps when binding.
I've not had a "weak bind" nor lost bind in flight, but I have learned to listen for the proper sequence of tones and, if the receiver is visible, I always look for lights.

Did you leave the bind plug in?

I will have to test something.
Consider two setups:
A) Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX)
B) Another TX and RX B.

You bind up setup A but leave the bind plug in RX A after binding.
You start operating setup A.
While operating A, bind B at a notional flying distance (about 100 meters).

Will the Setup A RX be overwritten "in flight"?

Oh, interesting; no, I did not leave bind plug in. I'm hoping that with following better binding procedure of having some distance and myself between RX and TX, and being more deliberate with the antenna on my TX, I'll avoid any more catastrophic radio issues. I am curious if that water tower's cell repeaters will be a problem still. I'll just have to make sure to stay farther away.

 

[Thomas B]

Could very well be when ever binding any radio system if the transmitter is to close it swamps the receiver and it leads to a weak bind, which usually denotes itself as lost signal at distance..

Let me respectfully say that there is no such thing as a “weak bind” on a Spektrum radio.

If the system reports a successful bind, it is as good as it gets.

Always perform a correct range check following Spektrum’s exact procedure for a newly bound receiver before flying the aircraft.

In-flight radio failures are often related to the radio power on board the aircraft not performing correctly.

Poor RX installation is sometimes an issue, but unlikely to show up in a new BnF ARF.

 

[Bricks]

Let me respectfully say that there is no such thing as a “weak bind” on a Spektrum radio.

If the system reports a successful bind, it is as good as it gets.

Always perform a correct range check following Spektrum’s exact procedure for a newly bound receiver before flying the aircraft.

In-flight radio failures are often related to the radio power on board the aircraft not performing correctly.

Poor RX installation is sometimes an issue, but unlikely to show up in a new BnF ARF.

When to close the receiver gets swamped on the front end when binding.

Quote What happens is that the transmitted signal being received at the Rx is so strong that it overloads the receiver's input (front end circuitry). All receivers will have a working range for the received signal - one end being the lowest level that a receiver can still receive a signal and decode it correctly and the other being the highest input level it can handle before it becomes too high and the receiver then cannot decode the digital signal due to distortion (non linearity issues) being generated inside the Rx due to the high input level. This is actually just normal behaviour for just about all sorts of receivers (not just RC) and while there are some ways to mitagate this problem (high input level overload) as long as users are aware of what is occurring, they can easily take steps to avoid it... eg. Binding with the Tx held a little further away or keeping the actual Tx antenna(s) away from the Rx antennas in the model etc. End Quote A good discussion of he problem. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?4354567-Receiver-swamping-during-binding

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[Thomas B]

When to close the receiver gets swamped on the front end when binding.

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Quote What happens is that the transmitted signal being received at the Rx is so strong that it overloads the receiver's input (front end circuitry). All receivers will have a working range for the received signal - one end being the lowest level that a receiver can still receive a signal and decode it correctly and the other being the highest input level it can handle before it becomes too high and the receiver then cannot decode the digital signal due to distortion (non linearity issues) being generated inside the Rx due to the high input level. This is actually just normal behaviour for just about all sorts of receivers (not just RC) and while there are some ways to mitagate this problem (high input level overload) as long as users are aware of what is occurring, they can easily take steps to avoid it... eg. Binding with the Tx held a little further away or keeping the actual Tx antenna(s) away from the Rx antennas in the model etc. End Quote A good discussion of he problem. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?4354567-Receiver-swamping-during-binding

Nothing in that linked discussion supports the “Weak bind” theory for a Spektrum radio system. If the radio binds and passes a range check, you are good to go. I have had a fair number of binds attempts fail from being too close to the TX. I simply increase the distance and bind again.

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