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Hello all,
Those of you in attendance at TQC/QCRS’s Mini-Mid-West-Power launch back in May will probably recall that something went wrong with our Wilson F/X launch system. We were in the middle of a hot afternoon of rocket flying when the launch system suddenly stopped operating with no warning. AARRGGHH!!!!!
I did a quick check on the field and found two immediate possible problems. But when I eliminated both of them, the system continued to not operate. So we did the next best thing and removed all the wireless units and went back to hard-wired and finished the rest of the launch hardwired.
Mini-Mid West Power is our last launch till Mid-West-Power so we had some time to figure out what went wrong. And we did. Dan Fox, my cousin and the other half of Wilson F/X, came up last Friday. He and I went and picked up the whole launch system. I know we weren’t using the whole system at Mini-MWP, but it seemed to make sense to check out the whole system as long as we were at it. The system has been operating since 2003, so we like to keep on top of it.
As I said, there were two possible problems that I was thinking it might be: a new wireless communications plug and the new FET PBU-8w that the new plug was on. You all might as well know that I’ve been using TQC/QCRS as the beta testers for every new item that Wilson F/X has come up with since the very beginning of Wilson F/X. I became the founding Prefect of TQC way back in 1995 coinciding with the creation of the very first Wilson F/X launch system. Anybody remember that four pad system besides Dan and me? Well TQC has tested every system and every component since those earliest days of this club.
As I said there were two problems that I thought might be “it.” The first was a brand new PBU-8w that Dan and I had only finished putting together the night before Mini-MWP. We’re looking at replacing all the relays in our pad-boxes with Field Effect Transistors or FETs. This PBU-8w (FET) is the prototype and we were testing it out at Mini-MWP. As it turns out, it was operating flawlessly, but we didn’t know it when the system crashed.
The second problem was the communications line coming out of the PBU-8w itself. Again as many of you know, TQC owns eight of the original PBU-8 pad boxes with the original double stack circuit board design. There’s no room inside the NEMA 8x8x4 enclosure to fit the wireless unit so the external wireless unit’s female 16/3 plug simply plugs into the male 16/3 communications plug on the PBU-8. But the new design for the PBU-8 is a single circuit board layout which does allow plenty of room in the PBU-8 enclosure to add the wireless unit inside the same enclosure. But this would leave a male 16/3 plug hanging out just waiting to short 12V across the 16/3 plug and pop the fuse or short communications. So I replaced the 16/3 male communications plug with a female 16/3 plug to eliminate the 12 volts shorting problem. This prototype PBU-8w with FETs, worked great except for the fact that somebody grabbed the 16/3 female communications line and pulled hard enough to pull the plug end off of the wires themselves. I’m replacing all of these defective plugs.
When I saw that the plug had been pulled away from the wiring, I figured that the wires had shorted out on the inside of the plug causing the crossed polarity of the communications line and ground which would have shut down the whole system. Later when I inspected this plug it became apparent that while the wires were pulled out some from the plug, there was no grounding in the communications plug. So the mystery remained. What caused the system to shut down? Turns out it had nothing at all to do with the new PBU-8w with FETs that we were testing.
Anybody remember LDRS in 2016, put on by Rocketry of California on Lucerne Dry Lake? Dan and I drove out for that LDRS. We were expecting to have a great time as they showed off their brand new 72 pad Wilson F/X all wireless launch system with their LCU-64x Custom controller with all the bells and whistles.
If you were there, you will probably remember the extreme heat and that their launch system was having problems with intermittent operations. Dan figured out what the problem was by heating up a wireless unit with a heat gun in order to determine what component was failing. Turns out it was a redundant diode (redundant from an earlier design and no longer needed) that was failing in the extreme heat and shutting down the system. Without the extreme heat the problem would never show itself.
That was the first system wide Wilson F/X recall. I contacted every club (and all the individuals) that had Wilson F/X wireless systems and made arrangements to remove that unnecessary diode and it fixed the problem completely. End of problem right? Well of course not. I also had to go thru all my then current stock of wireless units and wireless unit circuit boards in order to remove that diode. And I did that too. So what’s the problem?
The problem is simply that I did not think to send that recall notice to my own club. For years now, my own club has been flying from the first of November when the crops come out of the field, thru till the end of May when we can no longer walk thru the fields. And the last few Mini-MWP launches in May were never above about 85 degrees. But as you recall this year’s Mini-MWP got hot.
With the heat at Mini-MWP, the wireless unit on the controller got hot enough that it shut down the whole wireless system. I know, because when I got home and started opening all the wireless units, the LCU-64’s wireless unit had the redundant diode still in place as did three other of TQC’s wireless units. Once removed, the system went back to operating flawlessly. How embarrassing….. I forgot to do the recall check on my own club’s wireless units. Oh well, live and learn as they say.
So that’s what happened at Mini-MWP. The problem was solved two years ago, but it just didn’t get applied to TQC’s launch system till July 20, 2018. And that’s my fault. Sorry about that. I figured everybody ought to know what actually happened and h ow it got fixed.
Brad Wilson of Wilson F/X Digital Control Systems
Those of you in attendance at TQC/QCRS’s Mini-Mid-West-Power launch back in May will probably recall that something went wrong with our Wilson F/X launch system. We were in the middle of a hot afternoon of rocket flying when the launch system suddenly stopped operating with no warning. AARRGGHH!!!!!
I did a quick check on the field and found two immediate possible problems. But when I eliminated both of them, the system continued to not operate. So we did the next best thing and removed all the wireless units and went back to hard-wired and finished the rest of the launch hardwired.
Mini-Mid West Power is our last launch till Mid-West-Power so we had some time to figure out what went wrong. And we did. Dan Fox, my cousin and the other half of Wilson F/X, came up last Friday. He and I went and picked up the whole launch system. I know we weren’t using the whole system at Mini-MWP, but it seemed to make sense to check out the whole system as long as we were at it. The system has been operating since 2003, so we like to keep on top of it.
As I said, there were two possible problems that I was thinking it might be: a new wireless communications plug and the new FET PBU-8w that the new plug was on. You all might as well know that I’ve been using TQC/QCRS as the beta testers for every new item that Wilson F/X has come up with since the very beginning of Wilson F/X. I became the founding Prefect of TQC way back in 1995 coinciding with the creation of the very first Wilson F/X launch system. Anybody remember that four pad system besides Dan and me? Well TQC has tested every system and every component since those earliest days of this club.
As I said there were two problems that I thought might be “it.” The first was a brand new PBU-8w that Dan and I had only finished putting together the night before Mini-MWP. We’re looking at replacing all the relays in our pad-boxes with Field Effect Transistors or FETs. This PBU-8w (FET) is the prototype and we were testing it out at Mini-MWP. As it turns out, it was operating flawlessly, but we didn’t know it when the system crashed.
The second problem was the communications line coming out of the PBU-8w itself. Again as many of you know, TQC owns eight of the original PBU-8 pad boxes with the original double stack circuit board design. There’s no room inside the NEMA 8x8x4 enclosure to fit the wireless unit so the external wireless unit’s female 16/3 plug simply plugs into the male 16/3 communications plug on the PBU-8. But the new design for the PBU-8 is a single circuit board layout which does allow plenty of room in the PBU-8 enclosure to add the wireless unit inside the same enclosure. But this would leave a male 16/3 plug hanging out just waiting to short 12V across the 16/3 plug and pop the fuse or short communications. So I replaced the 16/3 male communications plug with a female 16/3 plug to eliminate the 12 volts shorting problem. This prototype PBU-8w with FETs, worked great except for the fact that somebody grabbed the 16/3 female communications line and pulled hard enough to pull the plug end off of the wires themselves. I’m replacing all of these defective plugs.
When I saw that the plug had been pulled away from the wiring, I figured that the wires had shorted out on the inside of the plug causing the crossed polarity of the communications line and ground which would have shut down the whole system. Later when I inspected this plug it became apparent that while the wires were pulled out some from the plug, there was no grounding in the communications plug. So the mystery remained. What caused the system to shut down? Turns out it had nothing at all to do with the new PBU-8w with FETs that we were testing.
Anybody remember LDRS in 2016, put on by Rocketry of California on Lucerne Dry Lake? Dan and I drove out for that LDRS. We were expecting to have a great time as they showed off their brand new 72 pad Wilson F/X all wireless launch system with their LCU-64x Custom controller with all the bells and whistles.
If you were there, you will probably remember the extreme heat and that their launch system was having problems with intermittent operations. Dan figured out what the problem was by heating up a wireless unit with a heat gun in order to determine what component was failing. Turns out it was a redundant diode (redundant from an earlier design and no longer needed) that was failing in the extreme heat and shutting down the system. Without the extreme heat the problem would never show itself.
That was the first system wide Wilson F/X recall. I contacted every club (and all the individuals) that had Wilson F/X wireless systems and made arrangements to remove that unnecessary diode and it fixed the problem completely. End of problem right? Well of course not. I also had to go thru all my then current stock of wireless units and wireless unit circuit boards in order to remove that diode. And I did that too. So what’s the problem?
The problem is simply that I did not think to send that recall notice to my own club. For years now, my own club has been flying from the first of November when the crops come out of the field, thru till the end of May when we can no longer walk thru the fields. And the last few Mini-MWP launches in May were never above about 85 degrees. But as you recall this year’s Mini-MWP got hot.
With the heat at Mini-MWP, the wireless unit on the controller got hot enough that it shut down the whole wireless system. I know, because when I got home and started opening all the wireless units, the LCU-64’s wireless unit had the redundant diode still in place as did three other of TQC’s wireless units. Once removed, the system went back to operating flawlessly. How embarrassing….. I forgot to do the recall check on my own club’s wireless units. Oh well, live and learn as they say.
So that’s what happened at Mini-MWP. The problem was solved two years ago, but it just didn’t get applied to TQC’s launch system till July 20, 2018. And that’s my fault. Sorry about that. I figured everybody ought to know what actually happened and h ow it got fixed.
Brad Wilson of Wilson F/X Digital Control Systems