I actually still haven’t fixed my toothpick quad yet. Originally I wasn’t in any hurry to get it replaced and I was hoping to try that antenna fix as well, but I haven’t made the time to do it. Between the holidays and wrapping up a lot of work tasks before going on my end of the year vacation, I really didn’t have the motivation to sit down at my hobby table and take it apart even though once I did I’d probably have it all done in under an hour. But for now I wanted to talk about the most frustrating part of the hobby for me, and that’s when things just stop working or at least start having problems.
About two months months into flying my HX100 toothpick daily for about 30 minutes using six batteries, I suddenly started having an issue with my video signal going to static and then cutting out when I’d take off. Doing a visual inspection didn’t show anything. I tried taking off a few more times and then just holding the quad and moving it around by hand and noticed that any kind of vibration would cause it to go out again. It sucks when a flight session is cut short by a technical problem like this, but that’s one advantage of being able to fly at home so easily, at least I hadn’t had to drive somewhere or hike out to a remote spot only to have to leave early.
So I took the quad to my hobby table to open it up. The last time I had a problem with it the answer was pretty obvious as the receiver antenna literally fell of when I took the canopy off. Which was nice because I immediately knew what the problem was and just had to order a replacement. This time unfortunately there was no such obvious sign of what was wrong. The VTX antenna didn’t look loose at all, it was securely soldered to the board. All of the solder connections for the wires connecting the VTX to the flight controller looked solid. The wiring harness looked okay, there was some damage to it that I had noticed and fixed with electrical tape a few weeks prior when I replaced the carbon fiber frame, but there was no new damage. I tried wiggling the wires when the battery was plugged in and didn’t see any issues in my goggles from the VTX signal.
There’s another difficulty when troubleshooting problems from the bench. VTX’s general a lot of heat as in they can burn you as well as just fry themselves if left on for too long on a high power setting. This isn’t normally an issue since the expectation that they’re on a quad flying through the air so there’s a lot of cooling from air flow. When inside on a table though that’s not the case. So every time I tested it out even when I had it cranked down to 25 mW which is the lowest setting, I had a limited window if I didn’t want to ruin the VTX.
So at this point I was unsure what to do. There was nothing obviously wrong with it that I could try to fix with solder or tape. I’ve learned that this is the point where I have to start swapping components, so I ordered a replacement VTX. They’re not super expensive at $15 from online vendors like RaceDayQuads or Amazon, but still not something I wanted to be replacing often.
While I waited I decided to try to cut out the damaged sections of the wiring harness that connected the VTX to the FC and solder the wires together. Which unfortunately didn’t make any difference but it was at least some good soldering practice. It also confirmed that it wasn’t the wiring. That left either the antenna or the board which amounted to the same thing since they were soldered together.
I even ended up cutting away the heatshrink protecting the antenna and didn’t see any damage to the wire itself. So my guess at this stage was something on the board itself had gone bad. Maybe a surface mounted component was loose or some component was damaged internally.
Thankfully when the new VTX showed up in the mail a few days later, I had no problems getting the new wiring harness soldered to the flight controller and getting the quad back in good working order. Or at least I didn’t think I had any problems until I noticed that I couldn’t adjust the VTX band and channel using my radio. It wasn’t enough to keep me from flying thankfully, but it is annoying knowing that the quad wasn’t in 100% working order.
It’s actually a problem I still haven’t fixed. I even have another VTX and a replacement flight controller as well, since the issue might be on either end, and given the FC had quite a few hours of flight time on it, it’s probably that end where the issues is. It’s what happens when I know I can just fly something instead of being forced to take it apart an troubleshoot it again. I think that’s part of the reason why I’ve put off fixing the motor, since I have to take it apart enough to do that, that I might as well work on fixing the VTX issue as well.