Well miserable topic but I have to raise it. Had a small mishap last night while for the first time powering up my DSX9 system on my one competition heli, thought I might share the situation even though we have yet to fully establish the cause of the problem/incident.
Followed everything as per instructions plugging the bind plug into the charge lead on the 3-way switch and everything proceeded to bind like it should. Everything worked fine for about 30 seconds (Yeh I was doing the little boy thing and wiggling the sticks around on the bench for no explainable reason). Then all of a sudden the light on the sat rx starts blinking and a short funky servo response, then the next light on the main rx along with more servos going funky and then finally the last and third light joins it's mates with the x-mas dance..poof all the servos go dead with only the occasional buzz. Panic station and defcon 4 sets in as I grab the RX pack and tweak my smell senses for indications of something about to start a very expensive BBQ on the bench....alas the enemy has gone full recon. I powered off and immediatly got out the battery checker, RX battery doesn't even get one light on the checker fired up...it's as unresponsive as a member of parlement. No indications of heat however and everything's smelling dandy.
I was a little dumb struck to say the least, powering the system up again only gave me a nice light display and nothing more productive than that. I then proceeded to hook the Swallow up to the flightpack to discharge, guess what the Swallow also confirms it's dead. How could this be? I flew the battery just this past Saturday and it was still full as I only had a short 5 minute flight to test something. This is a big 3300mah NiMH pack, they don't go flat just because going flat sounds like fun. Tried charging that sucker up and no luck, can only manage putting 200odd mah back in..it's toast to say the least. Took the pack out of it's used to be cuddly home between all the strapping tape and found the heatshrink over the poles on the connecting plates are melted away slightly.
So after speaking to a couple of people this morning we established:
1) The battery was rather old, so yes murphy could have decided now's a good time to let it die so I can have a sleepless night or two trying to resolve this mess.
2) The battery was a little flattish as it was used and being a NiMH the binding process could have forced the voltage of the pack down the drain.
3) Binding could have bursted some serious Amps through the pack and in so doing made the voltage drop below desired levels reversing the polarity of a cell or two (Haven't seen this myself but other members in the club speak of this happening
).
So in conclution I'm forced to think using an old NiCD pack lying around to bind your spektrum equipment might be a safe method of doing this. Maybe I was just unlucky with a series of unwanted incredients making my soup turn to KFC. Yes yes it could have been worse and this battery could have decided to retire upstairs, I'm not crying. Just bummed cause these packs aren't growing on trees, not even in Columbia.
Anyone have any thoughts on this situation?
