I have been flying the Mamba with the Potenza gyro setup for months. I have been very impressed with the combo. The airplane is incredible and the Potenza really helps stop wing rock. And yes I am using the shark's teeth. However today at the flying field I experienced quite a scare. When I turned on the plane's receiver it took the normal few seconds for the Potenza to power up the flight surfaces. However the rudder stayed deflected a few seconds longer and I had no ability to straighten the rudder with the transmitter until a few more seconds had passed. I thought this was odd so I cycled the receiver a few more times and checked the transmitter's range. All seemed ok. About five minutes into the flight the plane went into an un-commanded gyration that lasted only a second. I regained control and landed quickly without issue. During this entire flight the gyro switch was in the off position. My question is whether or not the Potenza gyro could have caused this momentary loss of control even though the switch was off. I know that all the receiver current and commands go through the gyro before ending up in the servos. All of the servo plugs were well connected and the Potenza was well anchored to a stable plank. I could find nothing else suspicious. Your input would be appreciated.
Potenza question
- Thread starter Trump
- Start date
wfield0455
50cc
If the Aura really was off it seems unlikely that it caused the problem but if something is failing anything is possible.First thing I would look at is the Rudder servo since you had an issue with it centering during power up. Also take a good look at all your servo extensions. Based on what the airplane did I'd try to figure out which controls were affected. If you can't find any bad servos, loose connections, etc, I'd say send the Aura back and ask them to check it out to see if they can find anything wrong.
Alky6
150cc
yes. click the "watch thread" on the right side just above the original post.
49dimes
Damn I'm hungry
@Trump FYI..... One way to see if the Aura 8 has gone in to a failsafe mode for some reason is that the indicator light on the Aura 8 (Normally split grn/ org light) will be a solid blue color. You must not power down though to see as it "resets" the failsafe indication if you do power down. In the future if have a problem again you know not to power down but check the Aura 8 first. From my personal experience I have found excessive current or excessive voltage drops across the Aura 8 servo outputs will cause it to go in to failsafe mode.
49dimes
Damn I'm hungry
The Aura 8 failsafe can be activated by low voltage (dropouts/brown outs) and by loss of Rx signal. In either case Aura will "lock" the servo ports at their respective positions when a fault occurs. If you have failsafe settings installed in your Rx then Aura will mirror those settings when it locks the ports. Aura will not lock these settings if a low voltage condition happens across the Aura 8 alone. It will simply lock the ports at whatever position the servos are in. A low voltage condition across the Rx however should be the same as a signal loss as long as failsafe settings have been programmed in to the Rx.