Replacing Receiver Antenna

[SuperRoo]

Can anyone help with advice on how to go about replacing the receiver antenna or suggest who to take it to to get it replaced?

[Matt]

Ive done this.

Need a soldering iron with a very fine and small tip. Some thin, thin wire from Dick Smith (39 cents per meter, buy 5 to 10 meters worth).

* open the receiver.
* unsolder current antenna
* the new antenna must be the EXACT SAME length as when the receiver was new. if you lost an inch, add an inch back on when you cut the new wire.

That part is very, very important.

* solder on new wire
* test receiver while its still open. have a mate take the vehicle (boat, car, plane) 20 to 30 meters away and see that theres no glitching or erratic movement.

All done and it should work. Good luck and keep us posted here on how it goes. Pics are always welcome :) .

Matt.

[SuperRoo]

This would have been the simple solution but I dont know how long the antenna was before and I dont want to take a rough guess.

It happened in the last race last night to Yvonne's E-Maxx and it was glitching pretty bad.

If I had a ossiliscope it would be a easy fix.

I might drop Futaba a email and see if they can suggest the length.

Thanks for the suggestion Matt.

BTW the best wire for this is the rainbow coloured ribbon cable for computers.

[daz75]

if you still have the manual for the radio it will have the length in there it should be under specs

[stone]

I agree with Matt,yet in some articals in manuels they say too CUT the exsess wire off.
From what I have been lead too belive it is at a certin lenght too optimise range.I have replaced on on a mini t befor,luckly I had another too measure against,Work's fine now.The reason I replaced it was because the old one was nicked in a few places and had lost a few centermeter's off the end.
The bugger would glitch at the same two spot's on the track every lap.Not anymore!!!

[SuperRoo]

Just an update, I have a friend in the radio industry that had a look at it for me. He put it on his scope and did some adjustments with the 3 sets of crystals I gave him. He said he gave it a little range test (Flattened the fully charged set of batteries that were in the truck) :) and said to just check it ourselves before we go for another race.

So thanks all for the input