Heng Long Tank Control Problems.

[JagdTiger builder]

First off let me say that for the money Heng Long is outstanding. I have five ranging from Tiger 1, Panzer IV, Stug III, JagdPanther, and Panther. All are well detailed but lacking in some respects. Super detailing really makes an outstanding RC tank.

Now to the meat of my problem. When I began super detailing the STUG III it worked perfectly. I would test the tank from time to time. This past Winter has been pure hell. The tank became sluggish in movements. Now all I have is motor sound. Sometimes maching gun which hangs in firing position requiring total turning off. Nothing works as was last Fall. Does anyone have any suggestions what I can do to get the tank back to operating order?

Second problem is the Panther. I had to play with the on/off switch till it finally made contact and turned on the driving head light. Not blinking, steady on. No control of the tank whatever. Any suggestions as to what I can do to make it operate?

Thanks for your time and help.

[lister fiend]

hmmm, could be anything
but seeing as you have so many tanks
i would suggest charging your batterys tx & tank & swapping things with one that does work untill you find your problem.
a bit long winded but a solution never the less

[Earwig]

does indeed sound like battery failure....try discharging your batts first,then give them a full slow charge.....

[ALPHA]

First off let me say that for the money Heng Long is outstanding. I have five ranging from Tiger 1, Panzer IV, Stug III, JagdPanther, and Panther. All are well detailed but lacking in some respects. Super detailing really makes an outstanding RC tank.

Now to the meat of my problem. When I began super detailing the STUG III it worked perfectly. I would test the tank from time to time. This past Winter has been pure hell. The tank became sluggish in movements. Now all I have is motor sound. Sometimes maching gun which hangs in firing position requiring total turning off. Nothing works as was last Fall. Does anyone have any suggestions what I can do to get the tank back to operating order?

Second problem is the Panther. I had to play with the on/off switch till it finally made contact and turned on the driving head light. Not blinking, steady on. No control of the tank whatever. Any suggestions as to what I can do to make it operate?

Thanks for your time and help.

Hello Jagd...first off.. welcome to the board .... on to your problems... Your Stug sounds like it may have got some moisture contamination... what I would suggest is first ...disconnect your battery... then with some alcohol or electrical cleaner on a Q tip... swap all the electrical connections... unplugging and plugging them back in to make sure everything is snug

same with the panther... though that one sounds like less work... the lead that sounds dirty is the battery connector...or the switch...but since you went through a hard winter ...it may not be a bad idea to do all your tanks.
also discharging and recharging your batteries

Good luck

ALPHA

[JagdTiger builder]

Thanks for the suggestions and a starting place to find out what might be wrong. I did try changing batteries with no success. Will clean the electrical connections as well as run down the batteries.

[Marc780]

Regarding the panther, the on off switch could be bad. If you have a voltmeter you can check your battery leads -detached-and see if there is continuity from switch to battery. Some meters make a beep sound if the wires and connection is good and circuit is unbroken, some meters just show a number drop on the meter to show the same thing.

Since you tried changing batteries anyway this tip might not help but I will try. If you are using hang long batteries they are nicads. (At least if you are in the US or perhaps the UK I understand nicads are banned in Europe). HL probably chose these because they are cheap but they have limitations. Every time a nicad is charged and discharged it does something inside called "crystallization" which weakens the battery a tiny bit each time. The way they work is they give full battery power until almost run down with no slow fade. At that point only is when you are supposed to recharge them, when they are run down. Putting a nicads in the charger before run down is supposed to reduce the service life faster by increasing the crystallization rate. I have read tests done on nicads and they said The only way to reduce the crystallization is to lower the charging voltage. I think you'd need a lab and fancy test equipment to figure out that deal though. What's more, you only get 500 recharges of a nicad at most until the batteries probably used up).

Moreover the charger heng long supplies has no overcharge protection at all. The only overcharge protection is you guessing what time to unplug the charger. And overcharging too can reduce battery life and performance. The cursory way to check the condition of your battery is to put a volt meter on your batteries and see how many volts they will make after a charge. Give the battery several minutes to stabilize after unhook in from the charger and set your multimeter to 20 vdc....7.6 to 7.7 v is about right any less the battery could be wearing out. Even that may not be a good check, as a worn battery may test fine then simply drop its voltage at a fast rate as soon as it's under load.

All this may or may not be a factor but perhaps something to consider. After discussing this here in the forums a fellow member recommended this battery it's nimh (nickel metal hydride) and so I bought one for $20; also i bought a different charger that does have overcharge protection, can recharge nicads OR nimh batteries and a choice of 2 charge voltage rates (I'm still not sure what the different charge rates used for). Nimh batteries are better then nicads plus this battery is slightly more powerful voltage then the HL one.



I hope you fixed the problem by now, regards