Eifion Herbert

According to the ANO if it's not a balloon or a kite, and it's under 20kg it's a "small unmanned aircraft", regardless of if it's got wings and a spinny thing up front, a big spinny thing on top or four small spinny things on the corners. This is a bit of a mismatch to how the terms are commonly used, by modellers, the press and general public. For the layman, the terms "drone" and "model plane" conjures up two different images. I did notice a new sign had appeared at White Horse Hill the last time I was there, informing people that the flying of drones was prohibited, even though flying any kind of powered model there has been prohibited for years, with signage to that effect. Clearly, the council thought that clarification or reinforcing that rule was needed. Perhaps a multirotor pilot turns up with his new DJI, sees a sign saying "flying powered model aircraft prohibited" and doesn't consider their drone to be a model aircraft.

With regard to flying time, I learnt on an E-flite Alpha 450. It would do ten minutes very comfortably at pottering around circuits and shooting touch and gos on a 2200 mAh lipo, and with a couple of minutes in reserve for the inevitable go-arounds. I'd typically land with 35% to 40% power left. I had a pair of these lipos, and charged at 2C at the field. By the time I'd landed from the second flight, retrieved the model, made it safe, walked back to the pits, had a debrief with my instructor, the battery from the first flight was charged and ready to go again. I found what was limiting my flying time was my own concentration rather than running out of charge. And yes, it would bunt!

I've been using a lot of 1s 160 mAh lipos lately, the kind that go in a Blade Nano CPX heli, or my eflite whipit tiny little DLG. I've looked through the usual suppliers and well known online auction site and can't find anyone selling a small, convenient battery checker for them. I can hook them up to a multimeter and just read the voltage, but the multimeter's quite bulky and it's quite fiddly to do. Does anyone know of a thing that will just plug straight in and give me a voltage reading? Thanks, Eifion

Posted by PatMc on 18/11/2015 11:40:19: wait until the model was about complete, see how much weight in the nose/battery bay area would be needed to achieve the cg, then decide on motor & battery. The thing is to move forward with the build the next thing I need to do is glue in F1, and I'd rather fit the captive nuts and the motor mount to it before it's inside the fuse, so I need to choose now. Also as my building style can most kindly be described as "agricultural", I'm not holding out much hope of coming in under weight!

Thanks for tidying up my links Steve, will try to remember it doesn't automatically parse URLs. The prop seems small to me too, there's plenty of clearance as far as I can see, the motor axle sits a good eight inches above the ground at the moment, make that nine by the time I fit the wheels. Even allowing for the tail to come up there's still plenty of room for an 8 or 9" diameter prop I'd have thought. It's good to know I'm not a million miles off in my selections. I'll be running it on a 3S, plan says 1500 mAh, going to try to sneak in a 2200 for longer flight times if the weight doesn't become too much of an issue.

So I'm building the Lowbo from the plan in RCMW in the summer. See here The description here stipulates a 2228 Turingy motor, well there's no such thing, but there are 2822 size motors, so I assume this to be a typo. However, all motors of that size come up around 80 - 90 Watts max, which if my model comes in at the expected 1.75 lb mark is only going to get me around 50 Watts per pound. The actual plan itself stipulates a 2238 size motor, can't find anything in that size either, so I've given up trying to work out what was actually used on the prototype. Assuming I would like 100 - 120 Watts per pound for reasonable performance I'm looking for deliver something around the 180 - 200 Watts mark, with a mediumish Kv rating. I'm looking at these three as possible options - am I in the right ballpark? Motor 1 Motor 2 Motor 3 Edited By Steve Hargreaves - Moderator on 17/11/2015 15:57:31

Posted by AJ on 17/10/2015 22:22:01: If you are using 3 cell batteries then you can get a 6 to 2 X 3 cell adaptor which will allow you to charge 2 batteries as if they are a single 6 cell. This has the advantage that the charger can balance all 6 cells properly. They are available from HK and elsewhere. Better than parallel charging A Interesting, might be useful for my fixed wing stuff too, I mostly fly 3s 2200. Would I be looking to wire up the cells in series then, effectively making a 6s 2200 pack? How about the balance connector I'm guessing they would still need to be wired up in parallel?

Thanks for all the advice and encouragement. Been practicing nose-in / side in hovering in Phoenix. Bloody hell it's difficult. I never remember fixed wing being this difficult to learn, model or full size! I assume if I keep practicing it will click eventually. I notice in the sim that anything with a flybar is generally more sedate than flybarless - assume this is true in real life too. Should I be going for something with a flybar for an outdoor size heli, or is it just a matter of setting up appropriate rates and curves regardless of the head mechanics?

Thanks for all the tips - I'm afraid it's only sparked more questions! First about the charging: My charcher is a Turingy accucell 6. It will charge a 6s lipo at 6 amps, so am I right in thinking it's max power output is 133 Watt? (6x 22). In that case if I wanted to power it off the mains (for convenience) I'd need a 12v power supply capable of delivering that wattage - not that I have anything bigger than a 3s 2200 at the moment. Currently I power the charger from a 17000 mAh lead acid battery originally form a golf cart. Also parallel boards - wow never knew there was such a thing, looks like an awesome way to get more stick time on smaller models, currently I have 2 batteries for the nano, so that's 8 mins stick time then over an hour to charge them back up. Am I right in thinking if I had a 300x and were charging a pair of 1300 mAh at the same I'd have to tell the charger it was a 3s and set the current to 2.6A? and if I added a third I'd set the current to 3.9A and a 4th would put it up to 5.2A My garden is this size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMXPf7ArF2U This was a quick demo I did with my Blade 450 when I sold it a few years ago (which I am now regretting but that's what I always do, sell things and later rebuy them!) The 450 was too big for even hovering practice to be useful in the garden, wonder how a 300 would go, or should I get a 180CFX - I guess what I'm after is something I can do more with than just hovering practice but that I can get time on without needing to go up to the model club, I figure more time on the sticks = faster progress. Maybe I should just take the nano outside if it's not windy. How's the T-rex 250 compare? I see lots of them on ebay for not silly money. Tried a pirouette with the nano, it did not go well, got about a third of the way round before it got away from me and crashed into the sofa. Should I try hovering side in and nose in first? I've been attempting that but find I can it round to about 45 degrees and hold a good hover there but as it gets more and more side on I very quickly loose it. More time on the sim to train my fingers then!

How much space does the blade 300x need? Is it viable to fly it around a smallish garden? That would certainly increase the availability of practice times. 500 sized heli while nice I'm sure gets me a bit worried about the time the big batteries take to charge, Assume my current Turingy charger won't be up to the task, it's 6A max I think. Really struggling to find any sport / trainer type IC helicopters so looks like electric is the way to go. Bit of a shame really, as convenient as electric is you can't beat the refuelling time of IC.

Been getting back into helicopters recently. I'm able to reliably hover my nano CPX through battery after battery, but don't really have a lounge big enough to risk flying it around without hitting anything. What's the next step after hovering? I used to have a Raptor 30 back in the day, never really got competent enough with that to get beyond barely contained panic, but seem to be doing OK so far with the nano CPX, so looking for something I can fly outside. What's a good copter for a novice at collective pitch machines, would consider electric or IC.

Very nice, scale like flying, the beat-up and circuit could have been full size!

Thanks for the tip about the curve. In my mind curves are helicoptery things and hadn't even considered them to be a solution for the flaps. Quite painless to set up in companion, once I'd realised that as I have the flap channel reversed then the -100 side on the curve is the +100 side on the channel output monitor. Still not sure what to do about the firmware. I have no idea how to update the internal module's firmware. Companion keeps telling me I'm up to date, and all my Rx's currently work so I'll leave it for now. However, when my current build leaves the board and wants a new Rx I'll have to choose one way or another, though I might hold on as there's all the talk in the news about leaving the EU, guess then we'd be free to buy non-EU spec Rx's.

Oh right, I've no idea how to update the "other" firmware. But looks like I will have to, and my old RX's too, if I want to ever buy another model or replace an RX.

Posted by Dave Bran on 08/10/2015 20:18:08: Your Taranis will be carrying old operating firmware. Receivers you buy now will only work with newer firmware. Hmm, pretty sure I updated mine not that long ago and it works with all my old receivers.