Lee Burke

Too true, Eric.   The moving finger writes, and having writ, Moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. Well, not if someone posts before you can get to the Edit Button 

I think the idea of the stand-alone BEC or UBEC is that it can be connected to the main drive power battery and regulate power to the Rx whilst remaining separate from the ESC.  Should the ESC get too hot and decide to shut down it wont affect the separate BEC.  Also, a switching UBEC can step down the voltage more efficiently ( creating less heat) than a BEC circuit in an ESC.  Now, I stand happily to be corrected with this. 

This a rather confusing post, to me at least, Scott.  I need your help in understanding it, please.    You say you are convinced that brown-outs and signal loss are the same thing?  But surely a brown-out, ie reduced and insufficient voltage to the receiver, can be caused by a number of things, but none of them is signal loss.   If you turn your Tx off, causing signal loss to the receiver, it will not suffer a brown-out as a result, will it?  It remains ready to connect to the signal as soon as this reappears.  On the other hand, a sufficient voltage drop, caused, by whatever reason, will shut down the receiver until such times as the voltage returns.  In this case it does not matter how strong the signal may be at the receiver it will not be able to decode it.  So, as far as I understand it, brown-outs and signal loss are two distinct and separte problems each of which requires its own solution. It seems these ideas are not at all those you hold?  Perhaps we are somehow talking about differant things? 

Drifting off topic is often how things are discovered 

This is the one.

Anyone wonder just how fast is fast enough?  I wanted to know what was the optimum speed my prop should turn at, and found this interesting and possibly very useful little gadget on line.here: PropCalc   Of course this is for full size machines but i guess the principle remains true? 

Thanks, Myron, I have an Arabic/French keyboard which I use mainly for Arabic if I have to, but its not really necessary for French as I said to Ernie.  Why don't you return to France if you enjoyed living there so much?  Dumb question, I know. Sorry about the parenthisis, (sic) sounds like a parrot's disease.  LOL  I meant parenthesis, I guess.  Why don't people read what they have written? 

Pretty Lady, David.  Very clean and mean. Off topic parenthisis Ernie, its not worth changing your qwerty keyboard unless you write mostly in French.   Remember too, that another way to insert accents and symbols is in MS Word using the Insert menu.  Also, if you enable French language through the Control Panel (XP) you can then select French from the language bar and benefit from Word's French proofing options - which may need to be installed.   Specialist web sites will have more information should you need it. Close parenthisis

Thanks, Brian.

Poor old Timbo, chained to his test bed now and forever   I like your Miss Power 2008 ranking. Thanks for that explanation of the signal radiation, Brian.  Does the shortness of the wavelength of 2.4Ghz mean that the "hole" in the signal is narrower than that of, say, 35MHz.   I have attempted to discover just where the No Signal point is on my 2,4Ghz equipment but so far without success (maybe a good thing) but I guess proximity to the Tx means the Rx is "smothered" and bound to pick up a signal wherever the Tx antenna is pointing.  Just how far away does one have to go, I wonder?  Shaun, you seem to be the unwilling expert here   How far out was the ill-fated Sea Fury?

Hmm,  Think I'll have to pass the hat round then . . .  Come, who's first? Otherwise your remarks on BECs being safer than separate Rx battery seem to make a lot of sense.  Isn't a UBEC the best bet in the end, I mean doesn't a UBEC keep cooler - when all around are loosing their heads, to quote our old chum Kipling.

And when you have finished these tests, Timbo.  Please do them all again on a Futaba  2.4Ghz.   Ducking and running very fast 

Its a question of semantics, really, I guess, Myron.  You do have to pay to register the vehicle initially to obtain French plates and documentation.  This cost varies from region to region.  Beyond that you pay no annual road tax.  In the UK also you pay to register the vehicle, about £50, isn't it?   Then you also pay annual road tax. 

Does anyone know how wide that that doughnut might be?  And is it a collumn or an inverted cone? Getting a bit off topic with that, though.

You can insert accents on any machine by using the ASCII codes .  Press Alt together with the number (using the keypad) to insert the accented letter.  For example: Alt  +130 = é Alt + 138 = è Alt + 135 = ç Others may be found by Googling ASCII and downloading a list. Doesn't help one much with grammar though.  

The robotic forums, too, are perhaps more experienced in these areas.  Try robots

Gosh, what a frightening idea, Ron, the English running France!  The French running France manage to have no road tax at all.  Perhaps a better idea to have the French running England. Runs and ducks 

Blimey!  You were swift there, Mr T

LOL I guess those are the readings on the lipo.  It would be interesting to see what the UBEC was supplying to the Rx when you operate the servos.  But since nothing failed . . .

Or you could use a little screen capture app like the freeware on this page Link 

Very interesting, Timbo, and great to see the test on video too.  Presumably with several servos working at the same time the voltage drop would be more severe, and even worse with digital servos?

But no doubt the Speccy has its antennas in a line as Timbo confirms.  Just good to know they are different. 

 This extract is rom the  6EX manual, I know, its not Spektrum but its the one I have.  They also mention that the Tx antenna should be perpendicular to the face of the Tx for best results. ---------- 1. The two antennas must be kept as straight as possible. Otherwise it will  reduce the effective range. (By antennas they mean the bits of bare wire, not the sheathed part) 2. The two antennas should be placed at 90 degrees to each other.  This is not a critical figure, but the most important thing is to keep the antennas away from each other as much as possible.  Larger models can have large metal objects that can attenuate the RF signal.  In this case the antennas should be placed at both sides of the model. Then the best RF signal condition is obtained at any flying attitude. 3. The antennas must be kept away from conductive materials, such as metal and carbon by at least a half inch. The coaxial part of the antennas does not need to follow these guidelines, but do not bend it in a small radius. 4. Keep the antennas away from the motor, ESC, and other noise sources as much as possible.

Perhaps I am not understanding the descriptions here, and my info refers to Futaba 2.4Ghz ,but the antennas should not be in line with each other but form as near as possible a right angle.  It doesn't much matter if they point up or down or across but they should be at 90 degrees to each other.  It is preferable if one of them points towards the rear of the aircraft but this is not vital.

Be really great to see some unbiased and credible figures.  Great stuff, Timbo.  I am, as I said, very pleased they are replacing your receiver like that with no quibbles, Shaun, but it sure would have been nice to eliminate it from the ring of possible suspects one way or another.