Dodgy reversing y lead
This little lead almost cost me the Segull Edge-540.
I was in the middle of an inverted pass when all of a sudden, the Edge pitched down towards the ground for half a second. It was more than just a wind gust and I assumed a radio glitch. The day had been long with a number of flights so I assumed it was time to retire and charge up the batteries.
Being labour day long weekend, I was back out at the field the next day (Monday). With batteries charged, I headed back up. After less than a minute in the air, I was getting glitches again. The glitches seemed to be only on the elevator but definitely more frequent. After a calling an "emergency" landing and getting it back on the ground safely, a bit of wire twiddling revealed the problem.
Tugging on the Y-Lead caused one of the two elevator servos to go 45° up elevator. As you can see from the photo above, vibration and the leads moving around in the fuse have caused the solder joint to break. The upside is; 1) Got the plane back in one piece and 2) Nailed down the problem to a specific component rather than just putting it down to "radio glitches".
March 12th, 2009 - 19:37
lol matt from matt