Futaba 6EX TX and intermittent servo

[Albert Stall]

Awhile back I was having intermittent problems with my rudder and assumed that the servo (Futaba S3010) went bad. So I sent it back to Futaba and they "repaired" it. Before I received it back, I substituted a HiTec (HS5645MG) servo and lo and behold I had the same intermittent problem.

I figured it's unlikely I'm going to have 2 servos go in a short period of time. So I did a crosscheck.

I have a Futaba buddy box for flying my planes with a student, so I connected it to my Futaba TX and used the buddy box controls to operate the suspect servo. It operated perfectly. I then connected a spare servo to the rudder ouput of the TX and that was intermittent in its operation. Now I knew I had a bad pot (potentiometer) on my rudder control, which by the way, is aileron control on planes. In my case "intermittent" means it was not operating absolutely smooth throughout it's entire range (E.G.-full right to full left)

My Futaba 6EX was purchased in Jan 2008 and I sent it in February 2009. They honored the warranty and changed the pot at no charge but the whole process was delayed since the pot was backordered. I am still awaiting the TX.

If you find that your servos are not operating smoothly throughout the entire range of operation I would suspect the TX. Do a crosscheck as I did or connect the suspect servo to another channel on your TX to verify your findings and get the repair done.

Al Stall