Mikado warns Logo 700 owners - but why?

About a week ago Mikado published a warning notice to all Logo 700 owners due to an unwanted static charging issue occurring on the model’s tail. It sounds serious but what’s the real cause of this issue and why is this so important? I will try to explain as clearly as possible…

First of all, what’s happening? The source of the problem is the tail belt. During operation the belt can touch the inner wall of tail boom tube or the mounting block, this friction generates an electrostatic charge on these components. When the build-up of charge reaches a certain level it is then discharged by generating a spark somewhere – which itself then generates an electromagnetic field. The bigger the discharge, the stronger that field is.

The problem comes from here.

The helicopter has many sensitive electronic devices on board, like the servos, ESC, BEC (or BEC-ESC combo), FBL or gyro and the most important – the receiver. These devices are able to interact with this unwanted electromagnetic field causing undesirable effects. The most likely to interact with the unwanted electromagnetic field is the receiver antenna as this is what it is designed to do – just that it’s supposed to receive a field from your transmitter, not from this discharge – and it tries to interpret this as a kind of message, but obviously it can’t.

By now we have smarter and smarter receivers, most modern systems can notice the difference between a message from your transmitter and an erroneous one caused by this type of discharge and ignore the faulty ones – mostly… If the frequency of these sparks is higher than the limit of the fault tolerance, then there’s a crash. Fortunately the chance of this happening is unlikely, but it’s definitely not 0 percent.

Back to the past, and in the early years of helicopter modelling (before modern receivers) there were many issues like this to be handled. One of these was the electromotor. These motors were brushed motors, where the carbon brush contacting with the commutators timed the motor itself, generating a tiny spark with each rotation. The receivers were not prepared to distinguish between real and error messages causing many, many crashes as the motors wore from usage and generated bigger and bigger sparks.

This is one of the reasons why the brushless motor was a monumental change in helicopter modelling. Brushless motors don’t generate sparks or the associated unnecessary electromagnetic fields. Modern receivers then brought the next big change with error correction making RC helicopter flying much safer.

Although these innovations reduce the possibility of a spark causing an issue the chance is, again, still not zero. To be honest I have never flown Logo 700 but the symptom is not unknown even to me. As a beginner or semi-advanced pilot I had to endure this problem on a belt-driven T-Rex 500. I was flying the helicopter when I noticed a hiccup on the cyclic control periodically causing me a small heart-attack followed by stream of colourful language and then a landing by autorotation. Every 1-2 second the helicopter would jerk forward, forcing me to pull it back. It was a real fight for control.

This was a known issue even on T-Rex 500 CF

By that afternoon (ok, night…) I had found the problem. With its blades removed and on the kitchen table next to a desk lamp, with the noise of the 500 making my family very happy, I noticed the little sparks between the tail tube and the carbon fibre sheet, then the tell-tale shaking servos. I had heard that WD40 is a good solution on the belt, so I sprayed half a bottle on it. It did solve the problem, but only for a few days.

So I was ready to throw the entire helicopter in the bin, then one of my mates told me the ultimate solution (thank you Gabi Füge): a wire underneath the servo arm in contact with a screw on the carbon sheet, and voilà, job done. This wire discharges the potential continuously, preventing the build-up of charge and therefore avoiding all the sparks. No more hiccups, no more problems.

Now Mikado offers the same solution, but I hope it’s clear for you why this is so important

2020: The majority of the RC flying to become illegal?

A few days ago the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) released preliminary rules for UAVs and remote controlled drones, the 'Prototype' Commission on Unmanned Aircraft Operations, which are due to come into force by 2020. I have read the regulations in full, and whilst I live in hope that they simply represent a very early draft due for revision, in reality I fear they will have grave consequences for the RC modelling community within only a few short years’ time. At a stroke this document seeks to make an educational, entertaining and highly popular hobby illegal - or at least so inaccessible as to be a nightmare, if not impossible, for most common people to participate in.

Reading through I naturally assumed I would find that these rules would be specifically applied to multi-copters or industrial and commercial operations or similar. It seems however that the bureaucrats want to with one sweeping set of rules ham-fistedly bunch all models together regardless of their type, make or purpose. In other words, these rules seek to cover everything from paper airplanes and toys, right through to almost military-spec drones, saying nothing of the glaringly obvious differences among these aircraft.

The 'prototype' regulations explain that there will be three main categories. The first, the 'open' category seems to be the most important to the RC world as the other two, the 'special' and 'certified' categories are designed for industrial and emergency service use.

The first ‘open’ category is subdivided into four further categories (stay with me here..); A0, A1, A2 and A3 – The first of these is absolutely free in that it doesn’t require the pilot to have any special licenses or for them to register themselves anywhere, however there are many extremely strict limitations that both the pilot and their UAV* are subject to. Fortunately there isn’t an age limit, so potentially even a toddler could fly in this category, but with what I hear you ask? Well, an aircraft up to a take-off weight of 250g (including batteries) which cannot not fly higher or further than 50 meters (150ft) from the pilot. Also its maximum horizontal speed must not exceed 15m/s (54km/h or 32mph) and the UAV must be able to be flown without any training. Oh, and finally it must not be capable of causing any serious injuries… Dear T-Rex 250 owners, you can forget about this category immediately.

This will not fit into A0 category...

3...2...1 and lift up...

Here we go. It's started. Yes, this is going to be a new blog about RC helicopters, their controlling, their principles, facts, news and everything so. Serious? Yes it is, and no it's not. Depends on the topic. But first of all: RC Helicopter is not a toy!!!

It's me - in Tweety II. Mi-24P 716 (HUAF)

This is really serious and dangerous hobby, sport, lifestyle, call it as you want, but it's a fact: it can kill you - as a donkey, a horse, your motorcycle and everything which aren't toys. But let's leave the dark sensational topics for tabloid media.

Who am I? I'm a guy from a little country in East Europe called Hungary. I was 4th in the national championship in 2010 as RC helicopter pilot, I have started to run the rchelicopter.hu at the same time. One year later I organised the national championship with few other fanatics. It wasn't so successful - I mean the organisation, but that is a longer story. At least no one has injured - physically ... and finally we have been doing it correctly.

Apart from this accident, I started to publish my thoughts on my blog which is still running called forgoszarny.blog.hu, Don't worry, most likely you will not understand it, it's Hungarian. And I can hope it only, you will understand me here, because I'm struggling with this language. But...

Being interviewed...

My 700E next to a real R22 (HA-MIZ)

700E and MD 500 of Hungarian Police

What's behind my 600N? Yes, the Mi-26 from Die Hard 5.

There is a guy, named Aaron. He told me "come-on, you can, if you are so successful there, you can make it here." Because fact is fact: The rchelicopter.hu is still running, whatever more it's rising up from its ruins. Plus there is my blog, the recent two posts were re-blogged on one of the biggest Hungarian news sites, on the "second cover" page of index.hu where the "bests of the people's internet" are - as they say. So let's suppose I'm not quite unknown in RC helicopter community there.

So wish me luck, please. I'll do my best.

Peter "PgPetike" Szabo - not relative of Alan Szabo Jr.