FlyinFlynn

Getting a clear, unambiguous, date and time stamped picture is one thing, getting plod to do anything with it is another and having the courts punish the perpetrators in an appropriate way is yet another and even if you manage all three of those it still doesn't get you your mower back. No cameras are necessary to get a crime incident number for your insurance company, which is all 99.9% of the police will be interested in.

Catherine, this forum is primarily a model aircraft forum with a small contingent of people who are also interested in model boats, you might have better luck with a response to your request on somewhere like https://www.modelboats.co.uk/forums/ . I'm not trying to dissuade you from your goal but I suspect if you wait on here it will indeed end up being a boat shaped plant pot.

These days I doubt having a 1080p Hollywood quality video of the scumbags complete with their home addresses and a full set of fingerprints would help you getting your mower back, plod isn't interested. The only solution IMHO is not to keep the kit on site-especially now.

I'm sure you mean €'s not £'s..doubt the postie would accept £'s Did you not get an email from la poste advising you that the parcel was at customs and there was a duty to pay?. I usually do get the email and if you opt to pay it on line there is a significant discount on the stated charges - usually only pay 2 or 3 euros in charges plus some made up figure for the TVA.

Whilst that may well be true we are not just dealing with the 'system voltage'. There is the inductive element to consider when dealing with electric motors, take a look at a motor commutator running at 5v.....plenty sparky. A motor stalled mechanically is still subject to inductive influences when a circuit is both made and broken. Anyhow.... I think everyone is in agreement - don't use the cheap Chinese switches

The 125V as stated in the specs is most probably there for our American cousins. It makes no difference to the switch contact if it is 125v or 5v, it is the current that strikes the arc. Whilst it is true there is no, or very little, regulation on the speed of operation of a slide switch the switch does at least wipe the contact during operation, something a lever switch does not do. It would be quite easy for an instantaneous current in excess of 1 amp to flow if say, something like a retract servo was stalled due to a bent leg door fouling the wing. Once the arc has been struck you can kiss goodbye to your silver coating on the contact and once that happens all bets are off. 'A bit down the priority list' tends to get forgotten though.

If you go through the specs of that C&K switch you will find it is only rated at the quite impressive 12 Amps at 12v AC, but that drops to ONE amp 125V DC !!..... and it is still one of the better switches available. I'd open up the Etronix heavy duty JR switch to ensure it uses both poles in parallel. I wouldn't entertain the lever switch for this application having seen inside so many examples.

Not sure I agree with this Peter. Providing you are not keeping the cells on trickle charge more than the recommended 12 to 14 hours at or below the 0.1C rate IMHO there is no chance of the nimh being sufficiently overcharged to cause gassing. There is a far greater risk in overcharging cells by fast charging than trickle charging and it is doubtful fast charging will allow sufficient time to get the pack properly balanced. Also not too sure about your claimed cause for black wire corrosion too, I have never seen any definitive evidence as to the direct cause of black wire corrosion, can anybody point me in the right direction on that? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence though! Was it the development of fast peak detect chargers that saw the reduction of black wire corrosion or was it a change in the composition of the wires and the sheathing (for example). /2p

For a nominal dipole antenna, which is what a typical R/C Tx antenna aspires to be, the -3dB radiated power level appears around 78 degrees from the horizontal.(that is half power at the blue lines in the elevation plane diagram) In other words, if you point your tx antenna directly at your model you will get an order of magnitude reduced RF energy arriving at the Rx, (-30dB in this case as shown at the 90 degree point in the elevation plane polar diagram.) Having two Rx antennas doesn't increase the level of power gathered from the air except when one antenna may be shielded by something metallic in the model, then the other antenna receives the energy and the model doesn't lose the signal. That is why you separate the antennas and place them in different orientations well away from anything metallic.

...plus to that, if you do point the end of your tx antenna to your model if you should suffer a range problem simply jerking your tx upwards will present a better aspect to your model and 'should' recover control...

Or your Tx for that matter.

Just found this - Can someone please help me with reprogramming a Tarot ZYXS2? It's the yellow version and does not have a usb cable as it came on a 2nd hand Heli. I bought a Bluetooth module for it as I thought but it turns out to be the ZYX 24 whereas the module for the ZYXS2 is the ZYX 12 I think. Itlinks to BT but no response from the gyro. If I knew the data port pinouts of the S2could I use a standard usb dongle to connect? The data port is 4 pin and I've worked out the first 2 pins from the left are ground then +5v. The other 2 presumably tx and Rx? I have a ft232rl and could make a lead. Will this work? Any other ideas please? on https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1512179-New-Tarot-ZYX-ZYX-S-ZYX-S2-Flybarless-System/page851#post52678671

As to the pinouts, the ground pin in the data port will be connected to the ground of any servo socket, the +ve may also be connected to the +ve of the servo output...but it might not be as the servo will be +5v and the programmer may be 3v3. As to the Tx and Rx it wont hurt if you get those backwards, it just wont work so then try swapping them over. Other than that you could open the ZZYXS2 case and have a gander, the Rx and Tx traces will normally go together to a uP of some sort whereas the +ve will go off by itself.

That looks for all the world like a standard USB-Serial adapter Maybe try something like this.

Well, changing the colour to black and adding a centre line is easy... however, someone else has already done it .https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=52469175&postcount=6 black Bugs Ear.pdf