[jimb]

My first time with eflight. I scratch built a Tiger Moth following the usual balsa construction methods. Since I have no experience with the systems, I connected all the components and tested out the servos, motor etc. It worked fine!
Now all the flight surfaces have been connected and all of the gear has been installed in the finished airplane. When I turn on the Tx then plug in the batteries to the a/c, the servos jitter like mad and throw to their extreme limits and the motor starts and stops without any input from me.
My push rods are light wood dowel with Z bend wires on each end... could this cause some sort of interference!
the batteries on the Tx and the 3 cell lipos are fully charged and checked and yet the servos act as if the Tx isn't even on!
Any suggestions?

[Hughes500E]

Are you working with 72Mhz under fluorescent lights?
Have you tested/used the RX before?
Have you checked for PPM/PCM setting in the TX?
What radio and RX?

Sounds like interference to me!

[NorseHammer]

The receiver is my first suspect, the crystal could be loose or damaged, the antenna wire could also be loose or damaged, the next thing to check is the BEC circuit, you mentioned using a 3 cell liPo so if the voltage to the receiver is too high things are not likely to work correctly either, more info would help us help you. See Hughes500E message.

[robonline]

Unplug the ESC/BEC from your receiver and use a 4.8V receiver battery to see if the receiver is working. If no, find out why. If yes then look into the ESC/BEC as the source of the trouble.

[Guest]

You didn't mentin the battery type and number of cells. The ESC has an upper limit on the voltage that it can handle.

ESC may also need to be programmed. RTFM for that!

I agree that you should use a regular reciver pack to hook to the RX (ESC is NOT in the power loop) and verify that ther TX/RX combination works. Just thought that another possible culprit is that the crystal may not match the radio -- RX manufacturers sometime fiddle things to sell their own crystals.

Only other thing that I can think of is that the radio is too close to the receiver -- stick the radio about ten feet away.

[Hughes500E]

I have a feeling he fixed it

[jimb]

Sorry, but yea I did figure it out. The problem turned out to be quite simple but when it originally popped up at 12:30 in the morning, I could'nt wrap my head around it. Today, I unplugged every thing from the reciever, plugged in an old Nicad battery for power then started adding components.
My mistake was not realizing that Hitec plugs can be inserted into the reciever in two ways. One orientation and also rotated 180 deg. to that. I am used to using Futaba electronics which can only be plugged into the recievers one way because of the small alignment chip molded into the plug.
I discovered this by calling the eflight guru who sold me the components at Hobby Wholesale and he said "oh for sure! always make sure the black wire is to the outside!"
Thanks for all the help and if the maided flight is successful I can enclose pics if you want.
All the best... Jim