Programmin' Smoke!
(success courtesy of Len Alessi, Team JR)
My first effort at programming my JR 10X was frustrating. Made me feel like I was some kind of technically-impaired radio owner.
After MANY attempts at setting the mixes, I finally gave up, and posted a list message to the Scale Aerobatics list (a LOT of knowledgeable IMAC and Giant Scale guys hang out there, including Len Alessi, Team JR). One message, and several replies back, here's what I got from Len.
It works. Flawlessly. Credit to him. I was on the track, but close only counts in....well, you know.
Some comments. First, you need to know how little travel is needed in the ON position. Or put another way, at what percent does the pump shut OFF when running. To learn this, I had my radio in program mode, everything on, flipped the retract to "smoke on" position, then, on the ATV screen (screen 12), starting beeping the highlighted numbers DOWN until the pump stopped. Then, I went back a few beeps, just to be sure. The "off" ATV is not important. [This was the part I was missing from my own attempts. The idea of using a mix is to modify ATV's of the slave channel.]
Now, knowing where it shut OFF, I went to my Program mix...the first one I have free was screen 52, so I used it.
| Assign Channel 1(Throttle) as Master and Channel 5 (Retract) as Slave | No Photo |
| Page twice to set "ORIG" mix mode, so that ONLY Throttle stick movement influences the "smoke"(retract) |  |
| Press Page twice to set Offset (position of Throttle where smoke shuts OFF). Set stick, press "STORE". Mine is -32 |  |
| Move the stick to BELOW pump shutoff, then adjust THAT percent until pump shuts off. Mine ended up -100 | |
| Move the stick to the smoke "ON" position, and set that percent. This was also -100% on my setup. |  |
| Save all your work by pressing "Enter" and back out to top menu. | |
| TEST THIS ON THE GROUND!!!!
Mine works...these are for my TME pump, plugged into the Retract Channel. |
This works terrific!! I apologize for the photo's lack of quality. My dig camera doesn't do well with LCD panels. Below is Len's message to me....it is very useable.
| Hi Bob, I saw your question regarding programming for your smoke pump and wanting to turn it on and off with a combination of the retract switch and throttle position. I don' have one of the smoke pumps so I tried it using a retract servo and I think I can get you on the right track. I can't be accurate about the percentages and directions without having one of the smoke pumps, but maybe after some tinkering you can get it to do what you want it to do. What we are going to try to do is to reduce the travel of the retract channel such that there is not enough travel to turn the pump on. Then introduce more travel (enough to turn the pump on) by means of a mixer that is using the throttle as the master and retract channel as the slave. Here we go,,,, Position the retract switch in the position that causes the smoke pump to turn ON. Go into Travel code 12 and reduce the Travel for the GEAR channel in both directions until the smoke pump shuts OFF. With the travel reduced the gear switch should no longer be able to turn the pump on without some assistance or additional throw from a mixer. Put the retract switch in the ON position. Access an unused program mixer (51-55). If you have to use a Multi-Point mixer (56-58) select NORMAL mixing instead of CURVE. Touch 1 to set the throttle as the master and touch 5 to set the retract channel as the slave. to get the first mixing display. Touch PAGE twice to get to the type of mix display and touch SEL under MASTER until ORIG appears. This will cause the mixer to ignore any throttle exponential and to mix from the physical position of the throttle stick only. Now touch PAGE to return to the mixing display. Move the throttle stick to the position where you would like the pump to come on and touch STORE under Offset to set the offset to this throttle position. Now move the throttle stick one click up towards the high throttle position. Touch + to increase the mixing percentage until the pump just comes on. If it does not come on, try setting the mix percentage back to zero and touch TURN to reverse the mixing direction. Now touch + again to increase the mixing percentage until the pump just comes on. Once the pump starts coming on, test it by lowering the throttle stick and the pump should shut off. Turn the pump off with the retract switch and it should no longer come on when the throttle is advanced. Let me know if it works Bob. If it doesn't, then maybe we can try something else. Len Alessi lalessi@flash.net Team JR Bob Pastorello El Reno, Oklahoma rcaerobob@cox.net http://www.rcaerobatics.com |
