Retractable Landing Gear

[rsbkh]

I have a question about hooking up the retractable landing gear from Tarot. Of course it came with no instructions. There are two legs, each with its own servo. Is it possible to connect them together so they operate off one channel or do they each need their own channel and I have to mix them in the tx so they operate off the same switch?

[Kbev5709]

If they are regular old servoless retracts and don't require a special control card, then you can hook them up in parallel to one channel of your TX. From the looks of them in your pic that would seem to be the case. You can use something like this to do it. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... _5pc_.html
they make them in even shorter lengths. When I bought my retracts that I used to make my own gear with, they came with a "Y" cable. You might need to power them from a spare ESC bec depending on how many milliamps they draw. I have to run mine that way.

[rsbkh]

I've since done some research and figured out a few things. This is one video that I wanted to share because this guy automated his landing gear (same as mine) with sonar. I might have to try to incorporate that somehow.

https://youtu.be/KWmgRvqy59s

[Kbev5709]

I noticed he left no details on the wiring and no link to the code he wrote for it. He did use the "Y" harness that I recommended which will work fine from the TX switch and RX. I personally don't see a need for the extra weight and hassle of all the added sensors, boards and wires to do what is essentially flipping a switch automatically. When I control the gear the weight is all in the TX. That leaves me more power for payload instead of an extra switch I don't really need. That plus if the sonar fails to lower the gear I don't want to land on my gimbal if I can help it. Now, if I didn't have the channels on my TX to handle it all I could see a need. For the video, nice idea, poor follow up on how to.