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Chris King 3

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Everything posted by Chris King 3

  1. I had seen that some people had used the balance plug but I was a bit concerned about running down one cell more than the others. I thought using the BEC output would solve that but also have concerns that anything going wrong with the RunCam could stop the receiver etc working.
  2. Hi, Apologies if this has been covered before, I did do a search but couldn't find anything. I have a RunCam2 and was wondering if I could power it from the receiver or more accuratley from the BEC of the Esc? Main reason is to reduce weight so I can mount it further forward on a Crash Test Hobbies Pinata wing. I wondered if anyone has sucessfully done this?
  3. Hi, Apologies if this has been covered before, I did do a search but couldn't find anything. I have a RunCam2 and was wondering if I could power it from the receiver or more accuratley from the BEC of the Esc? Main reason is to reduce weight so I can mount it further forward on a Crash Test Hobbies Pinata wing. I wondered if anyone has sucessfully done this?
  4. I can cut foam very effectively now but haven't had a huge amount of success with my chosen wing. I'm trying to build a scaled down Scimitar Slo Motion so I can use some batteries and brushless motor and controller I already have. The problem is with the taper of the wing which makes it hard to get the wire moving evenly over the distance of the formers. I'll either 1) Get someone to help or 2) Go for a plank wing without taper. Happy with my setup though, works really well. I'm using 32swg Nichrome wire and bought EPO foam from Wickes for about £15 and chopped into two pieces in the car park! I'm the mean time I got impatient and bought a Crash Test Hobby Pinata (flying wing) from the States. A friend who flys out of the same local field as me has bought one too so we can fly combat for a laugh. They are EPP foam which you cant seem to get in the UK anyhow. Will probably take a careful note of the dimensions and airofoil section so I can reproduce it in EPO in the future though! ?
  5. Just as an update and to let anyone else know who's going through a similar process, I thought I'd just quickly see what the more powerful transformer would do without any way of reducing the power and it barely warms the wire! It doesnt matter how powerful it is at 12V it still isnt going to get the wire hot. Based on what Piers said above about a variable voltage supply for laptops etc I dug out an old one I had that goes up to 19V. Works like a dream and you can vary the power very nicely by selecting the different voltages. Perfect.
  6. Some useful (and amusing!) advice, many thanks. I've got a few things to try now. Working it out is half the fun tbh.
  7. The original power supply was 12V at 30A but was DC so had some other electronics involved as well/instead of a transformer. Measured the Volts from the new transformer using the dimmer and is always below 8V even when turned fully up. The usable length of the wire (where the connectors are) is about 700mm but theres 1M of wire so could play around with changing lengths. Have some different thicknesses too and am on the thinest currently which is 32swg.
  8. I'm using nichrome wire but it's a pretty beefy transformer and I'm worried it will melt the wire if I use it without some way of controlling the power.
  9. Hi, I've built a foam wire cutter and have tried various power sources that I already had. I was controlling the temperature by using a dimmer on the mains side of the power supply. Even with the dimmer out of the circuit it didnt quite get hot enough to cut well. Was a bit slow which caused the wire to drag. So I thought I needed more power so bought a 100VA 240-12V Torroidial transformer. My problem is that my dimmer wont work with inductive loads so I need a different dimmer. Ive see this Variable Voltage Regulator which looks like it would do the job well https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393140331113?hash=item5b88fd6269:g:FSgAAOSwQbVe12JC but wondered if it would be better (and more cost effective) to vary the power on the 12V side of the transformer with a 12V AC Speed Controller? Just wondered what others do.
  10. The shaft sticks out the back of the motor through the motor mount you can see above. To mount the prop saver onto the shaft I would have to push the shaft through the motor so it sticks out the front where the prop adapter is in the picture. The prop adapter is held on with bots. The problem is, I dont want to do that so want to know if the prop saver onto the prop adapter.
  11. Thats the motor with the prop adapter And thats the prop saver. The prop adpter shaft is 5mm and there's a 5mm prop saver available.
  12. Hi, I hope someone can help with a question about using a prop saver. I'm just about to order a Pinata from Crash Test Hobbies and they sell a prop adapter for a rear mounted motor. My motor of preference (Airmax 2836/1120kv) has a 4mm shaft but also a 5mm prop adapter bolted to the front of the motor. My question is, is it OK to mount a prop saver to a prop adapter (with the shaft cut to size of course)? That would be my preferred configuration because mounting direct to the shaft would mean pushing the shaft through the motor which I want to avoid. I can add pictures if this isnt clear. Thanks in advance, Chris
  13. Well I've been doing a lot more reading than building! Had a good look at flying wings but theres lots of decisions to make there. Pusher prop, tractor prop and they look like they can be tricky to setup correctly. I found plans for the Little Plank III which looks quite interesting. Also came across the Simitar again which kc mentioned earlier on and I'd discounted because it looked to complex. Far from it, they are pretty simple and I like the fact that they were designed for foam core wings even though they cover with ply or balsa. The ability to fly in higher winds is what I'm looking for. Trouble is there's loads of variants to choose from! Only one was designed for electric and I saw somewhere that one wasnt the best flyer. I'm also intrigued with the concept of getting some kind of flaps on a wing.
  14. Its probably a question for another forum but does anyone know if you include the elevon when putting wing dimensions into a flying wing CofG calculator (if you are just adding them behind the airfoil profile)?
  15. Thanks Mark. I like the look of the Plank. Certainly would be a good candidate for hot wire cutting. What would you make the fuselage from? With the 3mm spruce/cedar do you wrape that around the leading edge and if so how far back? Do you have to rebate it into the foam or just have a 'step' when it finishes? Is a 'surface spare' just a strip of the carbon/glassfibre epoxied onto the surface of the foam? Sorry to fire so many questions at you but you've piqued my interest! I haven't found any wing palns that I want to build yet. Have been reading about some of the CrashTestHobbies wings and am tempted with their Pinata because a friend I fly with wants (needs!) something indestructible too but would prefer to build something myself tbh.
  16. I finished my hot wire cutter today which works really well. Practiced on EPS and just for interests sake I stuck some laminate on one side. Its adds a huge amount of strength but when you dent it it doesnt pop back like EPP.
  17. Does anyone know how strong the styrofoam is from Bluefoam? I understand it's EPS (extruded polystyrene), just wondered how much stronger than XPS it is and is it anywhere near EPP?
  18. Perfect, thanks for the advice. I think it will be off to B&Q for some EPS to practice with and maybe even for a prototype and then the grey styrofoam once thats working OK!
  19. Not sure if I need to start another thread for this but can anyone point me towards a supplier for EPP/polystyrene that will do small quantities and what density EPP I should be looking at please?
  20. I did build the Flight Test BushWacker which is foam board. Funnily enough I had trouble with hot glue on the wing section which resulted in the spar failing. Luckily fell into a bush so model was repairable with some carbon fibre to re-inforce the spar. Hot glue is too quick for some of the longer sections. It's great fun but theres still quite a lot of time that goes into it even though quicker than traditional balsa. I'm looking for an 'indestructable' fly anytime model and quite like the idea of hot wire cutting as I havent produced anythiing that way before. I did see that FT have covered one of their foam board wings with fibreglass which looked interesting!
  21. Thanks. Zagi's ring a bell from way back. I'll take a look.
  22. Hi, I hope someone can help me. I've come back to model flying after some years and have had some fun refiting old models with brushless and lipo. I want to kill a few birds with one stone if possible. I'd like to build something with a hot wire cutter but dont want the hassle of a fueselage so was thinking of a flying wing. This would also help with being able to fly in windier conditions which none of my exising models are particularly good at. I was thinking of starting with something cheap and cheerful to prove the design like expended polystyrene covered with PVA and brown paper and then moving on to covering with glass fiber and maybe EPP. So the question is does anyone know of some decent plans for a build your own wing using hot wire cutting? I'm looking for around 750mm-1M span and have 3S 1500mAH and 3S 2200mAH batteries kicking around but that isnt so important.
  23. Yes. I used it in a modified Lazy Bee and it worked fine with no problems. Father Christmas bought me the Turnigy case mentioned by Gary above and the NX6 fits in nicely.
  24. Sorry I dont understand you reply Denis. My understanding is you can control the AS3X gain (which I'ce done on switch D) but also the level of SAFE and can have a Panic button to get yo back to staight and level. My question is, do I need 3 channels (which I dont have spare) for each of these functions? I'm aware the control surfaces wont do much on the bench. They move when I move the Rx and move more when on the highest AS3X gain which confirms it's working.
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