Jump to content
Please be aware of scammers when using the Sale/Wanted forum areas

Chris Bott - Moderator

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    8,533

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Chris Bott - Moderator

  1. Chris Bott - Moderator
    I agree 5S would be a better bet, certainly if you want to keep the LVC setting untouched.
  2. Chris Bott - Moderator
    There could be Frank.  We set the LVC to off or as low as we can set it. What sort of current will you be pulling? The A123 volts do depress quite a lot.. You could change to a bigger prop while on A123's to keep the power the same.
  3. Chris Bott - Moderator
    He does have that look doesn't he? Danny you'd better get him glued in if we are going to fly them both together soon. Nearly ready to go - chocks away!
  4. Chris Bott - Moderator

    Chris Bott - Moderator posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  5. Chris Bott - Moderator

    Chris Bott - Moderator posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  6. Chris Bott - Moderator

    Chris Bott - Moderator posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  7. Chris Bott - Moderator
    If the soldering iron has trouble, try fashioning a big block of copper to fit at the rear of the "bit" as a heat reservoir. I have twisted lots of thick solid copper wire round mine which is nearly as good.  60 Size warbird? I think you should do that as well Have a look at the Electric Sea Fury thread. Now theres value for money. A 60 Size Warbird for £99 from Leeds model shop, complete with retracts. We've moved on a little and are ready to test a larger motor. Still on 8S A123 though. As the thread says, it might as well have been designed for electric. The bigger motor bolts straight onto the firewall, the 8 A123's have a ready made box to drop them in. Theres even a little carb box which nicely guards the cells from the rear end of motor shaft. And Dannys making a great job of painting over the stock scheme. Hopefully we'll have  "before and after" overpainting examples at our electric funfly next weekend. See greenacres website. Danny is also experimenting with a Yt International Hurricane. I don't beleive that we have hit the A123 sweet spot with this one yet. Theres an issue with 2300 being too small in capacity and doubling up being too heavy. At the moment it's on 12S1P. We hope to do some bench tests with 8S2P to hopefully bring up the duration. Different motor though.
  8. Chris Bott - Moderator
    I would add to what Danny has said, that I try to avoid wherever possible soldering direct to cells. The button end seems OK but the can end reaaly soaks away the heat. If your iron doesnt have the thermal capacity (i.e. a big lump of copper store heat in before soldering) then the cell reduces the iron temperature and the solder on the iron solidifies! I generally use dewalt cells and have revived apparently DOA cells. I try very hard to use the welded tabe, they are easy to solder to. The cells from our chineese freinds come with tabs welded on. They appear and perform like genuine ones so I assume they are. (Unlike other pretenders!) See Cells with tabs I've had 4S packs from Puffin and they are very well put together and an excellent price. I do with they would do 6S. Maybe we should all tell John that there is a demand?? I also find that 3S Lipo planes are getting a bit small for A123's to work well. The extra weight making more difference. So 4S and above seems to be the sweet spot. 6S in a 40 size plane is where they work really well...
  9. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Timbo First look at your FDR's and they are very odd. First of all they seem to be sampling at about 4 samples a minute.  I dont even have a setting near that speed. In Tools - Choose Recorder Capture Rate. I can choose 1 Sample every 5 mins, 1 every min, 1 every second, 2/s 4/s, 8/s and 10/s. Mines set on 4 per sec. Next - the battery volts graph starts on 0V and doesnt rise until after you've taken current. This could be a product of the very slow capture rate and having logging triggers set. Mostly I have mine set to start recording as soon as I connect it. Full raw file shows 2 sessions, but all parameters seem to continue through from one session to the next. This doesn't seem right. Your full bench run test looks like my graphs. When current is high volts are low etc. as you would expect. On all your files except the bench test, the voltage graphs just look wrong, the volts dont do the "opposite" of current...  Downloading and saving is very confusing, I've never really got my head round choosing a model before getting into the software. So always just accept whatever comes up. Maybe it saves different on screen meters with different models?? Downloading gets everything in the recorder. I then tend to save the whole recorder file. But it is possible to save individual sessions. I only record voltage and current.  That gives me V,A,W,mAh against time.
  10. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Hi Timbo  My A123 packs have always been great straight off the blocks, never had to "run them in" at all. I'm pleased that the soft ones have got better, that sounds promising. Send me the FDR's and I'll have a look tomorrow night (I'm somewhere in the wilds of N Wales tonight, thank goodness for satnav, I dont think I'd ever have found this hotel without. Seems worth finding though It sounds initially like one or two of your cylinder cells weren't full to start with? But I'm sure you would have checked? I've had packs that have needed no balancing ever, and I've had packs that go way out, needing initial balancing for hours on end and then regular balancing to keep them in check. The last lot I had, were refused by the charger, volts too low, from new. A quick touch accross a good cell, the volts came up and the charger was happy. Those have been great ever since. Hopefullyyours will come good nice and quickly. I can compare yours with some of my FDR's and see where theres a difference. Dannys Eagle Tree needed a good calibrate, mine happened to be quite close. We did them against  3 separate multimeters at a steady 10A.
  11. Chris Bott - Moderator
    me me me... yes please sir!
  12. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Here comes another one Danny is right when he says this is the easiest kit ever to build. (of its type). And it seems sooooo designed around electrics. Especially with our A123 Packs, but would suit Lipos well too. Heres some pics of this afternoons work. Surfaces hinged, Elevators joined (thats a mod), Tail feathers glued on. Motor and ESC mounted, and the big job, retracts fitted and working.
  13. Chris Bott - Moderator

    Chris Bott - Moderator posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  14. Chris Bott - Moderator

    Chris Bott - Moderator posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  15. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Those are just the warbirds There's also a couple of DB Moths, some pattern and 3D stuff. And a Wot4, a largish Tayporcraft and who knows what CM might dust off??   All on A123's.  And plenty of little stuff on LiPo's. And Bob P's Spit with the sound system and anything else he bings... Does anyone have connections to order some more weather like we had last weekend? What a cracking event we had   Greenacres/YT Funfly July 2008
  16. Chris Bott - Moderator
    OK thanks - I promise to do the videoing properly next time too..     Very soon by the look of things?
  17. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Danny that looks brilliant.   Really must start (and finish) mine. Trust you have some paint left ?
  18. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Many thanks to Danny for all the hard work, the Cirrus looks fantastic. (They both do) Electric seems to suit them both really well. looking forward to some lazy evenings to fly them together. Plans are to mount a video camera in one and chase the other around, I do hope that happens.
  19. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Timbo my impression before we started this, was that in NiMh's for the same size can, then the higher the capacity, the lower the current capability. Particularly in AA's. IF this is indeed the case, then as NiMh's get higher and higher in capacity, we should watch what we use them for. That's one reason I'm investigating the Eneloops. I was with a well respected flyer at our club the other day, he had a voltspy installed in his plane.  When he waggled all servos at once, it was dipping off the scale beyond the red. His comment - "these volyspys are rubbish, this is a brand new pack, and they are 2300's so they should be really good"  (They were AA's)  (He really has problems with electric planes too by the way) I did try to help, but you can't help some people.
  20. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Wow Frank that really demonstrates what I thought I was seeing with the higher capacity but smaller cells. Looks to me that to pack mAh into an AA package, they have to compromise on current capability. Or at least that's the effect. I'll do the same test with the Sanyo Eneloops when i get a chance, that will be interesting. Might be a few days though. 
  21. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Greenacres Club (Walsall, West Midlands) Are having a funfly this weekend (26/27 July) All pilots and spectators are invited, see our website for details. (Free entry, £3 to fly, plenty of camping, barbeques Trade...) I am planning to leave a live web cam running for the entire event. Or if batteries don't allow, then for an hour here and there. I might even move it around?? This does depend on everything working, and I'm probably setting myself up for failure by announcing it. But if you're interested, have a look at http://greenacresmac.co.uk over the weekend and see if I'm succeeding. Has anyone done this before? If so what are the pitfalls?? Let me know if you'd like to see this. Or is it a lot of effort for nothing? Cheers Chris
  22. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Well the weather gods didn't do us any favours at our first funfly, but a good time was still had by all that attended. Everything is now in place for our biggest annual event this weekend (27th/27th July) We have had interest and promises from quite a number of display squadrons, and quite a few huge models, including big electrics too. The biggest and best burger van we have ever had is booked, along with bouncy castles (not intended for soft landings!) and other kids attractions. The strip is bigger, flatter and closer mown than ever too, the new mower we bought at the start of the year is really doing a great job. All we can do is pray for the weather now - there must be some decent flying weather this summer! If you can't attend, take a look at http://greenacresmac.co.uk I will be attempting to keep a webcam running through the event. Sadly, I couldn't set that up last time because of the rain..
  23. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Thanks Rob I'd missed that. This seemed like a magic bullet! Now I'm not so sure.. I've had a packet of Vapextech Instant's arrive. On a banner right accross the packet it says "READY-TO-USE" "1000x times" and in big letters "instant" Then in the small writing instructions below, it says "Must be charged before use!" Wish they'd make their mind up They also show a graphic of 2 circles overlapping. In one it shows advantages of rechargeables (enviromentally frendly, re-useable etc.) In the other about Alkaline (Instant use, long shelf life etc) Theres a big plus sign between the 2 circles. (This is after I'd had to send back the ordinary Vapextech NiMh's that the ebayer had wrongly sent.)
  24. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Rob, having to cycle sounds disappointing. Did that refer to a particular manufacturers type? I wonder if these are all a generic type or are the different manufacturers acheiving the charge retention by using different methods? 
  25. Chris Bott - Moderator
    Theres a couple called "instant" here may have been these guys at Weston Modelpower  They also have lots of other options..
×
×
  • Create New...