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wow, it worked!


Bob Moore
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I had a mishap with my old trainer yesterday. A dead stick which resulted in a bad landing and broken wing servo. (It wasn't behaving right on the ground, so I shouldn't have flown anyway.)
 
Anyhow,  I replaced said servo with one out of my box of bits and found that it worked the wrong way. (They are connected by Y lead.)  I tried unsucessfully different ways of connecting the servo. Apparently that can be a good way to smoke something?
 
Searches revealed it was necessary to desolder and reverse the outside wires on the pot and reverse the motor wires.  On first reassembly of the servo, nothing, no noise no movement. (I think the gears were jammed.) Second reassembly , woo hoo, it had reversed and the travel was the same.
 
Nice to have a bit of success.
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Well done Bob........!! Obviously a posessor of a steady hand & a keen eye (& a soldering iron with a very small tip!!!)
 
In t' olden days when we used to power our radios with coal & servo reversing hadn't been invented Futaba used to sell two versions of their servos.....one with a red label & one with a black label The different colours indicated that each servo rotated a different way for a given command!!! Of course you always needed more "red" servos than you had so we used to do exactly as you described to "reverse" a servo & then you had a "black" servo that was really a "red" servo.....no wonder we only had one model at a time back then
 
Ah yes radio installation really was a challenge in t' olden days as everything had to be achieved mechanically.....you youngsters today don't know you're born....we had no servo reversing, none of yer fancy EPA or ATV.....sub-trim? sub-trim? I'll give you sub-trim my lad....just you try & set up a reliable throttle control with only the different radius horn holes to help you.....full throttle without straining the servo...a nice progressive reduction in engine speed down to a reliable idle with none of yer fancy electronic doo dahs to help......that's real aeromodelling lad & don't you forget it.....!!!!
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Actually turning it over end for end doesn't work,  as I found when I tried it!  And it  would have been much easier.  Turning it left to right would work, but wasn't an option as I would have had to have moved the horn.
 
The terminals aren't that bad really Steve, especially when compared to soldering inside an 808 key chain camera, as I discovered when I attached remote leads for shutter release and power supply. The terminals there are the size of a pin head, and the work has to be done under a magnifying glass! (I do like a challenge though.)
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Linear servos??? LINEAR SERVOS????????
 
LUXURY.......why in my day we used to work 27 hours a day down t' pit for three years just to afford a single servo & if rotary servos were good enough for my dear old Dad & 'is Dad before 'im & 'is Dad before him then they were good enough me....so don't come yer fancy linear servos stuff wi me lad...........
 
Actually my first radio, a Digifleet set, had servos you could swap from linear to rotary by changing the top case......it was a great idea as a linear servo works really well in certain installations....
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I mentioned turning the servo over etc just to ensure beginners did not get the wrong idea  & start mucking around with the insides of their servos unnecessarily!  And I did go and get a servo out and check I was right before I posted!
Its also possible to use seperate channels  instead of a Y lead in many cases ( not all ) so soldering should not really be necessary. ( Experts only! Reliability is essential for safety )
 
 


Edited By kc on 11/11/2010 12:19:01

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Eeh, rotary servos you big ninnie. In my day ma-lad it were th'elastic band out of yer kecks. And if th'model went any distance year'd 'ave to run with thy undies round yer ankles to fetch it back. Yer Ma sent yer out with Kiel Kraft model, fish paste buttie and a bottle of water t'last all day - aye and half the night as well. I'll tell thee summat else as well - sun shone every day of year it did and th'air always smellt of new mown grass. Aye those were th'days.
 
BEB
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Posted by Steve Hargreaves on 11/11/2010 11:44:02:

In t' olden days when we used to power our radios with coal & servo reversing hadn't been invented Futaba used to sell two versions of their servos.....one with a red label & one with a black label

 
And just to illustrate the point,  here's one from the mid-1970s with a red label;
 
 
The black label version obviously looks the same apart from having a black label!
 
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OK- all of the old RC gear probably is off topic in this thread but I like to see it and read about it, so I think everyone with interesting gear like this should start a special thread or section of the forum just for this sort of thing.
 
David Ashby started a historic  RCM&E section somewhere-- maybe he could start off a section for old RC gear (or maybe there is one already- can't find it though), so we can find it all in one place.
 

Edited By Chris Downing on 11/11/2010 23:28:52

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