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Intermittently signal loss help

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blaze309

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Hey everyone,

Ran my first race this weekend with my ET48 and EB48. However, I had issues the last two races with my EB48 losing signal for about 2 seconds intermittently. I was first in my main but it kept randomly cutting out so I ended up taking it more easy just so I could finish the race and try to keep from running into walls when I lost all control.

What should I be looking at? I checked all the wires and solder points on the esc wires. I checked my receiver and everything was still firmly plugged in. The only thing I did find was I checked my transmitter wire for the battery pack and when I pushed on it it wasn't plugged in fully (probably about 80-90% plugged in) and I did change my transmitter batteries before my last runs. Would that have been enough to cause the issues? Obviously, I'll find out once I get to run the car some more but since it's intermittently it's hard to reproduce. I'm running a Futaba 4Pm with R304SB-E receiver if that helps at all.
 
If the time was consistent that 2s sounds like the receiver was losing connection with the transmiter, the time to reconnect would be about 2 seconds. If you have your fail-safe set, turn off the transmitter and then back on again to see how long it takes to connect up. Would you have been running a timer on the transmitter? That would have reset each time if it was the transmitter was turning off momentarily.

It is a really unnerving thing to have happen I hope you can sort it out. Hopefully it was just the battery connector in the radio.
 
I would start checking the integrity of receiver’s antenna. If the antenna is broken, reception signal is going to be dramatically weaker and what was suggested by @PrimaRC may absolutely occur. Loss of signal and Tx need to re-synch with Rx.
 
If the time was consistent that 2s sounds like the receiver was losing connection with the transmiter, the time to reconnect would be about 2 seconds. If you have your fail-safe set, turn off the transmitter and then back on again to see how long it takes to connect up. Would you have been running a timer on the transmitter? That would have reset each time if it was the transmitter was turning off momentarily.

It is a really unnerving thing to have happen I hope you can sort it out. Hopefully it was just the battery connector in the radio.
I don't believe there's a fail safe set unless it defaults to being setup. And yeah it's more of a pain then anything trying to track down the issue since it just happens randomly. Both the receiver and transmitter are brand new but it seems one is faulty.
 
I would start checking the integrity of receiver’s antenna. If the antenna is broken, reception signal is going to be dramatically weaker and what was suggested by @PrimaRC may absolutely occur. Loss of signal and Tx need to re-synch with Rx.
The receivers I use don't even have antenna's on them.
 
I don't believe there's a fail safe set unless it defaults to being setup. And yeah it's more of a pain then anything trying to track down the issue since it just happens randomly. Both the receiver and transmitter are brand new but it seems one is faulty.
What I mean is make sure that if you turn off your radio while your receiver is on that you have done the bind process correctly and that the car won't take off on you. It is just a test to see if you think you had the same experience when the radio would drop out. Turning off the transmitter then back on again is just simulating the transmitter with a bad connection.
 
What I mean is make sure that if you turn off your radio while your receiver is on that you have done the bind process correctly and that the car won't take off on you. It is just a test to see if you think you had the same experience when the radio would drop out. Turning off the transmitter then back on again is just simulating the transmitter with a bad connection.

So if I understand correctly your just saying to turn the transmitter and then car on like normal and then just power down the transmitter and make sure the car doesn't take off? Upon doing that the receiver just goes from green to red and stays that way until I power back on the transmitter. It doesn't try to take off or anything. But yeah probably takes about 2 seconds for everything to link back up after powering the transmitter back on.
 
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We have two brand new 4pms and they both have this issue intermittently. One is on the 304-e antennaless receiver, the other is on the 304 antenna version.

I'm not getting anywhere tracking this down, as it doesn't seem to have anything in common from failure to failure. Sometimes it happens on the grid like 20ft away, sometimes across the track. It is pretty rare overall, maybe once every 10-20 runs.

I've seen quite a few other racers have their cars go limp mid-race, too, so I know this isn't something specific to our cars. Just a few races ago a TLR had their car go limp just like I've seen our cars do it.

At this point I suspect Futaba TFHSS is to blame, but I swear one or two of these other racers I saw it happen to were on Sanwa.

🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️😩
 
Hey everyone,

Ran my first race this weekend with my ET48 and EB48. However, I had issues the last two races with my EB48 losing signal for about 2 seconds intermittently. I was first in my main but it kept randomly cutting out so I ended up taking it more easy just so I could finish the race and try to keep from running into walls when I lost all control.

What should I be looking at? I checked all the wires and solder points on the esc wires. I checked my receiver and everything was still firmly plugged in. The only thing I did find was I checked my transmitter wire for the battery pack and when I pushed on it it wasn't plugged in fully (probably about 80-90% plugged in) and I did change my transmitter batteries before my last runs. Would that have been enough to cause the issues? Obviously, I'll find out once I get to run the car some more but since it's intermittently it's hard to reproduce. I'm running a Futaba 4Pm with R304SB-E receiver if that helps at all.

Lets start comparing other components besides the Futaba. Maybe we can spot a common cause.

Both my cars are eb48 2.0.

Both have HW XR8 Pro G2 and 4268 1900kv G3 motors.

Both have Protek 170SBL servos

Both have an extra motor fan

Both have MyLaps RC4 Pro transponders
 
We have two brand new 4pms and they both have this issue intermittently. One is on the 304-e antennaless receiver, the other is on the 304 antenna version.

I'm not getting anywhere tracking this down, as it doesn't seem to have anything in common from failure to failure. Sometimes it happens on the grid like 20ft away, sometimes across the track. It is pretty rare overall, maybe once every 10-20 runs.

I've seen quite a few other racers have their cars go limp mid-race, too, so I know this isn't something specific to our cars. Just a few races ago a TLR had their car go limp just like I've seen our cars do it.

At this point I suspect Futaba TFHSS is to blame, but I swear one or two of these other racers I saw it happen to were on Sanwa.

🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️😩

I wonder if Futaba is having some quality control issues. I saw another guy on RcTech forums talking about the same issue a few months back. I believe he sent in both the transmitter and receiver and I believe they told him the transmitter had a fault and the sent him a replacement.
The only difference in ours is that yours seems to happen a lot less. I had to run two back to back mains both 8 minutes each and probably went out a total of 10 times between those 16 minutes.
My current setup is
Futaba 4PM
304SB-E Receiver
My Laps RC4 Transponder
Hobbywing XR8 Plus ESC
HobbySTAR Sensorless 2050kv Motor
SRT BH-9032 Servo
 
I wonder if Futaba is having some quality control issues. I saw another guy on RcTech forums talking about the same issue a few months back. I believe he sent in both the transmitter and receiver and I believe they told him the transmitter had a fault and the sent him a replacement.
The only difference in ours is that yours seems to happen a lot less. I had to run two back to back mains both 8 minutes each and probably went out a total of 10 times between those 16 minutes.
My current setup is
Futaba 4PM
304SB-E Receiver
My Laps RC4 Transponder
Hobbywing XR8 Plus ESC
HobbySTAR Sensorless 2050kv Motor
SRT BH-9032 Servo
10 times in 16min seems like a different kind of issue. Maybe you have a cable with the insulation frayed touching metal chassis?

As for QA issues, it would be a bit shocking to have two 4pm bought a few weeks apart from two different dealers exhibit the exact same problem. This is why I think the issue we are seeing is either a design problem with TFHSS or something simpler like power delivery to the Rx, caused by anything from batttery/ESC/BEC/servo/fan load etc.

We are going to try running a glitch buster in hopes of ruling out power delivery.
 
10 times in 16min seems like a different kind of issue. Maybe you have a cable with the insulation frayed touching metal chassis?

As for QA issues, it would be a bit shocking to have two 4pm bought a few weeks apart from two different dealers exhibit the exact same problem. This is why I think the issue we are seeing is either a design problem with TFHSS or something simpler like power delivery to the Rx, caused by anything from batttery/ESC/BEC/servo/fan load etc.

We are going to try running a glitch buster in hopes of ruling out power delivery.
I checked all my wiring but it was good. Plus, everything was literally brand new.

https://www.rctech.net/forum/radio-electronics/1082876-futaba-4pm-random-signal-loss.html
 
If you can't replicate it, maybe it was just that plug not seated all the way home?

Go out in your yard and give it a drive or go to a park and see how far you can go before it drops out of at all.

If it was the receiver dropping out you would have the steering in whatever position the steering was in when it faded, if it was the transmitter it would "reboot" and likely the steering would centre if that's how the binding sets it for a signal loss.

Did the car run on or just roll on during the failure?
 
If you can't replicate it, maybe it was just that plug not seated all the way home?

Go out in your yard and give it a drive or go to a park and see how far you can go before it drops out of at all.

If it was the receiver dropping out you would have the steering in whatever position the steering was in when it faded, if it was the transmitter it would "reboot" and likely the steering would centre if that's how the binding sets it for a signal loss.

Did the car run on or just roll on during the failure?
The car would just roll on during the cut outs
 
It sounds to me from the info provided that it was your transmitter that was dropping out. Hopefully just that battery connector not making a good connection.

Yeah, I just came across another guy on Facebook that was having the same issue with his Futaba 4Pm as well along with the guy in the forums I found. Trying to decide if I should just send everything back and switch over to Sanwa.
 

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