Receiver Power

[Subculture]

My understanding of the Tmax system is that the last 15% is proportional, with feedback supplied by a linear slider on the tank.

If that is the case, it could be a dirty slider/pot.

[HardRock]

Correct. The last 15% is proportional. How do I effectively clean the pot?

[Subculture]

Isopropanol alcohol works well (this is what is used for cleaning tape heads for instance). You can usually get it from chemists. You can also get cleaners like Deoxit, which are used for cleaner pots faders etc. in the recording industry. Very good stuff, but expensive.

[HardRock]

Got some in the shed. Thanks for the tip.

[Subculture]

Okay. Just 'paint' a bit in with a small clean brush and work the pot back and forth a few times. Obviously check simple things like the wiring from the pot to the board. It's highly unlikely you are experiencing radio interference issues- the Engel boards use relays which have close to ideal separation between low level signals from the receiver and power cabling.

If cleaning doesn't fix it, you may require a new pot.

[HardRock]

Thanks. I'll get onto it in the morning and see what happens. I should add that Gregor Engel came back to me within a very short time and suggested separating the signal and power lines and putting a ferrite ring on the signal line.

[HardRock]

OK. Cleaned the pots as suggested and retried the system but got the same glitching. So, following a bit of experimentation I adjusted the end points on the two transmitter slider channels to 80% either way and, voila! No more glitch. Its as steady as a rock and behaves according to the script. There's no suggestion that this might be necessary in any of the documentation that comes with the TMax by the way. Maybe its an unusual thing.

[Subculture]

Very odd, sounds like a possible bug in the firmware of the controller.

[HardRock]

I had a long exchange with Gregor Engel regarding this. He has a similar set up in one of his own boats and at one point he went through all of his own settings just to check. Turns out that here is no requirement to reduce the slider end points on his gear, both are set at 100%.

I'm glad its fixed; that thing was rocking and rolling like drunk with St Vitus Dance. Just in the process of shovelling it all back into the hull.