I have a hitec 555 reciever which I used on a parkflier. The antenna ran down the center of a carbon fiber tube which was the tailboom. It seems that some CA wicked through the tube and glued the antenna wire to the inside of the tube. I was unable to get the wire loose without mangling it. Is it easy to replace the antenna, or do I have to send it in to get it fixed?
Mail it in. Hitec fixes it for free. and in 2 weeks.
I agree with Dr1Driver's post. You can replace the antenna wire with any
22-24 gauge wire, but make sure the new antenna is the same length as the old one. Hitec has those numbers on their site somewhere.As a side, I do this myself so I can bury the antenna in a wing or something similar and use a single pin connector to connect my receivers and antennas. Allows me to fly multiple ships with one receiver; I don't have a lot to spend on the hobby right now.
~Dan
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Hi Norman, Although any copper wire will work for an antenna. I would not recommend just any wire for the job. Standard stranded wire has only seven strands and will not stand up to the flexing that an antenna on a model undergoes. Use nineteen strands or more such as servo wire if you have any. You can also splice on to what is left. Do not just twist it together though. If you have no experience soldering, I would surely recommend you send it in for repair. If you have experience soldering, I can send you a piece of nineteen stranded wire if you e-mail me your address.
Good Luck Gene
I use single strand copper PC board wire for my DLG planes without any problems. I wrap it around the carbon boom and tack it with CA. Havent had one break yet.
Craig
Well, obviously I didn't make my self clear enough. If you have your antenna wraped around a boom and secured with glue, it can't very well flex and flop around in the slip stream can it. Good Luck Gene
They key to using fewer stiffer trands of wires is to support the joints, and the wire. Its fatigue that gets it in the end.
I had a RC boat a couple years ago and used a standard 72mhz tx & rx.
I used a bobbin setup to shorten the antenna and it greatly decreased the range. Prehaps I wrapped it incorrectly.
No, I wasn't near any airfields to interfere with anyone flying.
Craig- Good that you are getting away with it, but I wouldn't recommend this to others. A carbon boom is a fair to middling conductor; this seems pretty much equivalent to wrapping the antenna around solid wire pushrods, which few folks with a smattering of EM field theory in their bag of tricks would be inclined to do.
Abel
That carbon or graphite boom may be a good conductor shouldn't pose a problem, since it is magnetically inert AFAIK. I'm no EE but my basic EMag understanding tell me you should be more worried about coiling that antenna wire too many times around that boom, whatever the boom material is. A few turns down the boom is okay. If you do it too much, the coiling will act like an inductor and change the effective electrical length of that anetnna wire - possibly knocking it out of tune and decreasing range.
Still, if it is a Hand Launched Glider (don't know what a DLG is), then range is probably not a concern since you don't typically fly it too far away.
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