leccyflyer

Posted by john haz on 06/04/2011 18:39:12: Posted by kc on 06/04/2011 17:04:15: A money spending contest? Is aeromodelling becoming just a ‘money spending contest ‘ ? People seem to just want to impress others with how much money they can waste on RC gear instead of impressing others with their model building skill and their flying skill. Aeromodelling always used to be, and still should be, about demonstrating your skill not how much money you spent. i suppose that might be aimed at peasants like me that don't have the time or inclination to scratch build ! "Contest" not at all, I buy models I want to fly & in fact sometimes give away odd motors, batteries etc that i no longer have a use for.   I'm not out to impress anyone, just enjoy what i do & get a buzz from all the learning and chopping & swapping motors, fans, props, esc's etc.   I work pretty damn hard during the week running my little show & time is always tight, so foamie kits are my choice for that reason. Added to that, my "hobby room" at home wouldn't do much to impress anybody, it's about 11' x 9' & has my armchair, wall unit, computer gear & model making table - 'er indoors will not let me build them anywhere else indoors.   I know theres a few on here that have 5 models for every one i have & they have bene into it for years - but they offer us newcomers a lot of help & I say good luck to them if they can afford it. Would I like Tim's garage & Lexus, yep sure would but I'm not jealous of him & he does nothing but help people.   Better get orf me box now ......... (saying nuffing about my hawker hunter piece of foam junk that's beside me "in build" right now LOL) @import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); Well said John  There's room for everyone in the hobby and it's all too easy for the "purist" to forget that, if it wasn't for the fellers buying all that expensive gear an keeping the model trade going, that they'd be having to grow their own balsa and melt down old 78's to make glue.   

I've got a few sets of the servoless electric retract units for installation in small -medium sized electric models- a set of the expensive Eflite ones and a couple of sets of the budget units.  I must say I was very pleased with the speed the retract operates at - no need for a servo-slow there, it's a nice solid, smooth operation, rather than the "wham-bam-thank you maam" of some mechanical retracts. Has anyone used these yet and what provision did you make for battery back-up? I'm loathed to just run them from the receiver battery, just in case anything jams up and kills the battery.  How did you go about installing these?.

A clubmate was struggling with servos in a flying wing and they were the generic cheap and cheerful clear plastic bodied, nylon geared units. I don;t know what brand they were. However his controls were very notchy and imprecise. On opening up the servo there were gaps in the gear teeth where they were supposed to be meshed. I suppose he could have replaced the gear sets, but at the price for the servos the best place for them was the bin. If you look at the gear teeth on the micro servos then, quite often those teeth are really little more than "flash" and are very susceptible to handling damage. It's all well and good having a servo that makes some outrageous claim for a torque rating, relative to it's size, but if the tiny teeth on the output gear are not up to the job then it certainly isn't worth risking them in a decent sized model. As a result I probably overdo the servos that I put in my models and won;t use the tiniest, cheapest, or lightest . Metal gears help, but they can develop some slop in them over time and, as Tim points out, there would seem to be little point in mixing metal and plastic gears only to transfer the weakness to another point in the gear train.

Posted by Geoff Smith 1 on 05/04/2011 16:45:12: Posted by tom wright 2 on 05/04/2011 14:49:52: Geoff. I think BEB is spot on with his comments on post 16-13-39 .Don't worry to much if things don't go quite to plan this hobby can represent a steep learning curve in the early days press on keep asking questions and no doubt one day you will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. .   TW2. Thanks for this Tom and everyone else who has contributed. I'm feeling a lot more relaxed and a little more confident thanks to all your encouragement. As I started this thread off with a gripe about my soldering I'll just finish it off by saying that I've taken on board all you've said. One thing left to say is that I have resurrected my old soldering iron, it's so old it's mentioned in the Doomsday Book, it is much more efficient than the Draper and gets the heat to the job much quicker but how do you stop the overflow of solder running down the side of the job and blocking everything up? Cheers my friends Webbiteer No: 20   AKA Geoff @import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); If I get any blobs of solder down the side of the bullet connector I just use a pair of sidecutters to snip it off. A decent pair of sidecutters is a marvellous tool for all sorts of jobs.  Some folks take the male connectors apart during soldering, to prevent them losing their springiness. I aim to use a large-ish iron, very quickly and so don't have the iron on there for long enough to need to do that.   

John If you're interested in dollies have a look in my gallery for some ideas of a cheap and cheerful lightweight dolly. Very easy to make, very lightweight and doesn't actually need much in the way of steering either, if you're going off short grass.   

It used to be standard operating practice to "flash" a NCd/NiMh battery that has insufficient voltage for the charger to recognise it, usually on a 12 battery, just for a moment. No more than that is necessary.

Posted by Geoff Smith 1 on 04/04/2011 20:05:30: Ok mate I'll give that a go. I'm wondering if I got the wrong 4mm connectors, the hole for the solder in the end is not very big, in fact the sides of the hole are a lot thicker than female connector. Cheers mate. Geoff @import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); I've had some like that, the walls are thick and the hole for the wire is just a small depression, no more than a couple of mm deep. Pain in the neck to install.  The 4mm connectors on some of my Loong Max packs are nearly twice the length of some 4mm connectors and, over the years i've seen a lot of variation in the size and construction.  Once had a big discussion over whether there was actually any gold anywhere near them. The usual sort of thing, someone claiming that the connectors were not really gold plated just shiny brass. So I stuck one in the electron microsope and got a trace of the elemental composition - to show they had a thin coating of the real shiny stuff. on an alloy base

Geoff Tim is correct - 12 gauge wire should fit okay into most 4mm connectors, if done correctly, but if you've already spread the ends of the wire you might have trouble.  If you start from scratch with a freshly stripped section about 5-6mm long then you should be okay. Bear in mind that if you are stripping the wire, then giving it a twist with your fingers you might be getting finger grease on there. A little smear of a non-corrosive flux would help. If you don't want to start from scratch and you have a big blob of solder on the wires there is another way, but it's a bit of a botch.  You can use a set of side cutters to trim that blob into a neat cylinder of solder and wire that will fit in the connector. When you have done that tin the connector fill the hole with molten solder, apply the iron to the wire and connector simultaneously and as the solder melts on the wire, push it gently home. You'l lose a small amount of contact area on the trimmed wire, but if you make sure you get a good joint it'll be close enough for jazz. Give it a good tug afterwards to ensure a good joint.  Oh and be sure to do the wires one at a time, with the other safely secured to the lipo with a rubber band or similar so that you can;t possibly get a short out.

Posted by Tim Mackey - Administrator on 04/04/2011 18:44:07: 12 AWG is approximately 2mm diameter, so I cant see why Geoff is struggling to get them into a typical 4mm bullet connector.Geoff, you mentioned about making a bit of a hash of tinning everything - maybe you have artificially increased the diameter by applying too much solder?  4mm bullet connectors are very variable in their internal dimensions and design. They go everywhere from connectors with a small hole to a large hole, or a semicircular cut out.  I've had 4mm connectors with very different diameter holes in the end, some tht were smaller than those in 3.5mm connectors. The small hole can be a tight squeeze with the wires that are presented on some packs.  In this case however Geoff posted earlier that he had spread the wires a little and they wouldn't fit. he's since bound them with some thinner copper wire and now they definitely won;t fit.  Perhaps cutting them back a few mm and starting again would be an option?

File a flat on the wire and put a spot of CA on the grub screw.. Oh and I wouldn't personally use them on anything bigger than a parkflyer. Edited By leccyflyer on 04/04/2011 18:44:20

12AWG is a fairly thick-ish wire very suitable for 40-60amps and the "standard" wire that would have been fitted to medium sized batteries up to a couple of years ago. As capacities increased the size of the wire on those larger packs increased as well, s that it's not unusual to get much thicker 10AWG or even 8AWG wires on larger packs.  My own biggest packs have 10AWG wire, but my pal's packs inclue some with 8AWG wires, that he calls "pokers"! My smaller capacity batteries - 1800mah and below, - typically have 14AWG wires.

Posted by Tim Mackey - Administrator on 04/04/2011 14:27:14: The instant heat trigger gun type irons are useless IMO - the tip is simply not big enough to hold heat. Also, be very careful not to mix lead with non-lead solder joints.PS I cant believe the wire on your battery is too large to fit a 4mm plug - I have used 6s 150A battery leads on 4mm before today ( but not recommended see PC9 disaster ) Edited By Tim Mackey - Administrator on 04/04/2011 14:29:30 Agreed about the instant trigger irons, which are well into chocolate fireguard territory.  As regards the wires there are some of the larger packs from GC and Hobbyking which have either 10 or 8 guage wire fitted, which won;t go in some of the 4mm gold connectors - the ones with a small hole, rather than a semicircular depression or larger hole in the rear collar of the connector.  Those wires tend to be fitted to the 4500 -5000mah pack, but they are seriously thick wires and often supplied with either much larger 4mm connectors than standard, or with 5.5mm connectors. I;'ve had both types supplied in the past couple of years.

I've seen two of the Hunter's fly. If I'd only seen the first one - on 4S with retracts - I wouldn[t have gone near the model wit a bargepole, but having seen the model in a different configuration, whch I assume was on 6s (again with retracts) I was so impressed that I bought one. On 4s the Hunter couldn't get out of it's own way and really struggled to get off grass. With the second model the performance was sparkling. Both flown off well mown grass.  Here's a couple of pictures of the latter model in action   It's a bit big, and a bit heavy, IMO for handlaunching an EDF - doable with a prop on it, but with the EDF you have to get her up on the step and she'd need a very hefty chuck. Is a bungee an option for you?  They're a lovely looking model and that's excellent value at that reduced price. I'll be watching your thread with interest as I've foolishly promised to get our one put together in the next couple of weeks

It's a labour of love Danny and he is definitely doing a great job.

Posted by Chris Bott on 01/04/2011 14:27:36: That looks like a nightmare, and for the insurance companies too.   It reminds me that we had a scaled down model version at a Greenacres electric fun fly in 2005. Many models were picked up as a mini tornado swept accross the line of parked models. Some went up to 100ft in the air. Oddly most of the models damages belonged to a single member. It really wasn't his day. Have a look at the article Page 1 and Page 2 @import url(http://www.modelflying.co.uk/CuteEditor_Files/Style/SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/CuteEditor_Files/public_forums.css); Yeah, I remember that Chris - lots of models shredded by that mad couple of minutes and, as you said mostly foamies that were owned by one member. A real shame.

Posted by John Muir on 15/03/2011 21:06:23: Hi Bob,   I hope you don't mind me making a couple of observations. First off, I think your working space is incredibly restricted. From the picture it just doesn't look like you've got enough room to move about safely when the engine's running. Do you really have to run your engine at home? Couldn't you just wait til you get to the field? Those are exactly the thoughts that immediately occurred to me.   

Incedentally, if you're interested there is an excellent glow to electric conversion thread on the FT P-47 on RC Groups Top Flite P-47 e-conversion

Action Man style gear will fit a 1/7th scale pilot too, at a push,so it might be worth getting hold of some Action Man/Dragon/GI Joe Accessories. They were, after all, flown by the Long and the Short and the Tall.

Posted by Yobyid on 03/02/2011 09:52:04: Hi Danny.......It's for a TopFlite P-47D Thunderbolt (63" span)........my first Warbird What about the Top Flite Warbird pilot designed for those very kits?  They do turn up occasionally on eBay. - I've got one that I'm saving for a rainy day.  

Posted by Bob Cotsford on 25/03/2011 13:49:39: my take on this is that if the model is too big/complex to run off a BEC, then I'd use a dedicated rx & servo battery.I'm now having second thoughts about my Cularis with it's 6 (admittedly micro) servos running off a BEC. No problems to date, but IF there were a problem it could go an awful long way, bearing in mind that we're talking catastrophic failures here so the failsafe wouldn't work either. Bob When we did some tests a number of years ago some microservos drew more current than standard servos. There were some real amp hogs in there with a couple of microservos drawing upwards of 1 amp.

Posted by Tim Mackey - Administrator on 25/03/2011 11:51:20: Almost the same title HERE lads, however I may be rethinking my original preferences I only noticed that thread was there after I had created this thread, or I'd have given this one a different title.  I don't actually enter the site through the individual forums and hadn't seen that when I posted this thread. I use the View Latest Posts options and refresh that page.

Hi Danny Agreed on the connectors. With 6mm connectors readily available these days I'd probably do the same. As you know I've seen your lovely Hurricane in action and it's prototypical flight pattern on just 30amps shows the advantages of a high voltage system (over one that is frying eggs on the motor casing).  As regards the introduction of a second system,  To my mind it's really just exactly the same as in every IC model that I've ever flown. With a very large one of those - which are not in my sphere of interest - then redundancy of RC systems, especially batteries, is a common feature.  Yes you do introduce extra equipment, but you also offer redundancy in that, in terms of a back-up.  That would be the ideal for very large models, but in lieu of that a well maintained conventional power source for the radio gear would seem to avoid the loss of all radio control, in the event of a failure in the rive-power chain.  cheers Brian

Those are pretty much my thoughts on the matter.  Reading that particular post-mortem thread has only served to reinforce them, since I had a loss of power in the air on Sunday and was able to recover the model to a straightforward deadstick landing in the middle of the field with no more damage than one "How can you have a deadstick with an electric?" in my ear having called it. I don;t think that loss of power would have led to loss of battery power to a UBEC (or an internal BEC) as it happens, and I do use BEC on several of my smaller models and am happy to do so. The equation there is a bit different though, where the extra weight of a receiver battery comes into the equation and where onboard integrated BEC on an ESC on 3s1p power makes sense to me.  The particular model in question needs a receiver battery to balance, with the 6s1p Lipos mounted on the CofG, enabling different packs to be used. The main disadvantage is that of keeping the RX battery charged, which is just the same as for an IC model. I usually fast charge the RC pack at the field, on arrival.  I suppose another option would be to fit a Lipo RX battery with a regulator, or the UBEC, but I'm not mad keen on keeping a Lipo permanently in the model and I don't charge my lipos at home anyway.

The thread discussing the post-mortem on the dead Seagull PC-9 has been closed, with the recommendation that any further discussion on the subject of power looms, UBECS, connectors and data loggers should be in a new thread. I came to that thread rather late, but in reading through it found a number of items that were clearly of a wider interest to electric flyers. Those include the fragility of the power and radio control systems being dependent upon the linkages and connectors that we fit to the various components in our models.  My main question is - is the use of a UBEC a case of putting all our eggs in one basket, in a safety-critical part of the system?  I admit that reading the original posts in the threads relating to the big dead Seagull I was drawn to conclude that it makes a great case (IMO) for a completely separate power supply for one's radio system, especially in larger models, where the additional weight isn't detrimental. In the event of any sort of serious mishap in the power train, one does not then run the risk of losing radio control as well.   I think it's settled the matter for me in that I won't now be fitting a UBEC to my favourite model, since the potential disadvantages would seem to outweigh the advantages..  The other thing that I was enquiring about in that thread, regarding the wiring up of our power looms, connectors etc concered the additional complexity of in-flight monitoring equipment.  The introduction of extra gubbins into the power circuitry, whilst it produces some nice, useful data, is something that IMO needs to be looked at very carefully, lest that compromise the integrity of the overall system itself. As another poster pointed out, one is left with the little niggle as to whether the fitting of the data logger contributed to the situation at all.  I also asked the question whether the leads for the data logger (and UBEC) were added to the connectors in a second phase of soldering, which could conceivably have reheated, and weakened the original solder joint. I asked that for the sake of clarification and it appears that the datalogger was merely added in series in the circuit and there was no second phase of soldering to the 4mm bullet connectors used for the power circuit.  I stopped using my trusty Wattsmater years ago, in favour of a clamp meter, precisely to avoid the considerable extension of the power loom that results from using adaptors to fit that equipment in series, between battery and ESC. I could have lopped off the fitted ASTRO zero loss connectors. which would have shortened the extra cable length a bit, but there is still a fair length of extra cable to introduce into the circuit. The other, similar, though opposite question is - in the interest of accruing data, are we in danger of over-egging the pudding and introducing extra points of failure in our models? Both questions are egg-related, funnily enough. Hamlet and eggs - what more could you wish for? Happy Easter.   Thoughts? Edited By leccyflyer on 25/03/2011 10:23:09

Posted by Tim Mackey - Administrator on 24/03/2011 21:04:52: Posted by leccyflyer on 24/03/2011 19:13:59: Posted by Tim Mackey - Administrator on 24/03/2011 18:10:10: I may have used LMP, or just my regular big roll of 60/40 - cant honestly remember.What I can be sure of is that there was no mixing of types - the tinned leads on the ESC were cut back to the correct length of the leads to suit my installation, the bare fresh copper tinned, and then brand new bullets were tinned and soldered on in one stage. I refuse to use that awful lead free rubbish - and stocked up with a HUGE drum of multicore 60/40 a couple of years back. Did you add the extra leads for the data logger afterwards, as a second soldering job?  There are no "extra leads" - the logger comes already fitted with a pair of inputleads and output leads, to which connectors of your choice are fitted. I fitted my now standard 4mm gold connectors when I bought the logger year ago. How much does that extend the battery to ESC lead length?