RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi all, I know I've found a post about this before, but can't seem to find it now. I got my son an old HL Pershing with the old 27MHz system. It worked fine, but now the controller won't turn on. I've tried jiggling the batteries, and new batteries, but neither fixed it. What are the other common problems that would stop the controller from switching on? Thanks in advance.

The crystal on the tank could be the culprit. In my experience, they're temperamental. Try taking it out and refitting it. That worked for me on an ancient Tiger I had.

43rdRecceReg wrote:The crystal on the tank could be the culprit. In my experience, they're temperamental. Try taking it out and refitting it. That worked for me on an ancient Tiger I had.

Thanks, but I should've been clearer, when I say the control doesn't work, I meant that the red light doesn't even illuminate.

take the back off the handset and check for a broken wire - HL wire is notoriously fragile on the older handsets. The wires between the battery compartment and mainboard are the most likely place to check.

Remove the batteries, and check that the chrome lamellae are not oxidized, broken, and if contact is made at the end of each element, also do as said above, open the transmitter and check that not a broken wire (indeed very fragile) also check the level of the inter in the center? if it works well
one thing too, very stupid are you sure your batteries are okay? just one HS and nothing works

Thanks both, I'll open it up tomorrow and check the wire. Definitely not the batteries, tried the ones from that control in another control and was fine, and just to be sure put new batteries in the broken controller and still didn't work. Will update tomorrow with what I find.

Can you remove the crystal from the faulty transmitter and put it into one you know works, then see if the tank comes to life.
That way at least you can work the tank.

On the lack of red light.
There can be a huge amount of mucking around with batteries in the old old H/L transmitters.
New or not, they sometimes dont make the right contact.
Gently work each spring type battery contact to increase the tension on each battery, make sure the points that touch the battery is clean-use a bit of sandpaper or a file.
When you fit the batteries, work each one around & up/down in situ with your thumb.
I assume the transmitter you have has dividers between neach AA battery, if so, these can be chopped out.
There is differences in length and diameter of cheap AA batteries too, so that why there could be nothing wrong except a bad contact(s) .

Hope you get it sorted

Herman, to sum up the problem completely on the other hand, if you try the quartz on the other transmitter, you must also reverse that of the receiver? risk not being identical frequency? and avoid dropping it, otherwise HS. I'm like Herman, I would lean more for a problem of false contact, battery compartment.

With the old HL crystal type set ups, the tank(with its matching crystal) is the receiver, so sticking the matching one into a new transmitter will work straight away.
From the dead one into a working one. Then you can prove the tank is ok.
I bet its the battery compartment, especially if the face of the transmitter is all silver, with crystals for frequency.
Those are notorious for battery connectivity issues.

@Bikerdude - if you can make it to Grantham club on Sunday, let me know and I'll bring one of my spare transmitters (bring your dead one tho, I strip dead handsets for things for centering springs).