Rc range anxiety

[JohnDora]

My Futaba 40MHZ system has only a 20m range, even when the equipment tray for my Robbe Type XXI Rx aerial is separated from the WTC. Over that distance the servos glitch. Any thoughts? Tia.

[JHapprich]

Any cables in parallel to the receiver antenna? Same issue with separate receiver battery? Overworked BEC?

Jörg

[JohnDora]

Some parallel and close - how not to in the confines of a WTC I wonder?

[trout]

I would be concerned about that short of a range too!

Are your motors set up with capacitors? I had a Tamiya RC Truck decades ago and I did not know about capacitors on the motor. Reception to that truck was horrible.

Is your sub a dry hull? Or are you running the antenna in the wet?
If the antenna is in a dry space, then I would suggest redistributing the antenna. If it is not in a nice arrangement, wrapping it around a styrene tube and moving it away from power sources (or motors). I have also wrapped my antenna on a plastic sheet too. Just make sure not to cross over on itself. The funny part is every sub is different. I have one that the antenna is just jumbled up and stuffed in the WTC - it runs great. I have had one that I had to move the antenna all over the place to finally get a decent reception. Any photos of your arrangement?

[Subculture]

This could be any number of things affecting either receiver or transmitter. It does help if you have (known to be good) spare items that you can substitute to narrow down the item that is playing up.

Motor brush noise suppression can be an issue, but only if you are running the motors at the time of poor reception.

Simple things to check are the power supply quality e.g. good enough voltage, aerial connections, and that unless the items are synthesized the frequency crystals are in good condition.

[trout]

This could be any number of things affecting either receiver or transmitter. It does help if you have (known to be good) spare items that you can substitute to narrow down the item that is playing up.

Motor brush noise suppression can be an issue, but only if you are running the motors at the time of poor reception.

Simple things to check are the power supply quality e.g. good enough voltage, aerial connections, and that unless the items are synthesized the frequency crystals are in good condition.

Good point. A simple range check can help. Just a TX and RX, a battery and servo. See the distance you can get. I had a RX that even though it said it was a specific channel, it had horrible reception and when I swapped the RX out, all worked great. You should be able to move that RX/servo combo a long distance away (blocks). If not it could be more locally caused verses the submarine environment. This is the simplest setup to eliminate issues.