PB Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 A friend has given me a box full of RC items which he found during a house clearance. The box contained a number of Fleet Control Systems items. I tried to look up Fleet Control Systems, but they seem to have gone bust around 10 years ago, so I wonder if anyone here can help me. Firstly there were 6 servos labelled 'DIGIFLEET FPS-17 INDIRECT DRIVE' They look pretty heavy duty measuring 40 x 35 x 18mm. They all have the red +ve lead on one end of the attached plug whereas today the red lead is in the centre of course. I changed all the red and black leads over, plugged the servos into a receiver and they all worked perfectly. Trouble is I can't find anything out about them. Did Fleet kit have a good reputation? What sort of troque would these servos stand? Would it be 'safe' to use these servos in a model? Secondly there were three items I simply didn't recognise at all, photo attached. There's 2.5 volts between the red and black leads on both the 2 pin and 3 pin plugs and I presume they're some kind of Rx battery from yesteryear fit only for the bin. Any advice would be most welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete B Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 Worth having a read of this, admittedly rather old, thread which has some relevant info and a bit of the history, PB. I had a couple of Fleet outfits back in the late '70's - a 4-ch AM outfit and then a Digifleet 6, complete with the FPS-17's which was the standard servo. The reliability of the system far exceeded my skills as a pilot, so I never had cause to complain about Fleet gear... The pic seems to show the standard Ni-Cd Rx packs, or 'DEACS' as the older modellers used to call them, and they're probably well past their useful life, IMHO. Whilst it may be possible to use the servos now, given that modern gear is lighter, more reliable and more powerful gram for gram, I probably wouldn't but there are folk who know much more about radio than me on here.... I'm sure Phil Green, who knows his stuff, will probably look in.... Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Miller Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 Fleet radio was fine. The servos were OK. I use Fleet for years. They would use their own plugs which was a pain. I would think that the battery packs are not really worth risking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Member Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 [This posting has been removed] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Tee Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 Fleet were my first proportional set - never had any trouble. I don't think they "went bust" but Derek Olley the owner and designer died. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Member Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 [This posting has been removed] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Skilbeck Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 Yep I have some of the old FPS 17 servos, I can't remember ever having an problems with any of my Fleet gear apart from batteries failing due to non use when I moved over to programable radios. A fellow glider guider flies his 1/4 scale gliders from our local slope using his Fleet gear, I still have some fleet servos buried in a flying wing and I made up soem cross over leads so I could use them with a 2.4 Rx, if I'm using 35mhz I still use the Fleet Rx. Fleet stopped making transmitters as it would have been too big a development to make a programable one with screen, the business supplying receivers, servos, brushed ESCs etc was taken over when Derek Olley retired, but the new owners never seemed to make a go of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Freeman Posted May 20, 2013 Share Posted May 20, 2013 I have nothing but praise for Fleet gear except the polarity of their plug/servo/switch leads. NEVER just plug them into other gear....... The +ve and -ve wires are the opposite way round to everyone else. They never quite made it into computerised gear but I had nothing but good service from them and faultless operation from the gear. My first ever radio set was the old blue 27kHz FLEET gear back in 1976..... Happy days!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB Posted May 21, 2013 Author Share Posted May 21, 2013 OK thanks for your encouraging thoughts on Fleet gear. I think the 6 Fleet servos I've got will now go into service at some point based on your confidence in them in the past. I have to say I'm a bit puzzled though by those battery packs having a 3 pin plug attached to them. I presume that the two pin plug is the charger connection for the NiCad cells, but what's a white signal wire doing on a battery? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Miller Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 They just used normal leads but didn't connect the white wire. Come to think of it, I believe I have a Fleet battery in one of my older models. Better chnage that!. I also had their PCM computer radio. Without a screen it was a nightmare to program. You had to use a multimeter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Agate Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 If the white wire from the battery pack has power on it, this was the standard way we wired them when we did the first Fleet PCM system (I wrote all the software, and worked closely with Derek on the hardware design). The first system used an NEC 80C48 processor, which had a low-power sleep mode. When the system was switched off, the processor still had this extra supply in order to remember its failsafe settings. It only drew a few microamps in this mode, so it could remember them for over 6 months. The later receivers (for the MX-7 and Omega systems) used PIC processors, which had an EEPROM memory. This enabled them to remember the failsafe settings without an extra power supply, so the white wire became redundant, but was still connected on the battery for back-compatibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB Posted May 21, 2013 Author Share Posted May 21, 2013 The white wire is connected to the black -ve wire on these Fleet batteries as confirmed with both an ohmeter and a voltmeter. There is zero resistance between white and black wires and there is 2.5 volts between the white wire and the red wires on both the 2 pin and 3 pin plugs. As a matter of interest I presume that there is only 2.5 volts on these batteries because they are very discharged, maybe beyond recharging, and that Fleet systems in general and their servos in particular operated at 5 volts. I tested these 6 Fleet servos on a receiver powered from an ESC with a 5 volt BEC and they seemed to work quite normally, so I presume they are 5 volt servos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Hargreaves - Moderator Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 Fleet was my first radio set too...1978 or 79....I still have it somewhere.... IIRC you could convert the servos from rotary to linear movement....very useful PB I would think twice before using the servos.....they will probably be in excess of 20 years old now & of questionable reliability no matter how good they used to be. As for the batteries don't let them anywhere near a flying model....if the battery dies so does your model...simply not worth the risk.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB Posted May 21, 2013 Author Share Posted May 21, 2013 In the ineterests of science I've opened one of the Fleet servos up. Quite impresive double sided plated through amplifier board populated with surface mounted devices. Nice, but SMDs have been in wide use since the late 1980s, so yes Steve, could easily be 20 years or more old. Nice to see the Mitsubishi M51660L servo driver in there though, doesn't come any better than that, and though the motor markings are not conclusive I'm pretty sure it's Mitsubishi too. Plastic gear wheels are a disappointment though. I'm torn now having seen this. To use or not to use..............hmmm. Edited By Steve Hargreaves - Moderator on 21/05/2013 12:22:39 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingCrust Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 Loved reading all the above. I used to have a set the same as Steve H. I never had problems except with the servo horns - funny tapered/knurled things that split far too easily. Ended up throwing it all away after my lad 'borrowed' it all for his model and left it in a damp shed for 10 years. Corrosion? What's that? Unrecoverable. Also IIRC the centre point on their gear was at 1.3ms pulse width, not 1.5 as is the current standard. If you do decide to use the servo's check the end points before commiting them to the air (if using with modern gear.) Ian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Agate Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 All the gear I worked on was 1.5ms centre. I don't think Fleet ever used 1.3ms centring, though the range of pulse widths (throw) may have been different to other manufacturers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Sharp Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 The early Fleet servos and the stick units, were made by Skyleader Radio Control, you will find the SRC logo on them. Later ones were badged Sanwa, even later ones were badged Hitec. I bought one of their very first dedicated Heli sets complete with a Sanyo made Giro, this had two large heavy spinning wheels driven by it's own four cell nicad. This unit gave more vibration than the engine, but it did work. I've stil got it to this day, still in working order, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Grigg Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 A member of our club used to work for Fleet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Privett Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Our club's ex-chairman still uses a Fleet PCM set. I don't know what servos he uses but would imagine they are most likely the Fleet ones mentioned above. Rentman - my old Futaba M6 radio (and indeed all Futaba sets with the old-style, unevenly-spaced pins connectors, used 1.3ms centre. I used those servos when I upgraded to a 35MHz Challenger radio and recentred the servos by turning the pots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Read 2 Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hi everybody, I'm not an R/C modeler, but I did work at Fleet in the late 80's. I came across this site when I did a web search on Fleet Control Systems out of curiosity. Sorry to read that Derek Olley has died, does anyone know if his business partner Ernie Strutt is still with us? I'm also curious to see what the later fleet Txs look like, when I worked there they were making the xp/fm and PCM gear. Cheers, Steve Read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Etheridge 1 Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 This the fleet gear I have recently sold which is yet to be handed over to the buyer. I don't think it represents the very last Fleet designs but one transmitter has most of the features found on modern gear including 'mixing' of controls etc. It's a shame that Fleet did not standardise electrical connectors etc with other manufacturers but their connectors are positive and there would seem to be little if any chance of wrong polarity connections. Whilst my gear functioned OK I was very pleased with it. As I have indicated to the buyer there are currently glitching problems with the servos in range tests which to date I have not been able to resolve using two recievers. MJE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Green Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Just look at the positive wire soldered joint in PB's photo above! That wasnt typical, Fleet build quality was usually very good. We had a lot of trouble with the very early stuff, Derek used an acid flux which after 40 years ate through transistor legs. In Shauns Galloping Ghost transmitter I had to stand 7 of the original trannies on new legs! No such trouble with the later Fleet gear. I still have a 27mhz AM 4-channel Fleet 'Custom' just like Steves above. Still works fine, and although I dont use the tx/rx now, its 30+ year-old servos are doing sterling service in my Impala on a Frsky rx used with the Orbit 10 reeds set. Cheers Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Crook Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Steve Happily, Ernie is still with us - I see him frequently as he's my father-in-law. We still go flying when he can make it, he's still using his Fleet gear on 35MHz. I've gone to the dark side on 2.4, but still have a Fleet Omega tranny in working order. I believe the FPS-17 servos are re-badged Futaba units. If standard plug leads are fitted they should be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Cracknell Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Mike Hopefully I will get to collect the gear before the dryer flying weather arrives...! Thanks for looking after it... Regards Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Etheridge 1 Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 OK Robert, I just hope it meets your expectations, I might put one transmitter on charge in the mean time? Best Wishes, Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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