Spektrum binding and failsafe (how to)

[pepatrick]

I am kind of the resident spektrum junkie at our club. We have others, but I think I was the first to jump the 2.4 bandwagon so I get asked a lot of questions about setup on spektrum. The information I am about to share is in your JR transmitter books and has probably been posted on here before..I just want to make sure it is fresh in your mind. This is how I set up all of my planes.

Initial Bind

On a new plane: The first thing I do is bind the transmitter to the receiver.

• Put the bind plug in the receiver and turn power on to the receiver. You will see the lights flashing on the receiver.
• Press and hold the bind button on the back of your transmitter and power on your transmitter.
• Continue to press the bind button on the transmitter until you have control of the servos.

Flight ready Bind

Setup your plane. Setup the plane how you are comfortable (neutral surfaces) with and make sure the throttle is in the idle position.

• Put the bind plug in the receiver and turn power on to the receiver. You will see the lights flashing on the receiver.
• Press and hold the bind button on the back of your transmitter and power on your transmitter.
• Continue to press the bind button on the transmitter until you have control of the servos.

Flight ready Bind with Failsafe

• Put the bind plug in the receiver and turn power on to the receiver. You will see the lights flashing on the receiver.
• Now pull the bind plug out of the receiver and leave it powered on. Receivers should still be flashing.
• Press and hold the bind button on the back of your transmitter and power on your transmitter.
• Continue to press the bind button on the transmitter until you have control of the servos.

Testing

I always check to make sure failsafe works on the ground. I suspect that the club I belong to will start to enforce this as more pilots jump into larger aircraft.

Start the plane
Push all the sticks to the upper corners. (all surfaces should be fully deflected and engine should be at full throttle or close to it)
Turn your transmitter off. If you set everything right your engine should drop to idle (or off if you decided to program it off) and all surfaces should come back to neutral immediately.
If these results were not obtained, try rebinding, or switch from Futaba to JR

Fly your plane. Set the trim settings and make any other adjustments on your plane until you are comfortable with how the plane flies. Each time you make a change to the radio go through these steps again. Each change you make will throw the receiver off in fail safe so its important to go through steps after you make setup changes. I hope this helps..especially to some of the new Spektrum pilots.

[stew007]

What difference does it make leaving the bind plug in, versus removing it after the rx light flashes? Does it not just amount to the same thing? I thought it either stored the correct GUID or it dosent, I didnt think there could be any in-between?

Also some say you have to be further than 1 meter away when binding? is this so?, also that its better to plug the bind plug directly into the RX versus plugging it into the switch?, (but the Spektrum manual says plug it into the switch?) And some say if its not bound correctly the range can suffer as a result, is this true? How can that be? I want to be 100% sure on this stuff, I dont want my planes/helis locking out.

[davensocal]

The timing of the bind plug removal has to do with the failsafes, but this might only be for some receiver types.

This information is from my JR 1222 receiver:

Smartsafe: If the bind plug is left in position throughout the process (Flight Ready Bind above), the system will be set for Smart Safe. If signal is lost, only the throttle channel will go to a preset position.

Failsafe: If the bind plug is removed before the TX is turned on and bound, the system will use FailSafe settings. In this mode, if signal is lost all channels will go to their preprogrammed positions.

Clear as mud?

1 meter away for binding? Sounds like BS to me, however, I did read that in order to create a link (and/or bind) the system needs to see X nummber of clean transactions in a row. In some situations having large metal objects nearby can cause reflections of the RF which begint o look like bad transactions.

Don't know about binding through an extension or a switch.. I would assume the RX is simply looking for a open or closed circuit, so it shouldn't matter.

Range vs binding.. Hmm, sounds interesting, but it seems the binding process is all or nothing. I don't understand how you could have an improper bind..

[stew007]

Thanks, I understand now! I'll stick with smartsafe, seems like the best option.

[Richard!]

pepatrick Thank you for posting this.

I've recently upgraded my Graupner MC22 with a Spektrum module & bought several receivers for different models. One of which is a 450 size electric helicopter for which the Hold fail safe is no good. I am using an AR7600 for this. The problem was that channel 1, 2 & 3 are for collective & cyclic pitch mixing. I am not able to remap the channels on the transmitter due to the complex mixing.

With the Hold fail safe the motor (connected to channel 6) would continue to run & one of the 3 control servos would go to the preset position (channel 1). This could be quite a dangerous setup if I had any trouble with signal.

After looking through the manual I couldn't see an option to change to preset fail safe. This only seems to be documented on some of the receivers (e.g.. AR9000) and the Carbon receivers. I may have missed this in the manual?

Anyway, after reading your thread I had a go at changing the fail safe to preset on the AR7600 and it works great!

Thanks
Rich

[Gordo]

Thanks for the post. I am stepping off into 2.4 with my 10X and the new mod with AR9000 . Guess older dogs are a bit slower to change. Never lost one with the old system. Been reading all I can.

Thanks Gordo