I went down on Friday to pick up my X20 Pro AW. Being I went down in the afternoon, I knew traffic was going to suck so I took my motorcycle. My previous X20S fits nicely into a backpack and I assumed the new one would be about the same, so I just brought my tank bag. Well, fortunately they had some rope I could use to secure my package, as it was a bit bigger than I thought.
Fear not...we (the radio and I) made it back home just fine. (isn't she pretty?)
Now we can get to the main point of my story.
I started off my "modern" RC life as a heli flyer, and as such, I bought heli radios, first a JR 8103, then a Futaba 9Z, followed by the 14MZ. For those unaware, the heli version of the radio has the momentary (trainer) switch on the left and the two position (throttle hold) switch on the right. So the first thing I have to do with all my radios now is swap those two switches. Let me tell you, this one was the most difficult. (I really hate having to take my brand new $1200 radio apart to do surgery on it)
This radio is built a little different than all their previous models as the backplate is actually 3 pieces. The side "hand hold" areas are aluminum and come off separately from the center plastic back piece. The switches need to be desoldered to move them and the plugs are buried underneath another board, so the easiest way to do this was to do all the soldering with the switches inside the radio. The center backplate needed to be moved out of the way a bit, but it has 4 antenna wires running from it to the circuit boards, essentially attaching the 4 corners of it to the boards beneath it making it very difficult. I removed the two lower connectors as those were easy to get to (circled one and arrow to the other on the right side of the picture below).
I didn't want to desolder the switches while in the case, so I removed them, which also was a major pain as the wires (arrow on the bottom center of the image) ran under a board to their connection point and were just long enough to reach. I ended up soldering the wires back up with the switches in place and rotated a bit as I didn't want to stress the wires after soldering. If I broke one, I would had to have spliced it to make it long enough to make the journey.
The radio works fine, at least I think it does...I have only tried using ACCESS so far, but the antenna connections were fine after reattaching them and a drop of hot glue is holding them in place.
Oh, one other note. If you look at the gimbals you can see the round (battery looking things) haptic feedback units on the backs of them. Not sure what I will use them for, but I am thinking my low battery alarm on my powered items.
Cheers, Guy
Fear not...we (the radio and I) made it back home just fine. (isn't she pretty?)
Now we can get to the main point of my story.
I started off my "modern" RC life as a heli flyer, and as such, I bought heli radios, first a JR 8103, then a Futaba 9Z, followed by the 14MZ. For those unaware, the heli version of the radio has the momentary (trainer) switch on the left and the two position (throttle hold) switch on the right. So the first thing I have to do with all my radios now is swap those two switches. Let me tell you, this one was the most difficult. (I really hate having to take my brand new $1200 radio apart to do surgery on it)
This radio is built a little different than all their previous models as the backplate is actually 3 pieces. The side "hand hold" areas are aluminum and come off separately from the center plastic back piece. The switches need to be desoldered to move them and the plugs are buried underneath another board, so the easiest way to do this was to do all the soldering with the switches inside the radio. The center backplate needed to be moved out of the way a bit, but it has 4 antenna wires running from it to the circuit boards, essentially attaching the 4 corners of it to the boards beneath it making it very difficult. I removed the two lower connectors as those were easy to get to (circled one and arrow to the other on the right side of the picture below).
I didn't want to desolder the switches while in the case, so I removed them, which also was a major pain as the wires (arrow on the bottom center of the image) ran under a board to their connection point and were just long enough to reach. I ended up soldering the wires back up with the switches in place and rotated a bit as I didn't want to stress the wires after soldering. If I broke one, I would had to have spliced it to make it long enough to make the journey.
The radio works fine, at least I think it does...I have only tried using ACCESS so far, but the antenna connections were fine after reattaching them and a drop of hot glue is holding them in place.
Oh, one other note. If you look at the gimbals you can see the round (battery looking things) haptic feedback units on the backs of them. Not sure what I will use them for, but I am thinking my low battery alarm on my powered items.
Cheers, Guy
