Official Freewing F/A-18C Hornet 90mm EDF Thread

[Hopetofly1]

Had an issue today........... These Admiral receivers are now starting to worry be and I will be taking it out of my F-18 ASAP. I was doing a left turn and I go to roll out and nothing........I got the control back a few seconds later and performed an emergency landing and got down safe but boy if a 24 dollar receiver crashed my 500 jet I would have been quite mad. Be aware of Admiral Receivers in your F-18. Everything was set up per manual as well and antennas were 90 degrees apart.

[RCjetdude]

A brand new FW F-18 and the elevator servos are ratcheting. I tried two different receivers (Jeti System) and a servo tester - same results. Also the right flap moves on its own (ratcheting) without any control inputs. I tried a set of Hitech 82 servos hooked up to the elevator channel and they both work smoothly. Anyone else having these type of problems?
Thank you!

What voltage are you running to the servos?

[RCjetdude]

Had an issue today........... These Admiral receivers are now starting to worry be and I will be taking it out of my F-18 ASAP. I was doing a left turn and I go to roll out and nothing........I got the control back a few seconds later and performed an emergency landing and got down safe but boy if a 24 dollar receiver crashed my 500 jet I would have been quite mad. Be aware of Admiral Receivers in your F-18. Everything was set up per manual as well and antennas were 90 degrees apart.

Which receiver?

[Hopetofly1]

https://www.motionrc.com/collections/receivers/products/admiral-rx600-6-channel-dsmx-compatible-receiver-with-diversity-antenna

[RCjetdude]

Speed brake is now functional.

[TPS]

What voltage are you running to the servos?

Checked it at 5.1 volts

[TiredIronGRB]

https://www.motionrc.com/collections...ersity-antenna

I'm running over 30 of these and another dozen or so of the 10ch and have had zero issues.

[Evan D]

Absolutely awesome!

Speed brake is now functional.

[xviper]

https://www.motionrc.com/collections...ersity-antenna

I tried to use the Lemon equivalent of this Admiral. It DID NOT range test well. Once on reduced power, at 100 feet, the plane did not respond to stick inputs. I have never trusted these diversity antennas since. I will only buy these RXs if they have a satellite antenna. What you basically have is a "park flyer" receiver - good to 200 to 300 feet on full power. If you get near this distance of if you hit a "dead spot", you're in trouble. With these, I found that even in a small park flyer model, there were many dead spots.

[fredmdbud]

I tried to use the Lemon equivalent of this Admiral. It DID NOT range test well. Once on reduced power, at 100 feet, the plane did not respond to stick inputs. I have never trusted these diversity antennas since. I will only buy these RXs if they have a satellite antenna. What you basically have is a "park flyer" receiver - good to 200 to 300 feet on full power. If you get near this distance of if you hit a "dead spot", you're in trouble. With these, I found that even in a small park flyer model, there were many dead spots.

Did you have each antenna oriented 90 degrees from the other?

[xviper]

Did you have each antenna oriented 90 degrees from the other?

Yes. I didn’t start flying yesterday.

[Quax]

I fly my RC planes the same way i fly GA planes and the airbus at work. If i want the airplane to do something i add power, reduce power, pull up or push down to make it do exactly what i want. Some of yal are over-thinking this lol.

I totally agree. Do whatever is needed. However, on an Airbus you would never keep a low thrust setting and try to recover speed by lowering the nose if the goal is to stay on a given trajectory. One would add thrust.

[janmb]

Whats the the best way to go about getting this correct cg? Just pushing the battery back after each flight? Say 5 mm back after each flight? I’ll admit I’ve Swamy’s set the cg by book and flew it

Book CG is pretty much without exception nose heavy. Which is somewhat understandable, but also a bit sad since it leaves a lot of pilots flying models that could have flown a lot better.

My approach on new models is typically to start at book CG (aft end in case a range is given), test behavior, land, inch the battery back a tiny bit, new test, etc.

Being patient, using many small iterations and not getting greedy is important here. Too large increments can obviously put you into seriously tail heavy territory, which obviously is not ideal 👍

As for testing cg, tons of approaches there. I typically combine several to get the best possible feedback.

After trimmed out for level flight at medium speed:
1. Speed changes should not significantly affect pitch/trim
2. Unpowered 45 deg dive: The model should remain 45 degrees or pull out just ever so slightly
3. Inverted at medium speed: Should require only very little elevator pushing

Obviously, on trainer models with extremely asymmetric wing profiles, the third test does not apply. The two others still do though

[janmb]

I tried to use the Lemon equivalent of this Admiral. It DID NOT range test well. Once on reduced power, at 100 feet, the plane did not respond to stick inputs. I have never trusted these diversity antennas since. I will only buy these RXs if they have a satellite antenna. What you basically have is a "park flyer" receiver - good to 200 to 300 feet on full power. If you get near this distance of if you hit a "dead spot", you're in trouble. With these, I found that even in a small park flyer model, there were many dead spots.

Spot on.

It still amazes me how people try to save single digit dollars on buying ripoff receivers in 500 dollar models. Extremely poor economical sense, not to mention the safety aspect.

[RCjetdude]

https://www.motionrc.com/collections...ersity-antenna

Did you have a satellite on it ?

[RCjetdude]

Checked it at 5.1 volts

That looks good. Sounds to me like a servo is going bad and it is affecting others. If you have a servo tester, start checking them. Also, pull your elevator servos and make sure the wires are not damaged.

[Lcacing]

Had an issue today........... These Admiral receivers are now starting to worry be and I will be taking it out of my F-18 ASAP. I was doing a left turn and I go to roll out and nothing........I got the control back a few seconds later and performed an emergency landing and got down safe but boy if a 24 dollar receiver crashed my 500 jet I would have been quite mad. Be aware of Admiral Receivers in your F-18. Everything was set up per manual as well and antennas were 90 degrees apart.

I had two back to back maiden crashes in my F18, I have other Freewing planes and never had issues, the first one lasted one flight, second flight coming in for landing nice and level, plane instantly pitched nose down. I chucked it as pilot error, new fuse, wings and nose retract. Replaced parts, checked all electronics, range test, all GG. Next maiden 30 sec into flight, planes rolls to the right, no control.
First conclusion was signal loss, but of course, after crash inspection all electronics worked. Decided to test everything that survived separately. Did a range test with the worst set up scenario. Antennas facing the same direction, blocked by two 6s lipos, esc wires on top of rx. Tx antenna pointing away 180 from rx. All worked. Rx,esc,bec,edf, and most servos. No retracts or ECB used.
Installed crashed rx on a flat foammie plane. Range test in flight Sat. Installed ESC/BEC and EDF unit on different plane. Flight test sat.
Lastly, checked ECB on different plane. Bad ECB, the problem was intermittent and when it failed all surfaces lock up. Giving the impression of signal loss or brown out. But would come back and regain control. Since the signal was never lost there was no delay when ECB started working again.
The problem would disappear after cycling the retracts. Sometimes the ECB would work fine.
After all the testing, I realized that maybe my issues started from the first time I powered the model, the first time I cycled the retracts, all came down normal, coming up the right retract did not, I cycled them down again and by the time I walked to the other side, smoke. I disconnect the battery and removed the unit. Burned up retract. Open a ticket and got new unit from Motion. I documented with pictures and videos of all the testing and I opened another ticket with Motion. They stepped up and sent me a new F18 😃.
I know have 6 flights on new bird, no issues. All stock electronics. Only the elevators are bypassed on ECB.

The point is, check everything, maybe is not an rx issue, in my case the ECB would block all signal to all servos, causing the crash.

Here is a video testing the ECB on a different plane. Acted as if it was a loss of signal, never had radio issues with this plane before.

https://youtu.be/mEXdKkE3q0M

[Evan D]

Thank you for posting this and going through the trouble to figure it out. Too many people would have jumped to a conclusion and started screaming.

I had two back to back maiden crashes in my F18, I have other Freewing planes and never had issues, the first one lasted one flight, second flight coming in for landing nice and level, plane instantly pitched nose down. I chucked it as pilot error, new fuse, wings and nose retract. Replaced parts, checked all electronics, range test, all GG. Next maiden 30 sec into flight, planes rolls to the right, no control.
First conclusion was signal loss, but of course, after crash inspection all electronics worked. Decided to test everything that survived separately. Did a range test with the worst set up scenario. Antennas facing the same direction, blocked by two 6s lipos, esc wires on top of rx. Tx antenna pointing away 180 from rx. All worked. Rx,esc,bec,edf, and most servos. No retracts or ECB used.
Installed crashed rx on a flat foammie plane. Range test in flight Sat. Installed ESC/BEC and EDF unit on different plane. Flight test sat.
Lastly, checked ECB on different plane. Bad ECB, the problem was intermittent and when it failed all surfaces lock up. Giving the impression of signal loss or brown out. But would come back and regain control. Since the signal was never lost there was no delay when ECB started working again.
The problem would disappear after cycling the retracts. Sometimes the ECB would work fine.
After all the testing, I realized that maybe my issues started from the first time I powered the model, the first time I cycled the retracts, all came down normal, coming up the right retract did not, I cycled them down again and by the time I walked to the other side, smoke. I disconnect the battery and removed the unit. Burned up retract. Open a ticket and got new unit from Motion. I documented with pictures and videos of all the testing and I opened another ticket with Motion. They stepped up and sent me a new F18 😃.
I know have 6 flights on new bird, no issues. All stock electronics. Only the elevators are bypassed on ECB.

The point is, check everything, maybe is not an rx issue, in my case the ECB would block all signal to all servos, causing the crash.

Here is a video testing the ECB on a different plane. Acted as if it was a loss of signal, never had radio issues with this plane before.

https://youtu.be/mEXdKkE3q0M

[gooniac33]

Had an issue today........... These Admiral receivers are now starting to worry be and I will be taking it out of my F-18 ASAP. I was doing a left turn and I go to roll out and nothing........I got the control back a few seconds later and performed an emergency landing and got down safe but boy if a 24 dollar receiver crashed my 500 jet I would have been quite mad. Be aware of Admiral Receivers in your F-18. Everything was set up per manual as well and antennas were 90 degrees apart.

It is just the wrong RX for this application. Diversity is not the way you want to go with a model like this. You want an actual RX and satellite set up for a plane like this. All of my fleet use Lemon RX and I used the Lemon version that you are using but with satellite in my 90mm F-15, 70mm F-16, FMS 80mm Hawk, FMS 1400mm P-51 and countless other planes with ZERO issues. When I tried to use the diversity set up it did not do nearly as well! Range tests were not good and it required a lot of fiddling to get right. I still didn't trust it though and went back to what I knew worked well. Get a satellite set up and get polarization done properly and you will have no issues at all. There are far too many things that can block the signal with the diversity set up.

[gooniac33]

I had two back to back maiden crashes in my F18, I have other Freewing planes and never had issues, the first one lasted one flight, second flight coming in for landing nice and level, plane instantly pitched nose down. I chucked it as pilot error, new fuse, wings and nose retract. Replaced parts, checked all electronics, range test, all GG. Next maiden 30 sec into flight, planes rolls to the right, no control.
First conclusion was signal loss, but of course, after crash inspection all electronics worked. Decided to test everything that survived separately. Did a range test with the worst set up scenario. Antennas facing the same direction, blocked by two 6s lipos, esc wires on top of rx. Tx antenna pointing away 180 from rx. All worked. Rx,esc,bec,edf, and most servos. No retracts or ECB used.
Installed crashed rx on a flat foammie plane. Range test in flight Sat. Installed ESC/BEC and EDF unit on different plane. Flight test sat.
Lastly, checked ECB on different plane. Bad ECB, the problem was intermittent and when it failed all surfaces lock up. Giving the impression of signal loss or brown out. But would come back and regain control. Since the signal was never lost there was no delay when ECB started working again.
The problem would disappear after cycling the retracts. Sometimes the ECB would work fine.
After all the testing, I realized that maybe my issues started from the first time I powered the model, the first time I cycled the retracts, all came down normal, coming up the right retract did not, I cycled them down again and by the time I walked to the other side, smoke. I disconnect the battery and removed the unit. Burned up retract. Open a ticket and got new unit from Motion. I documented with pictures and videos of all the testing and I opened another ticket with Motion. They stepped up and sent me a new F18 😃.
I know have 6 flights on new bird, no issues. All stock electronics. Only the elevators are bypassed on ECB.

The point is, check everything, maybe is not an rx issue, in my case the ECB would block all signal to all servos, causing the crash.

Here is a video testing the ECB on a different plane. Acted as if it was a loss of signal, never had radio issues with this plane before.

https://youtu.be/mEXdKkE3q0M

Thanks for posting this! Always check everything over!! ALWAYS!! I have had issues with the box in my Mig-21 and never flew it with the box in there. I just went through the effort to change out all the connections to Y. No use in risking the model even if it were replaced by MotionRC. Its kinda out of Motions hands since its made by Freewing anyway. Motion will always take care of you on the customer service side though! But don't let that prevent you guys from doing your due diligence with testing!