range question
 

I just bought my first MicroSizer (Pro) a few days ago. I liked it so much, I ordered some go-fast goodies on the net.

Anyway, after a couple days of fun, I bought a second car so I could get someone to race me. The second car is a MS Sport. The Pro is 49 mhz, the Sport 27mhz. The Pro works great, but the Sport has a range of about 3 feet. It gets a few feet from the controller and starts to stutter and stop.

Is it the frequency? Interference? It is not the car because I already exchanged it and the second one did the same thing. What is going on?

it is perhaps interference, if you want the antenna longer just open up your car and under the pcb the antenna will be in a knot undo the knot. This gave me like 2 ft of range.

27mhz bits are known for their crappy range. You can try adding a telescoping antenna to your controller. I don't know exactly how much more range you'll get, but it's worth a shot.

careful unknotting, the antanae on my zipzaps came out easily. Two of them, both fell off. Poorly made. You could solder it back on, but it's not worth all that for an extra 2 feet.

I've never had an antenna in a microsizer just let go. Just be careful and you shouldn't have a problem.

there's a bunch of mods at this link that deal with range and what you can do to improve it.

hmm odd, cuz my 27 rocks my 45 in range. i can get about 30 good feet on my 27, even with the crip cap attatched, but my 45 gets about 10 with a lot of mods to both the car and controller.

then again, my AM set gets about 5 feet... =(

just be nice and careful, no sudden movements, and your antenna should be fine. also, soldering antennas is good practice, cuz it's hard to screw up and it helps you learn some skills :)

Re: range question
 

I must say it's interfierence. Beside my fridge and dishwasher i get terrible recepton, but great everyplace else. I took the crip cap out and i have no problem. My pro never had the problem, Try removing the crip cap.

It's the messy looking chip near one of the corners.

This site here has some good range mods also.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I have taken some of the advice given and: I did ant. mods to both controllers, removed crip caps from both cars, looked for crip caps in both controllers (with no luck), did dual cat 5 mods to both cars, not to mention some kick ass motors from TinyRC (and batteries - not dual yet though).

As for the crip caps in the controller, I could not see one of those brown things between the two points mentioned on the mod web sites on either side of the board. Both cars are new, so I figured the controllers have no caps?

Anyway, I got a few more feet from my 49mhz Pro, and very little from the 27mhz Sport. I guess I did all I can do? I think my house must be too small with too many appliances!

Anyone ever notice the 27mhz cars are on the same frequency as a Microsoft wireless mouse?