I hate Futaba 14SG. I bought one and got rid of it 3 months later. Yuk. Got a (used) 12FG instead from a gentleman from Texas. Wonderful radio. Much more pleasant.
Except - after quite some time, mine developed a crack in the left stick assembly. I tried (gently) gluing it, but it was NOT good enough.
I bought a spare 12FG (and they are HARD to find, now), but did not want to lose a radio to a damn plastic crack. Shipping to RadioSouth is not an option - I live in Israel and shipment would be both slow and dear.
Luckily, Tony from RadioSouth was kind enough to sell me just the stick assembly.
Thus equipped, in I dove. And here's the writeup.
1) I unscrewed the sticks and placed the radio face down (and battery-less) on a table. To keep the sticks off the table surface, I used two foam strips.
2) I removed the grips. Futaba 12FG has 6 screws holding the case together - four short and two long. The shorts are at the bottom corners and the top of the case, the longs are under the grips. Note that my radio (which has been obviously worked on before I got it) - the long screw were missing. Not a problem.
3) Gently and carefully lift the back off the radio. You will find either ONE or TWO connectors connecting the back to the radio mainboard. On the bottom right, a fairly wide connector (with blue wires) leads to the memory card socket and on the top, a much smaller white connector leads to the RF 72MHz antenna connector. On my radio, the 72MHz connector was NOT connected.
4) Disconnect both the memory card and the antenna leads from the mainboard.
5) On the mainboard, just above the memory card connector, a yellow-red-brown-orange (autumn in Rhode Island!) braided cable leads from the mainboard to the stick assembly.
6) Gently disconnect the autumn-colour cable (on the stick side) from the stick assembly.
7) Gently lift the left slider assembly (now on your right, covering one of the stick assembly screws) and move it so that you could....
8) Unscrew the stick assembly and lift it out.
9) Put the new stick assembly in and reconnect the autumn cable to it. This might be a good time (if you are working on the throttle assembly) to decide if you want a ratchet (air) or a smooth stick (heli). I like heli, despite never even flying one.
10) Rescrew the stick assembly in, GENTLY. Let's start with a small kiss, guys, not need to stampede like a herd of buffalos straight for the... ahem... a strong screw in.
11) Reconnect the memory card and the antenna, replace the slider in its slot, rescrew the back.
12) You are done....
MANY thanks to Tony of RadioSouth, yet again.
If you need such sticks - you can write Tony from radio south:
tony@radiosouthrc.com....
Or look for other stuff there:
http://www.radiosouthrc.com...
