In my Fish Tales the ball from the catapult does not hit the wire ramp. It aims way to high. Without the cover the top two wires are hit and the ball even hops above, so the ball almost shoots completely over the ramp. There is no way to adjust this much by bending the wires.

I tried to maximize the way of the catapult, so it will stop only short of the ramps. I also checked the coil and replaced the sleeve to be sure. No difference.

It appears the ball is leaving the catapult 'spoon' bevor end of way is reached. This may be the centrifugal force as the catapult is very fast. I tried to film it, attached you find a picture from impact. You can clearly see the ball being considerably higher then the catapult.

The ball sits fairly loose in the spoon and can be pressed down by 2mm (plastic then widens a bit).

What can I do?

fish_tales_catapult.jpg

I took it off for testing purposes. I did not think it is a good idea if the ball hits the plastic first and then somehow goes into the wire frame. Ball speed is greatly reduced also.

It was working because the cover would adjust the angle. Looking at the mechanics I do not see room for adjustments (other than pin length). It also looks exactly like the drawings in the manual. Again, I am not sure why the ball leaves early.

I conducted some more tests. I used a better camera to do a bit of high-speed filming and found that the ball is actually leaving the spoon to early, but not because it is loosing grip (earlier assumed centrifugal force). The arm is just slowing down too early.

After checking and re-checking the mechanics I was thinking: What if the impuls is too short? So I manually triggered the coil by grounding it with another cable.

Interestingly: Now the ball hits the ramp just fine.

I now assume some kind of electronics problem, but require some help on where to start.

Finally solved. Simple and surprising.

The catapult was working ok, but not perfectly before I touched it. Top wires were hit a bit at the bottom side. Edge is worn. The catapult seemed to stop early. I then shortened the pin for the flipper coil stop a bit allowing the catapult to stop later. Then I started testing with the above results.

The solution was very simple. In Test Menu, the catapult does not work correctly, the power supply is a tiny bit shorter then in real game play. When I started a normal game, put some balls in and waited for multiball to release them, all worked fine. Now ball shoots out a lot faster, too.

_{Post edited by GunterS: typo}