I had an unusual experience over the weekend with my E Stuka. This ship has been converted to electric for several years. I just did mods to the battery compartment to allow a Zippy Compact 3S 2450 pack to fit that will give enough head room for the full PA pattern in Classic. Did a ground test and it was pulling 20 amps which is well within the Phoenix 35 range. I did some short test flights last week and all was good. Yesterday at the field I was ready to start to practice the PA pattern, reset the timer for 5 min, 30 sec, hooked up and fired off. Flight went well (except the pilot sucked), end of flight normal shut down.

When time came for second flight, I plugged in a second fully charged pack, turned on the power switch and NOTHING! No arming tune or anything. Checked the battery, it was full charge, switch off, unplug battery, reconnect pack, turn on arming power switch and still nothing.

Home on the bench I hooked up the ESC (Phoenix 35) to Castle Link, LED blinked and it seemed to see the controller. It displayed the current settings (fixed rpm, 9754 all three ranges, all others at default setting). I did and update, it showed the update being loaded but nothing made any tune or gave any indication that it was actually connected. I then connected the Z_Tron Timer set for 10 sec run (it is set for 100% throttle, rpm is set in the ESC), connected the battery and turned on the power, again nothing. I swapped out the timer for a second one that I knew was good and tried again, still nothing.  Lastly, I tried an FM9 timer and again nothing.

It seems to me the ESC might be the problem any other way to check that I may have missed?

Best,       DennisT

I just disassembled the cowl, ESC, power switch and found the ground wire was not fully plugged in (this is the first time since I first install the ESC in the ship that I have pulled the cowl). I had taped the connection but it seems that over the years the power wires were moved around and worked its way loose. Connected it solidly all up, with the original Z Tron timer, and all worked fine.

Lesson learned is to periodically check your wiring connects.

Best,      DennisT

When you do calculations on mil-aero electronics reliability, connectors have one of the biggest hits. 

AMEN!
Dean P.

Too bad that the current management fad may not include checking with the reliability guy. 

I've been through one of those fads.  We even had "Quality Matters!" posters on the walls so that visitors would know that our quality system sucked.