Joined
·
3,140 Posts
On another thread, I posted about Wednesday night at our local indoor offroad track, when I had one of those nights where keeping 'Captain Bonehead' away from the transmitter was a full time job... Then in the Truck main, 2-3 times, my truck developed "mental problems" -- it was sort of a 'glitch', but it was more like it just shut off or lost the signal totally and it would just roll in the direction of it's momentum until it hit something and stopped... I'd get marshalled and it would be OK for a while... Then for the last half of the main, it seemed fine, but I was afraid to trust it... Weird -- guess I've got some work ahead of me to check this our... Bummer!
A friend posted:
Since my XXtra is out of warranty, I've wondered about taking the step of soldering the two boards together...
Anyone tried it?
A friend posted:
I responded:Tom, its time you came to the same realization I have for glitches: Novak XXtra receivers are junk. All three of mine have broken and Novak's lame excuse is "vibration damage". Now, they were cool enough to give me 3 brand new ones (didn't even have all the reciepts) but I'm sorry, these cars are going to "vibrate" while you drive. I figure those receivers are probably your problem because that is what mine were doing when they were giving out on me. Anywho, no more synthesized operation for me. I got rid of my radio as well. All crystals for me until the synthesized systems become more reliable.
The BIG question:Good guess... The MF2 has an XXtra synthesized receiver -- the concept is so good (fewer crystals needed, etc.), but their design leaves something to be desired... It's not the theory of synthesizing the frequency, because that should actually be LESS sensitive to vibration than a delicate crystal... NOVAK designed their XXtra receivers with a main circuit board and then a "daughter" board that stacks on top of the main board. The 'dials' are on the daughter board. The problem is that the two boards are NOT solidly joined -- instead of solder joints, there are small 'sockets' on the daughter board that simply slide onto 'pins' sticking up out of the main board. The fit is purely a friction fit, prone to vibration and loss of continuity. To make matters worse, the daughter board is roughly square, but is only attached at 3 corners, creating an unstable platform which tends to "rock" under vibration -- causing deterioration of the pin to socket contact due to wear and allowing the gold (?) plating to become damaged, allowing corrosion to occur. All of this could have been eliminated by using a fourth pin and/or joining the two boards by soldering the pins to thru-plated holes on the daughter board... Guess that's too complex a concept for them?
Since my XXtra is out of warranty, I've wondered about taking the step of soldering the two boards together...
Anyone tried it?