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DIY ( external ) Lipo to ESC killers


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30 minutes ago, Andy48 said:

I've been using arming plugs for years, indeed I published something on it years ago in RCME, so nothing new.

 

Point of failure, true there is a possibility, but its never happened to me and almost all my models have them. However, as a safety feature is is very well worth it. I never fit the arming plug until the model is on the take off strip.

 

Maybe better a mangled model than a mangled finger? 

 

I find the cavalier attitude of many flyers to connecting batteries with their hands through prop arcs or careless handling to be very concerning.  Many of these say that "it's OK, I've got an isolating switch on my transmitter" which I won't argue is a wise precaution - but only as a secondary layer of protection over and above safe handling.  It's so easy to either forget/misoperate a switch or knock one that their use shouldn't be relied on.

 

Last year, I was casually advising a fellow member that he shouldn't really be connecting his battery with the model on a bench pointing into the pits area when another connected his battery either with the throttle open or knocked the stick.  Either way, it leapt off the starting bench and into our safety fence...happily the miscreant and everyone else was adhering to club protocol and were behind the model.

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1 minute ago, Martin Harris - Moderator said:

 

Maybe better a mangled model than a mangled finger? 

 

I find the cavalier attitude of many flyers to connecting batteries with their hands through prop arcs or careless handling to be very concerning.  Many of these say that "it's OK, I've got an isolating switch on my transmitter" which I won't argue is a wise precaution - but only as a secondary layer of protection over and above safe handling.  It's so easy to either forget/misoperate a switch or knock one that their use shouldn't be relied on.

 

Last year, I was casually advising a fellow member that he shouldn't really be connecting his battery with the model on a bench pointing into the pits area when another connected his battery either with the throttle open or knocked the stick.  Either way, it leapt off the starting bench and into our safety fence...happily the miscreant and everyone else was adhering to club protocol and were behind the model.

Throttle lock switch is a really good safety step and highly recommended, but, like you said, it's not infallible. The only infallible bits are not having a lipo connected or not having a prop on, which should be a golden rule for the bench unless you are actually testing the motor and need the prop to be fitted. Until the battery is disconnected you must treat the model as live.

 

As an illustration of the non-infallibility of the throttle lock switch, a few weeks ago I was working on a model and broke my own cardinal rule or not removing the prop on the bench, because I was only rebinding the model and it was only going to be there for seconds. Rebinding the model means the back off the transmitter to press the bind button on the internal module and, with the fuselage sitting on the bench I was doing that, when the transmitter toppled onto it's face, flipping the throttle cut switch and opening the throttle. No hilarity ensued , luckily I was behind the model and grabbed it by the tail, so the only damage was a shredded set of papers for the TX module and some cuts to some other bits on the bench. As AVM Park would have said "That should damned well never have happened" and should be taken as a warning - props off every time on the bench.

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  • 1 month later...

At our club, most of the benches have 2 vertical posts one end. One puts the wing against the post with the fuselage  in the middle. Any mistake with the throttle just means a chopped off finger for the miscreant, rather than a torpedo across the pits area.🙃

Edited by Sam Longley
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