Filteboard fuselage tail broke, and remote trigger flaw

[sviden]

g’day

For fliteboarders… FYI. The other day, on my older Fliteboard (v2, 1.5y, ~2500km), the fuselage tail broke, in flight, and drown with the attached stabilizer wing 290 Only a stub remain in the tube with the bolt in it. This happened right after i changed the shim from 1 to 3, for some guy to learn easier, and went testing it, pushed to 33km/h and baaaam in middle of the bay. Luckily i was near the beach, and not on some of my 30km+ open sea adventures…

So… beware, your mileage may vary (literaly).

Now on the remote controller. The trigger of the remote of the newer board (v2, 9mo, ~1800km) started to get stuck. You push and it does not come back. Forget fine control, can’t even start the thing. So i opened it, and on the sides of the “axis” of the trigger there are round plastic caps, one has a magnet inside it - which has gone rusty, and bubbling up, and pressing/blocking the whole axis movement. i have to scratch quite some of that to make the movement loose again. There’s also some epoxy?glue?plastic-like piece in there, which i removed. So far so good, but i guess in few months i have to repeat the procedure when more rust forms there. BTW that magnet is THE actual control piece of the trigger, but, although the cap has some cuts for positioning, they are 2 and are equal and symmetric, and when put the wrong way, the trigger goes funny… i.e. does not work. Any idea what replacement magnet to put there, when the thing goes all-rust?

I asked Fliteboard’s support about warranty or something, they do not respond at all.

ah. Being the only one in whole country (Bulgaria) riding a fliteboard is… weird. But anyway, so far convered 3/4 of Black sea coast (14-16km per leg then back), only the northest part left. Next month maybe.

Ciao
Sviden (nickname in flite club)

[Larsb]

If you measure the existing magnet it’s safe to assume a similar size n42 or n52 would work, i’d order both strengths and try the n52 first.

[sviden]

Thanks for the hint.
Once i have a magnet, how to guess the proper position? it’s round pill-like, and i assume rotating it is controlling the “how-much-trigger-is-pushed”, maybe via Hall-sensor or similar. Try-and-error or is there better way?

[Larsb]

You can check the magnet polarity with a compass, just don’t come too close to any neodym magnet with the compass needle as it might get demagnetised.

The actual position shouldn’t be variable, it should be a through magnet polarity:

[Larsb]

Post a pic of what your trigger magnet looks like for clarity…

[sviden]

the magnet is in the cap on the bottom here:

Water goes in there by design, and sooner or later the magnet will rust out completely…

[sviden]

before cleaning

[sviden]

before disassembly:

[sviden]

rotating that cap on 180’ makes trigger work wrongly… so rotative position does matter somehow.
i removed that yellowish filler?glue? for some more space, and all still works.

[Larsb]

Ok then, it’s not like i thought, has to be a magnet like this

If it doesn’t have a notch or some visible reference feature then i guess the position is calibrated in the assembly through software.

That makes it harder for you, if you cannot get your hands on the software then trial and error is probably your best bet. Could be done (in a not so difficult way) if you can be bothered to sketch something like ten notches on the trigger and a reference line on the new magnet and test the positions around the rotation, should be good enough.

Or try to pinpoint the original magnet alignment with a paper and iron dust, the kindergarten way😄

Proving which way magnetic lines on a magnet travel

[Strongarm]

This is correct. The standard throttle calibration should handle the overflow from the Hall effect sensor, but if not try rotate the magnet 180° and try again. Putting a mark on it with some pen should help.

[sviden]

next installment came too fast… This was second time i clean this trigger, first time was a month ago… this time it took only 1 sea-session and 2 days to corrode and block again. i guess that filler i removed has been keeping some water out.

So 3rd time… apart of scratching out the rust, i put the cap into an electrolisys cleanup, in water + baking soda, cap as minus/cathode, with some random iron as +/anode, on a 12V/1A old transformer-based charger. Right Image is from 2-3 hours later… Maybe it is cleaner. And now i filled the hole with that tef-gel grease that comes with the bolts for the wings etc. Let’s see how long that will withstand salt water…

p.s. funny but the other, older remote, has seen twice more hours of usage and salt water and has no such pains…