Hello Everyone! I purchased a P38 Lightning a week ago (PNP). I installed a Spektrum Receiver AR636A in the plane. The night before I checked it to ensure all flight surfaces were correct and the AS3X was functioning properly. This morning I went to run a flight check before putting in the air and control surfaces were reversed. I fixed the problem and put the plane in the air. It flew beautifully. It landed just as perfect. The second time it went up it flew for a few min then I lost all control of it. It continued to fly in a straight line and was not responding to my commands. All of a sudden the plane nosed down and went straight in to the ground and was destroyed! The receiver was new. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with these types of receivers or the plane as I am not sure what caused the crash. Any thoughts on the best receiver to use? Thank you for any input you can provide based on your experiences.
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Based on the erratic operation of the receiver commands. I think the receiver was defective...……….. If your other planes fly O K with the same transmitter ? Receiver was bad.
Did you fully recharge the batteries of the transmitter and the plane ? If yes ? bad Receiver. -
When you say the control surfaces were reversed, did you correct them by reversing the servos in your transmitter? Or did you reverse them using Spektrum programming software and either a USB or Bluetooth programming cable?Originally posted by searay503 View Post
I have a lot of AR636 receivers and I love them... But you really have to be careful with them. You can NOT just reverse the servos in the transmitter, has to be programmed in the receiver. You have to set the wing type and orientation correctly in the receiver as well as the receiver orientation.
The thing is, when you have AS3X enabled, the roll, pitch, and yaw are corrected based on where the receiver thinks it is, what direction it thinks your control surfaces need to go. If you reverse the direction in the transmitter, the AS3X brains are still going to compensate in the opposite direction. Up is Down, Right is Left... So it's extremely important to conduct thorough pre-flight inspections and make sure everything is going the right way... And I will say it again, NEVER reverse the ailerons, elevator, or rudder in the transmitter! You get a small gust of wind and that plane goes straight into the ground...
Once you get past the initial learning curve the AR636 is one powerful little receiver. I have mine all set up with SAFE self leveling in one flight mode, panic modes, adjustable gains in flight for each individual gain setting, You can set them up to do dual ailerons, tailerons, flaperons. Cool stuff, but you have to know the little tricks to get them to play right...
Sorry about your P-38Comment
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This sounds exactly like a story posted on the RCAAA Facebook page over the weekend. In that story the receiver came out of a crashed E-Flite Cherokee and was programmed by a neighbor that had little to no experience with programming receivers. No surprise, the comments turned into a battle about how real men don't need gyros and that AS3x flies the plane for you. The constructive comments suggested an error in programming, reversed transmitter but the AS3x wasn't reversed, damaged receiver from the Cherokee crash, lack of checking AS3x movement during the pre-flight, or failure to do a range check. The similarities between this post and the Facebook post suggest this is the same incident. It would be odd for 2 P-38's running AR636 receivers to both crash on the second flight over the course of the same day.Comment
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This is a very sad thing to fight over something that can help fly your aircraft or not. I don't use any gyro's on fixed wing but I have them on all my Helicopters. I would never tell someone to not use a gyro if that helps them in their flying. I know I've tried to fly gyro's on a few fixed wing aircraft and for me the gyro seems to fight me which I didn't like. I've seen others that really needed a gyro. I don't know much about the AS3x but a Brown out will do this same thing. A spike of low voltage will brown out a receiver.Originally posted by BRGT350 View PostComment
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Agree it is a very sad thing to fight about, but the battles I see on Facebook over gyros, SAFE, and even foam planes is just crazy. People get really worked up over this stuff! Basically, if you didn't plant a balsa tree in 1952, grow and care for it until the 1970's, cut it down, carve out an airframe using your teeth, installed a 27mhz radio system hand built from vac tubes, and flew the plane in a hurricane, you aren't a real pilot and have no business talking about the hobby. That is pretty much the majority of Facebook comments. How dare anyone suggest a foam plane is capable of being called an airplane and flying with a gyro can be considered flying. I just hate it the people who can't see past 1975.
As for the crash in the original post, there was way more to the story that came out in the comments on Facebook. The big take-away was that the receiver came out of a badly crashed planes, was programmed by somebody who knew nothing about programming, and flown without any pre-flights. I have seen a lot of people with little to know flight experience buying expensive planes, crashing them, and then blaming some mystery mechanical or electrical failure. We all know failures can happen, but when you see people with zero flight experience trying to fly intermediate or advanced planes and then blaming the crash of an equipment failure, it is very suspicious.Comment
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