glitch proofing

[iron chef]

A couple of us have been having occasional glitch problems at the track. Nothing too serious or out of control but I am curious what you guys have done that has minimized interferance. We both run good stock motors, novak esc's and receivers, jr radios, and 3300 GP batteries. Receivers are on their side and everything looks clean but we get hit at different spots on the track while others just dont seem to have any issues at all. :confused:

[AudiTT-Quattro]

A few things that comes to mind right now.

Solder 0.01uf or 0.1uf capacitors to the motor. (Frankly the rating doesn't matter for such a small motor.)

Keep the receiver antenna away from any aluminum or carbon fiber. Aluminum as with any metal will amplify and scatter the Tx signal and cause glitching. Radio signals cannot permeate CF and is also known to be semi-conductive.

Keep the receiver as far away from the motor as possible.

Use two layers of double sided tape for taping down the receiver. This adds extra cushioning for the receiver as they are very sensitive.

If I missed anything, feel free to continue on.

[InspGadgt]

Well with the antenna wire above the carbon fiber or graphite there's really no blockage of the signal occuring. What to watch out for is the conductive traits of both carbon and aluminum. Your motor is directly bolted to an aluminum motor plate which is then bolted dirctly to the carbon or aluminum based chassis. Any RF the motor puts out could be conducted through the chassis straight to the reciever.

Keep your antenna as high as possible and keep major power wires like the battery and motor wires as far away from the antenna wre as possible. You want at least a 1" radius of clearance around the antenna wire.

[iron chef]

good points guys! one car is xxx-s with stock chassis with receiver mounted on the side rail slightly above the servo, no power wire, graphite, or aluminum up there. the other is yokomo special with graphite chassis with receiver shoe-goo-d to the chassis, no wire issues there but plenty of graphite and aluminum. another thing we noticed is we dont get hit to often in practice using counterfit transponders. once we run in qualifying that changes. we both run transponders off a lexan mount attached to the servo just like everyone. one esc is cyclone, the other gt7. do power capacitors break down with use?

[TEM]

Which iron chef are we talking to right now???

Make sure there is no metal rubbing against each other! Use motor caps always(Caps do break down and get damaged when heated. If in doubt, replace.. they're cheap anyways). The fat cap thats parallel to the battery will NOT likely get damaged. One thing I found useful is to keep the receiver away from the ESC as far as possible. Tie down all wires so nothing flops around.

Another cause of glitching is bad radio equipment; either yours or the guys running at the same time. Offtuned TX, RX or slightly damaged crystals. Could also be due to close channels. I remember my car used to like to slam to the left near the drivers stand. Later I found out one guy was running one channel above mine with an older radio. Sometimes cars can do weird things when you get too close to the wrong car! It can happen!

Glitching is a real strange thing to deal with. Some people say this, other people say that... I don't even know if I should be talking here cause I ALWAYS run a short antenna(whole wire coiled around a 3" piece of antenna tubbing). Works fine for me but I ALWAYS use top of the line stuff....

[InspGadgt]

Yeah deglitching a car can be like voodoo magic sometimes. Sacrifice 2 chickens to the glitch god and maybe he'll stop bugging you.

LOL..ok on a more serious note. Running a transponder can cause additional interferrence with your system. When running a transponder your motor should have 3 capacitors on them. 2 just isn't enough. Also I've heard the motors with the built in capacitors often have them go bad and people end up soldering external ones on anyway. In both those cars the electronics tend to be mounted very close so one thing that often works is to mount the reciever on top of the servo instead of on the chassis. That gets it even further away from the ESC.