I have been working on my Wisconsin this week and am running into a problem. I cannot get the turrets to rotate when I have throttle engaged. When I attempt to rotate the the motors stall and the power to the receiver starts to flicker. If I rotate and attempt to shoot the cannons then the receiver loses power. The ship is configured for Big Gun format. The ship is running on a 6VDC system with 3 standard servos for depression, 2 sail wench servos for cannon rotation, 1 standard servo for turning on the bilge pump and 1 standard servo for steering . My Radio is a Spektrum DX6i, the receiver is a AR6210 and am using a Mtronics Marine Viper 40A ESC. The battery is wired to the ESC and the ESC is providing source power to the receiver through the throttle connector. I noticed that on the receiver that there is a battery connector. An I supposed to be using an auxillary battery? Any idea about what maybe going on would be most appreciated.
Sounds like you're pulling too much power through the battery eliminator circuit on the ESC. There's many reasons for that, but often the main culprit is the depression servos being under constant load, pulling power for no good reason.
Seconded on Darrin's diagnosis. I would suggest disconnecting the depression linkage and seeing if that helps.
Chances are you have too much draw on the batteries. Try running the reciever on a seperate battery not tied into the main drive system. Go big, not the wimpy 4 AAsized ones, maybe even a gel cell. Also, DO NOT HOOK ANY BATTERY INTO THE CIRCUIT UNTIL YOU DISCONNECT THE RED WIRE FROM ESC TO RECIEVER!!! ( the tri colored wire that plugs into the reciever from the esc. probably a futaba j plug) You will smoke the esc! You have the space in a Iowa and probably could use the weight anyway. When the motor pull the gell cells down to 6v or below you start having glitches and strange things like you are reporting. Remember you are probably running 6 or more servos, drive motors, pump and transmitter off the same batteries. They don't like it. Mine never did either.
A few things you should do. First, grab a multimeter and watch the voltage levels on your batteries when you're doing these things, see what they're doing - note your initial voltage followed by the levels when you open up the throttle - if the sag is significant, your motors are probably drawing way too much for your batteries. Second, get a DC ammeter- the clamp on ones are handy for this - and see what sort of current draw you have in the various subsystems.
Thanks all. After running some DC and current checks, I determined that my two sail wench servos are serious current hogs. I was able to correct the problem by using Iceman's suggestion. I was able to put Wisconsin on the pond with no electronic issues. She ran for over an hour with no heat issues, all systems checked out within desired results. Once again, thanks for the tech assist. Ken
Awesome, always good things to find out! You can also, rather than use your rx to power the sail winch servos, generally power them directly off the main battery if you're running a 6v system. Pull the red and black lines from the servo extension and wire them into a connection to your main battery harness. Most servos are rated to run on 6v mains and will work faster and with more torque, with the added bonus of not drawing all that juice through your rx.
Thanks for the advice Nick. I will look at it after I finish figuring out what is wrong with my CO2 plumbing efforts.
