Hi Marc -
I’m first to admit to my lack of “electronics edumacation” but I always thought the switches were a go/no go kind of thing, meaning they were not proportional - only on/off. Many landing gear servos advertised are also similar - going from in to out without any control of fast to slow.
I may be completely off base, but is what I understand. Will have to watch this, as I am contemplating a separate jib winch on one of my bigger boats, and want to be assured that I can have/use a proportional transmitting signal instead of an on/off signal.
Will watch to see how others chime in. I know John Ball (Hiljoball) seems pretty well versed and has provided me with some unknown ( to him) education. Thank you, John
I have heard about taking the wires from one of the unused pots (elevator control lets say) and wiring in a new pot for a separate control.
I have also heard, (phone call with a new freind) that with i could use just the trim buttons on the radio and get enough throw int he servo to fine tune the jib… and not need to even put in a new pot or add holes to the case…
h rudder and elevator from the sticks to knobs ( jib trim and back stay ) I old pots out of a old Airtronics TX, I put them where the \ flap switch and throttle cut are, I unsoldered the 3 wires on the rudder and elevator pots, the wire was long enough to reach the new location
Dick, I did some testing on the Spectrum DX6i, I mixed the throttle with the flaps 100 percent ( mix1 ), and mixed the flaps with the rudder 20 percent ( mix2 ), plugged main sheet servo into the throttle and jib sheet kl servo into the aux1 ( witch is flaps) it worked great, both servos moved with the throttle stick and you could trim the jib servo with the rudder control, witch is now a knob John R.
Mark I modified my DX6i rudder and elevator from the sticks to knobs ( jib trim and back stay ) I used old pots out of a old Airtronics TX, I put them where the flap switch and throttle cut are, I unsoldered the 3 wires on the rudder and elevator pots, the wire was long enough to reach the new location
Dick, I did some testing on the Spectrum DX6i, I mixed the throttle with the flaps 100 percent ( mix1 ), and mixed the flaps with the rudder 20 percent ( mix2 ), plugged main sheet servo into the throttle and jib sheet servo into the aux1 ( witch is flaps) it worked great, both servos moved with the throttle stick and you could trim the jib servo with the rudder control, witch is now a knob John R.
I got another idea to just use the existing trim tab on one of the exiting pots I’m not using. Ie on the throttle stick, I don’t use the rudder portion of that stick, so plug the servo into the corresponding rx port and juts use the trim button. i can get enough throw int he servo arm so I should be good. just wether or not I can deal with the beeping from the dx6i…
but I have a couple post laying around that I could be able to use if I desice to go back to the orginal plan of desoldering from the existing pots and adding a new one…
So you didn’t do anything with the throttle cut or flap switch other than burry them in the TX? Also, would have it been possible to use the pots on the rudder and elevator by just relocating them? Nice job, clean looking.
Hi Mark, if you are just going to use the rudder trim you mite want to put a -exponential in the rudder, I was using -100% expo. when I was using the rudder, this will make the trim more sensitive, more travel with the same amount of trim.
grouch, I used hot melt glue to hold the switches in place so they didn’t flop around, I would not recommend trying to move the pots I think there are part of the gimbals, much easier to just put in new pots, the pot are 5K pots from Radio Shack.
John R.
Hi John
I’m a little late with this but it may help for the future. This link will take you to a mod that converts the 3rd channel on an Airtronics DX3. http://www.rccrawler.com/mx3.htm
This is an on/off channel and this mod shows how to change it to a three position. It’s a small step from there to proportional. If you read it thoroughly you may by able to transfer the idea to your DX6i. No guarantees but I thought it might help.
Don
warantee–eh i bought it used for 100 bucks shipped. I added a voltage regulator months ago so i could run lipos so even if it had a warantee it was gone a long time ago…
Nuts and bolts of it technically all I am doing is relocating a pot, cutting and soldering 3 wires…But if the FCC police wanna come after me…let em come…
I could cut all the wires to all the pots and cross them all up. and I would have ZERO effect on any other models.
the only way I could affect any other models is if I altered the frequency of the transmitter. or boosted the power so much that it flooded the airwaves with a lot of noise. being that I’m not doing either I wont be affecting any other models.
The DSM system scans the 2.4GHz band and finds a channel that is not being used. Once an open channel is found the transmitter begins transmitting on that unused channel. The DSM System has an available spectrum of 79 channels. In the unlikely event that the spectrum is full, the 80th system will not connect or cause any interference, going into “hold scan” until a channel is free.
Again send the FCC police. I’m not worried Id venture to say the fcc police if they looked at it would not even know what they are looking at. Enough people have done this and shown that its not a modification that alters the the transmitter in any way that can cause reason for alarm.
Hi Mark, glad to se you made the change, I think you will like it, I could only take the beeping so long also, I see you went to Lipos, why did you change? I get about 5 hr. from my stock 1500 mah batteries. Radio Shack has some nice knobs.
John R.
I was beginning to switch over to lipo in the boats. and the small lipo pack that fits in the 4 AA space is also a perfect fit for the footy. 730 mah, I’ll get about 15 races before it goes flat. I put in a 5 volt regulator to step it down from 7.2 I should probably get one that steps it down to 6, but the 5 seems to be doing well. it actually set at 5.3
The 7 volts full up probably would not hurt the dx6i, but no point in taking any chances especially when it got a full charge…
nice thing is that I don’t have to carry a bunch of aa’s any more and I can carry a small 12v sealed cell and keep things charged lake side.
I ended up getting a knob at radio shack last night…it has a raised indicator on it so hopefuly I’ll be able to tell by feel when its in the middle, out or in…
Thank you, John