From: "Finn Lassen finn.lassen@verizon.net" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
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To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: EC3 debugging. Code wanted.
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Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:45:57 -0400
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Yesterday Tracy took pity on me and came down and did some troubleshooting.

At first listen he said it sounded like I was only running on one rotor. 
We ruled that out by disconnecting power to rotor 1 coils, then rotor 2 
coils. Engine didn't stop.

Tracy said it sounded like timing was way late - not the sharp pop he'd 
expect from the rotary exhaust. (I would never have heard that).

Rechecked CAS wiring - OK.

Found and marked TDC on starter ring gear with white paint in between 
two teeth, and put on a timing light. Timing was off and random to the 
point he only got a glimpse of the mark once.

He thought he heard it run right once at very low RPM when I pulled back 
on throttle to shut down.

I removed the EC3 and he took it home. He confirmed that at very low 
idle RPMs it works right (timing is calculated differently there) but at 
higher RPMs coils never got the signal to fire! Only reason they fired 
at all is safety built into coils (and EC3) that fires themselves after 
max allowed dwell time.

He gave me a couple of hardware changes to make: clamping circuit on CAS 
input and shorting a diode from A supply to the Vcc3 supply. Doubtful 
that they will handle my issue.

So now it's up to me to debug the program. We verified the essential 
configuration bits. He lent me an Arduino based RX-8 CAS simulator (I'll 
post info on how to make your own later.)

The lazy person's (me) way to find out what changed is to compare the 
source code from when it last worked (for a Renesis) and the current 
source code.

If anyone has a copy of the EC3CL8.ASM file from several years ago, I 
would appreciate it.

However, it's probably not a bad idea to have someone other than Tracy 
who's also familiar with the EC3 program. So I might as well dig in.

I'll keep you briefed on what we find.

Finn