I've had a 40mhz laser 4 for about 6 months. It has always worked "fine", albeit with short range.

I just used the wal-wart from my new optic 6 to charge it (only about 60ma charging rate). It charged just fine; i checked the voltage, fine.

Hooked it up and the servos only move just a very little bit and move in the same direction when the stick is moved either way. the atv is not turned down.

I read somewhere about the diode being damaged when you charge the batt in the tx but this charge rate is very low and there's a jack right on the tx for charging.

Maybe it has nothing to do with the charging. I had been trying to get my buddy cable working. It works with the laser 4 as the master (but with the trainer switch on so using the optic) so it seems to be something about the controls, not the broadcasting. It doesn't work the other way with the optic as the master, with neg. or pos. shift.

Weird, the shadow automatically detects pos or neg shift so i can use either one!

any ideas? thanks.

Originally Posted by jay flay tway

It has always worked "fine", albeit with short range.

It probably had a problem in the RF part which now got worse - from "short range" to "no range" - and has nothing to do with the charging. Just my suggestion...

do you mean there's a known defect in Optic 6's,??

Thanks Ivanc but it worked just fine before. Suddenly (after the wal-wart charging and trying buddy cable in both directions(slave and master) )
it totally didn't work. I mean the servos just b a r e l y move. Just my luck to get a totally enigmatic problem. This 40mhz tx is turning out to be more and more useless to me. I had accepted that it would only be useful for training and my experimental planes but now it doesn't work at all, except as the master(which means I'd have to use the crappy single-conversion receiver, which goes in my crap planes anyway!!)

worst luck. frustrated.

Are you using a Hitec trainer cord? Using a different one may damage the transmitters. If you're using the Hitec one, have in mind that it is one-way - one side is for the master, the other for the slave tranny. The Hitec cord powers the slave from the master and turns the RF in the slave off. Only the master transmits RF on it's frequency (channel) and shift. As far as I know only the 72MHz band uses two different shifts - positive and negative and all other frequency bands use positive only. Can someone else confirm or correct that?

Thanks Ivanc. Yep, it's a Hitec trainer cord from ne sailplanes. Can it damage a tx if the wrong tx is powered up? I"m thinking not, because this is such an easy mistake to make.
I guess I can't use it for these two transmitters because the 40mhz one is positive shift and my 72 receivers are both negative.

I would think though that the shift and even the frequency band wouldn't matter since only one RF is fired up? Make sense?

I've used a Hitec trainer cord with an Optic 6, Flash 5, Prism 7 and Laser 4 in different configurations (master and slave). But they all are on 72MHz. I don't have information as to where exactly the shift is determined and whether it affects the signal sent from the slave to the master tranny. I assume that the shift shouldn't matter but I might be wrong. My assumption is made on the fact that I received a serial device for connecting a transmitter to FMS. It was made by my brother, who uses 35MHz positive shift transmitter with it. I added a cord with a connector for Hitec and it works without a problem. All my Hitec transmitters use negative shift.

Thanks for the further info.
It appears, as usual, that I have a problem beyond my or anyone else's ability.
I think I should take up frisbee or something else without moving parts. My bad luck is phenomenal, and it's expensive. I now have a tx I can't use, even as a slave for training, a receiver that works but not with my tx that works, a Seeker on the ground because of a new twitching receiver, and the servo plugs don't match the shadow receiver (might add the other plugs so both kinds are there for switching receivers.)

Wonder what else will go wrong?

I feel like throwing it all away and starting from scratch with an RTF. I just want to get in the air. There, there's my sob story.