2.4 gig interferance ???

Hi people, a poser for you radio experts.
During the featherweight heat (16 machines in the arena !!!) at Nottingham last weekend Skink behaved rather oddly and in a manner it has never done before, namely doing very little of what I was telling it to do and a lot that I wasnt!
It flipped randomly, moved when my fingers were off the sticks and even went in the opposite direction to which I was steering!
I checked with Stu regarding RRs stuff and looked at all the frquencies being used at TX control and found nothing even close to Skinks 40.935 in fact only a few robots were not using Spectrums.
Skinks bad behavior was almost completely gone in the final when there were only 6 bots competing.
Is it possible (despite the fact that 2.4ghz is miles away from 40mhz) that a large number of different 2.4 ghz signals could interfere with a 40mhz receiver? By the way Skink does not have a dual conversion receiver.
Any ideas or suggestions (apart from the obvious get a Spectrum) would be greatly appreciated, Mike.

Have you checked that the xtals are seated firmly in the TX & RX? It only takes a little misalignment to make full contact intermittant.

Another thing - and a long shot - this sounds similar to problems we had with Pillow Torque about a couple of years back while using 40mhz (although dual conversion). The only possible cause Geoff could think of at the time was that the venue (Brighton Centre) had low steel beams in the roof and there were a lot of TXs using that 40meg band at the time (robots and model cars). I noticed that Nottingham also had low steel beams in the roof. BTW that weekend at Brighton we had 2 speed controllers go up in smoke - one went up as it stood power on but idle on the bench!

Its probably just intereference from the other bots.
With the advent of the 2.4 Ghz Roboteers no longer have to worry about noisy motors etc ...I suspect that everyones bot using a Spektrum system is broadcasting no end of crap thru the ether.

(Message edited by woody on December 05, 2007)

2.4ghz is miles away from 40 mhz so dont think that would effect it, however like woody said if those who do use 2.4ghz may not bother supressing motor etc so that might do somthing however i would have thought that you would have to be right next to it for it to make any effect?

As above, most likely cause is electrical noise from motors, etc. With that number of bots in the arena, the noise output is going to be very high! Spektrum uses would of course be unaffected.

even tho i no nothing about robots as tx lady i can confirm no robots go out on the same frequency and very rarely do we allow those at either side but as alot of you have spectrums now and made my job quite boring as theirs nothing to do because you lot dnt bring them bk hmm...mr lear hehe so like evry1 says its properly something to do with the bots tht some1 will have to luk into as this is quite an odd thing to happen

mike looks like you should be on a spectrum now :)

robochallenge had a specktrum for sale with br receiver, not sure if they still have it. i gave my dx6 to my daughter and brought myself the dx7, a very nice bit of kit.

jess, as you say you dont have much to do.. their is always tea and biscuits!:wink:
or what about cheer leading?


(Message edited by ady on December 05, 2007)

Thanks for your ideas guys (and gals) I checked Skink today - all connections good, I then drove it around my workbench (15 feet by 20 feet!) in my workshop which is steel framed and clad entirely with steel sheet (not too warm in there at the moment!) while I was standing outside the closed doors (2 x 2m x 3m x 3mm steel). Skink seemed quite happy so I guess it has to be some kind of interferance.
Would a dual conversion receiver see through any motor noise?
Im skint at the moment so a Spectrum is not an option at present!

dual conversion vs spektrum is not much of a price difference, specially if you still need to buy new crystals.