Hi,
I had a pilot call me today and he had bought a PowerExpander Eq10 at a swap meet recently. He installed it but found that if he flexed the unit that it was intermittent. This brings up something that we should all think about. Care and feeding of our electronic equipment. One thing you should realize is that the material printed circuit boards (PCBs) are made of, typically FR4, is sensitive to humidity. High humidity can cause the FR4 to swell and warp. This can cause micro-fractures in the joints between the IC legs and the pads on the PCB. I think this may be what this pilot was seeing, the Eq10 had been stored in a high-humidity environment and when he brought it into his shop it probably released some of the water vapor. So, what I am saying is you should try to store all your electronics in controlled humidity environments. Short exposure to high-humidity is not a problem but storing your electronics in high humidity for months and then going back to a dryer environment will cause all your PCBs (receivers, servos, etc) to swell and then shrink. The connections between the current generation ICs and the PCBs is so small that expansion and contraction can cause problems over time. The new lead-free solder (as mandated by RoHS in various countries and now used in all manufacture of electronic equipment except military equipment) is not as tolerant of this behavior as the old leaded solder was. And speaking of lead-free solder, the other reason lead was added to solder was to eliminate an issue called "whiskers" (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21151552/w.../#.UUHspzdc1Kg). Tin will spontaneously start growing whiskers which can bridge the space between pins on an IC package and eventually cause a short. Some of the failures in the Toyota throttle control issue were traced back to tin whiskers growing on the IC pins. The whiskers tend to grow in high electric fields so any place you have higher voltage or higher currents they are more likely to grow. The basic idea here is that your electronics are not going to last as long as those manufactured with lead based solder so you should keep that in mind when keeping receivers and servos 10 years. Most lead was abolished in electronics manufacturing around 2002. Anyway, I hope this sheds some light on electronics life issues and how to store your equipment.

Hi,
Seems there are a lot of PowerExpanders and PowerSystems out there right now. Sales for me have slowed down because I think people are mostly reusing and reselling the old systems. I have a Catch-22 situation, my systems have to be reliable for people to use them but that comes with a price for me, they don't get replace like planes and engines after crashes. Also, not sure if the new "minimalist" trend is affecting. I honestly do not understand that trend, even down to 50cc with the current load the digital servos can put on the receiver and the significant reduced performance you get out of servos you paid a ton of money for to get high torque and speed. You loose a whole lot of that running off a receiver, even in a 50cc plane. I could show how bad a receiver bus voltage drop can be under a 8-10 amp load but I doubt anyone would really pay any attention to it.

All this said, I am trying to figure out what people might be looking for that is not on the market or what is on the market is not doing the job. I am looking for feedback. What are you looking for?

Thanks,

Hi,
I seem to run into this problem over and over and over. For some reason people are just not setting up their planes correctly mechanically before they start doing electronic adjustment.

First, you should make sure all your transmitter servo trims are at zero. Then, check all your servo arms and make sure they are as perpendicular to the servo as possible. Sometimes rotating the arm 180 degrees offsets you by a 1/2 spline so you are closer to perpendicular. Then you should program the throw in your radio on all your flight surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudders, flaps if you got them and what ever else moves the air) so that the high-rate throw in the transmitter is the maximum minus a little bit. So if your radio will allow you to set your travel to 150 then you should back that off to 140 but program that into all your flight surfaces. The 10 points is to allow some room for the electronic adjustment outside the radio. You should do this if you are using any external adjustment device, Equalizer, MatchBox, MSA-10 or anything else that does what these do.

Next you want to make sure your radio is set for your high rates. You can use your radio subtrim (offset) to get your servo arm perpendicular to the servo pushrod. This is very important. If you have ganged servos then you want to make sure the primary servo has this done. The others can be done using the electronic subtrim adjustment of the external adjustment device. You want to keep your plus and minus throws equal in the transmitter. Then MECHANICALLY you want to get all your surfaces VERY CLOSE to where you want the final throw to be for high rates. This is for all surfaces. If you mechanics are not setup well you are going to run into problems down the road. At neutral you want all ganged servos to have their pushrods perpendicular to the servo arm.

Last you you want to go in and use the external device to do fine adjustments to get the surfaces final positions. Set up the primary servo first, get the endpoints where you want them. Move to the next servo. Get the servo arm perpendicular to the pushrod at neutral. If you have to adjust the length of the pushrod at this point so that it does not fight the primary servo at neutral. Then move to the endpoints and adjust them so they do not bind. Then move on to any other ganged servos.

Doing things this way will make everything perform better.