450 Trex 450l Initial Setup Help

E

Eospro

Member
Hi All,
New to the forum and new to RC helicopters.
I have a little Blade 120 S2 which I am just getting used to tail in hover and absolutely love it.
All my reading and video watching tells me ideally I should be learning on something a bit bigger and be collective pitch.

So inpatient me went out and brought a Align Trex 450l. To get to the point the build went fine and time to wire it up.
Ahh, alot more complex that a RC car, but with the help of the manual and a few google searches I finally got there.
The issue I have is when I powered it up and binded the receiver all the servos go to full right (not the tail servo, motor is not connected) and stay there, and therer doesn't appear to he any response from the radio sticks, though I powered down pretty quick to avoid damaging the servos. But it happens every startup.
A orange light on the gyro runs back and forth (probably asking to be set up) I have no idea what to do about it.
Radio settings are normal swash, all servos at 100%, all trims at 0.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I have:

Align Trex 450l Super Combo 6S
- RCE-BL45P ESC
- RCM-BL460MX Motor
- Microbeast Plus Gyro

Spektrum NX6 Radio
Spektrum AR8020T Receiver

Sorry post is so long, just tried to give as much info as possible.
 
E

Eospro

Member
I think I have it sorted. I thought the servos would be centred out of the box. Apparently not!
I took the horns off and let the servos centre themselves then reattached the horns. All seems well now, but too late to think about it any more tonight or this morning, whatever it is now. Will get back to it in the morning or later this morning. Ahh, no wonder so many of you people drink coffee. lol
 
RandyDSok

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
First off ... Welcome to the forum

The first thing to address... is that you've "jumped into the deep end of the pool" as the saying goes. Helicopters are a challenge for an advanced pilot to fly and are not recommended to new users. The difficultly level is sort of like controlling around a spinning metal ball bearing on the top of a sheet of glass. On just about any flying RC craft you should expect that crashes will happen... with a heli expect them to happen often.

If you have a PC, then you can limit the amount of fixing the heli after the crashes by practicing on a flight simulator like Realflight which itself isn't cheap but it's much cheaper than all of the replacement parts you'll save over time... probably a pretty short time. I strongly recommend a flight simulator to practice any type of RC flying... for a heli flyer is is just this side of mandatory and will soon pay for itself.


About the servo centering and other specs. There are thousands of different RC radios, ESC's, receivers, gyros and servos of every different size, speed, strength, voltages and other specs you can think of out there. Just all of those differences alone make it impossible to automatically have a servo center itself out of the box. Include the pulse width range that is used to tell the servo where to be at is measured in micro seconds ... a common range many have is 1000-2000 µs but even those numbers vary. In fact, expect to have your assumptions on stuff you have no experience in to be shown up often... lol. In fact, I'm more surprised when I find my preconceptions I have about things I haven't learned yet are more right.... when I actually expect them to be more wrong.

Perhaps we should write a book... The Zen of RC flying ... assume nothing. :chuckles:
 
E

Eospro

Member
Thanks for your reply.
I should have known better. I imagine with all the excitement of getting the Trex together, I forgot the obvious.
I did get myself Realflight recently and try to practice a little each day.
I'm thinking of getting a Blade 230s to learn on, cheaper on parts and not too expensive, although will have to pick windless days or find an indoor stadium to practice in.
I don't have any intentions to use the Trex until I am confident in basic flying, so it will be sort of a motivation tool. Just looking at it gets me on Realflight. lol.
Well all baby steps at this stage, gotta crawl before we walk, and a great tool building it, learning how it works has made me respect the hobby even more.
 
E

Eospro

Member
I need help once again...
Seeing this is related to my setup, thought I would just continue on this post.
So spent most the morning setting up the microbeast gryo, alot more involved that I anticipated but quite enjoyable none the less.
All complete and time to give the motor a little power to see that everything works, and nothing, umm, hold mode off nothing, throttle curve set 0 - 30%, increase it to 40%, nothing 50%, 70%, 100% nothing. Motor wired correctly? yep black to black, red to red and blue to blue. ESC wired correctly, yep, plug to battery only fits one way, receiver and gyro working fine. Double, triple check radio settings, all seems OK.

Smart idea #1. Bind radio to blade 120 and see if it powers up, yep no problem there. Rebind to Trex, try again nothing, change battery, nothing. Getting concerned now

Smart idea #2. This is where you smart people come into play..

Any ideas??? Anyway to test motor & esc?? Can I attach the motor to a 2S ESC ( wired correctly) to test it?? And same with the esc if I connect it to a 2S battery and 2S motor???
 
E

Eospro

Member
Motor is fine. receiver appears ok, all servos work.
Connected 2S motor to esc and esc to 2S battery, nothing. So looking like the esc could be faulty. Disappointing as it is brand new. Will try anything else I can think off before I contact the shop tomorrow.
 
fran11784

fran11784

Goblin 380 Supporter
The AR8020, how are you running it? Are you using it as a standard receiver or trying to use the SRXL2 or one satellite? I looked at the manual on page 20, is that how you have it wired?
 
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E

Eospro

Member
Hi Fran11784, running it as standard, setup as on bottom half of page 20, which is the same as the Microbeast manual.
 
RandyDSok

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Eospro said:
Still no life with throttle trim at -100.
Contacted store and they are going to send me out a replacement.
Thanks for the welcome and all the help everyone.
Click to expand...

Ok... some explanation is needed...

ESC's will not arm a motor unless they can read the 0 and 100% range on a transmitters throttle and motor. This is a safety feature so people don't get hurt. So first, reset your transmitter to zero through 100% in it's settings. Next, read the manual for your specific ESC and follow it's instructions for calibrating your transmitter to your motor. Each one differs slightly, so the manual will tell you exactly what steps are needed. They should be something similar to place your throttle on the transmitter up all of the way ( 100% ), plug in a battery and you should hear a tone or some tones... then pull the throttle all of the way back down to zero.

When you set it to anything much over zero ( or less than in the case of -100 ) there was no way it was going to calibrate. What you were suggested earlier to start clicking down, would have helped if it was reading slightly higher than zero which is a common issue.
 
RandyDSok

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
PS...

Some gyro's have a calibration area in their settings... I'm not sure if the one you have does or not since I don't own any gyros. If it does... reset the settings on the transmitter as I mentioned but then do the calibration according to how your gyro tells you.
 
E

Eospro

Member
We have progress.
Maybe, Maybe not.
After calibrating the radio again, disabling hold mode, starting radio at full throttle Then plugging in the battery, I felt a single slight vibration from the motor, nothing else no tones.
Repeated this several times, but unable to get the vibrations or anything else again. At the same time the servos continue to work normally once the gyro has initialised.
 
E

Eospro

Member
Getting some inconsistent erratic life to the motor.
I have rebound the receiver several times, sometimes the motor will now beep and vibrate sometimes nothing.
I also reversed the throttle setting and got a few beeps and vibrations but then nothing when repeating the procedure.
Also got a few vibrations when moving throttle high to low quickly several times, but again unable to get to to do it again.

Is the ESC really faulty and giving me false hope, therefore I should just forget about it until the new one arrives?? Or is it trying to tell me I'm missing something and is ready to jump to life if I just listen to what it's trying to tell me.
Ahhh. Life is so much simpler with RC cars and boats.
At least Realflight is doing what it should, even if I'm not. lol
 
RandyDSok

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Your Spectrum radio shouldn't require reversing of the channel... Futaba's do by design because they are following a different standard on throttles.

I'm pretty certain you shouldn't have hold enabled... then the throttle wouldn't be moving.

I'm not making a call on if the ESC is at fault or something you are doing ( other than the above stuff which was wrong ). Calibrating an electric motor is a common requirement/recommendation. The part I'm ignorant on is having the gyro in the mix because I've read that several of them ( but not all ) are what perform the calibration steps in their software setup. You didn't mention if you checked the manual for that or not...
 
E

Eospro

Member
I'm starting to have doubts if it is faulty now, or something I'm doing. The more I fiddle around the more I appear to be getting various setup tones, but its not consistent with the instructions in the manual.
 
E

Eospro

Member
According to the manual, the esc goes to throttle on the receiver, which to me looks like Ch.3 (my receiver is just marked ch. 1-8).
One my radio it shows throttle is Ch.1 which I can not change.
I have tried both.
With esc cable connected to Ch.1 everything works but no power to the motor.
When connected to Ch.3 receiver light comes on and gyro lights just scan back and forth continuously.
 

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