Transmitter Range Question

H

hoowahfun

Well-Known Member
Messages
59
Location
Georgia
Hi all, first post here.

My son bought an AMP MT BTD kit earlier this year after saving some Christmas/birthday money and I pitched in the last little bit to cover the cost. It's been a great experience for us so far and he did about 90% of the build work with me guiding him along the way...not bad for a 7 year old :D He did some extra chores and bought a 5400 mAh NiMH battery and the faster charger for it which has really extended his play time. After that the plastic gears stripped (not surprised) so I bought the upgraded metal gears which have worked out well so far.

At any rate, one thing I've noticed about this truck is that the transmitter range has been horrible since about day one...he'll get about 50-60 feet out of it, max. I've tried various antenna arrangements and new batteries in the transmitter and fresh charge in the truck battery, but no change. This is the one thing he complains about the most and I can't say I blame him. I've noticed a decrease in his interest in this which he attributes to having to run around following it the whole time. Just hoping to find some simple way to resolve this without replacing the receiver/transmitter, but if that's the only option then I'll go that route. Trying to explore other ideas first.

Any tips on this? I'm wondering if I could solder a little stretch of copper wire to the end of the receiver antenna if that would help?

Thanks all!
 
Something is very wrong, my amp with stock transmitter has more range than necessary (you can't see which way it's pointing before it runs out of range). Maybe the antenna wire is broken? Is it standing up with the little tube?
 
Yeah it's in the little tube with maybe 3/8-1/2" sticking out the top. I've tried running from top/down and bottom/up thru the tube w/ no change.
 
I never really liked ecx stock transmitters because I never had luck with them. My best advice would be look for a nice upgrade it’s always nice to have some more adjustments.
 
Yeah I'm hoping to avoid that for now and go to that as a last resort.

Is there any way to fix a broken antenna wire if that happens to be the cause? Any other tips/ideas?
 
The antenna is just a wire, I'm not sure if you can get to the point where it's soldered onto the ESC though. And that's probably the most likely failure point.
 
Well I clamped a wire to the end of the antenna last night in the off chance that extending it will help. My son is hopefully going to test it out today while I'm at work. If that doesn't help then I'll probably have to just replace the receiver as a I can't really see anything being wrong with the transmitter.
 
So clamping the wire on seemed to give a marginal improvement if any. See video. Is it unrealistic to expect it to go to the end of the street or somewhere close to that? Kind of new to all this but that seems to be about 100 yards.

 
Something is definitely not right. I’m not all that great with the receiver and transmitter stuff but I got a spektrum with a broken antenna and it’s only about an inch long. I peeled off a little of the insulation coating and some of the metal mesh and exposed about 1/2 inch of the internal antenna wire inside with its insulation coating still on and it goes the same distance as my good condition antennas. I have no idea how I got it to work but while it’s working I’m not gonna touch it:D
Did you try binding the transmitter and receiver?
 
No haven't tried that, but I'll give it a shot when I get home.

If that doesn't work does anyone have a recommendation for a decent and uncomplicated receiver that will allow me to upgrade to a brushless motor and LiPo batteries at some point in the future? I'm okay with using the same transmitter, but would buy a new one if needed. Also trying not to break the bank on this thing since it's my son's starter truck.
 
Good to hear that.

My amp will go to the end of your street without problems in that video. Yours is defective in some way for sure.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but to answer your question: if you replace the transmitter, you need to replace the ESC as well, since the stock ESC has the receiver integrated into it. So even if you go cheap, you are looking at $45-$50. A flysky gt3c with hobbywing 1060 would be around that money if you shop around for a deal.
 
The new transmitter was waiting for me when I got back from vacation Monday. Unfortunately, I think I cooked the ESC on this thing while at the beach. See thread link below for that discussion. Once I get that sorted out then I'll pick back up on this thread, but unfortunately I may never know what the real issue was if I end up having a new ESC and transmitter.

https://www.ecxforum.com/threads/i-think-i-cooked-my-esc.1774/
 
Okay so circling back around on this to close the loop on this one. Turns out I burned out the ESC on this thing while at the beach which set me back figuring out the range issue. Ocean waves and sand don't do well on these things apparently lol. So I picked up a replacement stock ESC from my local hobby store since I figured we could upgrade to a better one w/ a brushless set up at another time. Plus that was the cheapest option and I've got two motors that will work with it. So when those go out I'll upgrade.

Once I got all that squared away I did a test between the old remote vs the new. Range on the old remote was definitely restricting this thing. With the new remote my son could drive it to the end of the street and probably further than that if he hadn't of run it into the culvert :D So looks like it was the remote all along. Thanks for all the tips on this one.
 
Thanks for the update, and I'm glad you figured it out. Since 2.4GHz frequency hopping radios became standard gear on RTRs, transmitter range is normally a non-topic.
 

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