92 MODEL AVIATION
Red answers Allan Schneider’s and Dell Erikson’s excellent battery-related questions
Also included in this column:
• Details of Mike Robinett’s Slow
Stick camera model
• Bob Frogner’s thoughts about
electric CL
• A new high-power add-on unit
for the West Mountain Radio
CBA II
• Product alert: Watch for
misrepresentations of true cell
ratings
The Battery Clinic Red Scholefield | [email protected]
An aerial view of the Flying Gators Club field from Mike Robinett’s GWS Slow Stick
which is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel Aiptek camera.
I’VE HAD SEVERAL requests for a
means to monitor field box or electric
flight charging batteries. My first
recommendation is to use that inexpensive
digital voltmeter I keep mentioning that
you should have if you are going to mess
with batteries.
Some have expressed an interest in
something such as a Voltwatch device we
use for receiver packs. With a little help
from Google I recommend that you visit
www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/batmon12.
htm.
Readers Ask: Allan Schneider has asked
some basic but important questions—
particularly for those of you who are
getting your models back into the air after
a long winter.
Q: Is there a finite number of times Ni-Cds
can be recharged or recycled? The guys at
my club believe it is between 700 and
1,000. Thus should one count or keep track
of such things?
A: Many things come into play in the life
equation, not the least of which are
temperature, vibration, depth of discharge,
and the design of the cells themselves. The
cells usually die of separator deterioration
(shorts) long before they die of cycle life.
The mean time to failure at room
temperature is roughly five to seven years.
I doubt if many would put that many full
charge/discharge cycles on in that time
frame.
The easiest way to keep track of your
packs—unless you are the bookkeeping
type—is to get a decent charger/cycler and
check the packs occasionally. This should
be every month or so, depending on your
flying frequency.
Write the capacity/date on the pack. By
the time you have no more space to write,
the pack will probably have dropped to less
than 80% rated and should be replaced.
And no, writing smaller doesn’t make the
pack last longer!
Q: Does recycling have the same effect on
battery life as recharging a partially
discharged battery?
A: A full discharge has more impact than a
partial discharge, although, as I stated, this
doesn’t have a great deal of significance. If
an individual deliberately wanted to wear
out packs, he or she could cycle them
several times a day. That would take many
hundred cycles to reach the end of battery
life.
Q: How do you know when it is time to
replace a Ni-Cd? When it cycles 10%,
15%, or 20% lower than the originally
rated capacity? Is there a capacity
decrease that automatically dictates a dead
cell? I guess 25% for a four-cell battery. Is
this correct?
A: The accepted “throwaway” point is
when the packs will no longer deliver 80%
of the rated capacity. Another good
indication is to charge the pack, let it sit for
a week, and then discharge it. That will
bring out any pending separator failure
(soft shorts) by yielding way less than 80%
capacity.
A dead cell will give you 1.2 volts less
in the voltage reading, or in the rare case of
an open or severely dried-out cell you will get no voltage reading
across the pack. And always look for corrosion around the
connector and the soldered joints on the pack.
Q: How many consecutive cycles do you do to get an accurate or,
say, a usable reading: two, three, or more?
A: For packs that are used frequently—at least once a week—one
cycle will give you a reliable reading. For packs that have been
stored for longer periods, two or three cycles may be required
before you get a stabilized reading.
Q: What is the best “load” to use in cycling mode to get the most
valid or usable reading?
A: The packs are rated at the C/5 discharge rate, so that would be
the one to use. You should not see much difference, however,
between C/5 and C rate discharge.
Q: What are the risks associated with using a battery that cycles
20% lower than the originally rated capacity? Do they fail? Do
they not hold a charge? Will they fail without warning? Is the
only risk its diminished capacity?
A: An Expanded Scale Voltmeter reading
before flight will let you know if a cell has
died or not. Cells that read low in capacity
usually have a high self-discharge rate too,
so if you don’t check them before the
flight they could have self-discharged in a
couple days, leaving you short on capacity
during a flight.
Packs don’t just die all of a sudden, and
they rarely fail in the air unless you call
running out of capacity failing. I put that
in the pilot-error category.
Q: I think I know the answer to this one, but
here goes. Opinions are split in my club. Does
lower capacity affect receiver or transmitter
performance (lower sensitivity or range)?
Those who say yes say so because the voltage
drops along with it, and those who say no say
no because the transmitter and receiver are
built to work within a range of dropping
voltage identical to the voltage drop in our
batteries as it discharges.
94 MODEL AVIATION
West Mountain Radio CBA II battery discharge analyzer is
dwarfed by prototype of Camlights 350-watt discharge unit.
Mike Robinett’s Slow Stick camera airplane provides a simple
approach to quality aerial photography.
Bob Frogner has applied electric power to his simple 1/2A Control Line model.
A: The receiver and transmitter performance is not that sensitive to
the slight voltage drop that you might get with a pack near the end of
its life. I did a range check using three alkaline cells (4.5 volts) for
the receiver and couldn’t detect any deterioration. I found the same
thing with eight primaries down to 1 volt each in a Hitec threechannel
transmitter.
Dell Erikson of Minnesota wrote:
“After having my digital camera stop working when it gets cold,
I thought about what may happen when I fly RC airplanes. When I
have flown in the winter the lowest temperatures were in the teens or
twenties and I did not fly for long.
“My guess is that, like my camera, control will fail. And then
possibly ‘fly away’ or be locked into the settings (turn, up, down ... )
when loss of battery power occurred. I hope I am wrong.”
Other than diminished capacity of the battery pack under severe
cold conditions, I have not heard of any problems with the radio
system. Where am I going to get 0 degrees Fahrenheit conditions to
test radios here in Florida?
When I lived up North (ugh) I flew frequently in the wintertime
(which seemed to be 10 months of the year), but never when it was
temperature.
Otherwise, think warm thoughts. It
only got to 60° here today (January 6).
Does anyone else have anything to offer
regarding cold-weather flying, other than
sympathy?
I thought Mike Robinett’s (mrobinett@
cox.net) Slow Stick camera model might
be of interest. There’s not much to look
at, but his objective was to get a low-cost
camera airplane in the air—and the
results were outstanding. A photo shows
an aerial view of his club field.
Mike’s GWS Slow Stick is powered
with an E-flite Park 400 outrunner
brushless motor with a 20-amp ESC and
E-flite three-cell, 1800 mAh Li-Poly
batteries and has an 11 x 7 APC Slow
Flyer propeller.
The camera is an Aiptek 1.3-
megapixel modified for RC with a
“'backpack” switch to trigger the camera.
A photo shows the model’s camera
installation.
Now that I have drifted out of my
battery-column charter I’ll share Bob
Frogner’s experiments with electricpowered
CL. He wrote:
“I have been experimenting with ECL
for a little while now and I think there is
a definite place for electrics in Control
Line flying. There has been a lot of talk
about the Stunt fliers and some articles on
96 MODEL AVIATION
their airplanes. I have taken a little
different approach that I think might get a
few more people trying this scheme out.
[A photo shows Bob’s inexpensive smallfield
Control Line model.]
“I have built a couple of small, 1/2Asized
airplanes. They do not require a
large (expensive) motor and many
batteries to fly.
“The latest is a foam-wing 1/2A
Combat airplane. The wings are
Styrofoam (from Hacker blanks available
from the Core House) and the rest is just
simple building similar to the flat foamies
that RCers are using. It has a 4mm
Depron and 1/32 plywood nose section
with a motorstick attached, a carbon-fiber
boom for the tail, and lightweight
covering.
The motor is a HiMaxx 2812-850 with
a Phoenix-25 ESC. I use a Z-tron timer
(which works great) and run a Thunder
Power 1320 Li-Poly battery. I fly on 38-
foot .008 lines and believe it would fly
well on 42-foot lines as well. It has plenty
of power and can do any maneuver you
could do with a gas-powered model. The
total cost for the power system, Z-tron,
and battery is about $200, which makes it
much more economical than the full-sized
Stunt airplanes.
“You don’t need a large airplane to
enjoy the benefits of electric power for
Control Line. It’s really great to have
consistent power all through the flight
and have a timer so you know exactly
when the motor will stop. I think in the
future there will be many more ECL
airplanes and I would like to promote the
keep-it-simple idea to get more people
involved.”
Big Stuff: As electric power continues to
get more sophisticated, so does the
equipment for testing batteries. I got a
prototype monster on loan to do some
high-rate Lithium verification (up to 100
amps), so I can tell you what these
continuous C rates on Li-Polys that are
being touted really mean.
West Mountain Radio is also
promising a high-power unit as an add-on
to its Computer Battery Analyzer II. I
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/05
Page Numbers: 92,94,96
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/05
Page Numbers: 92,94,96
92 MODEL AVIATION
Red answers Allan Schneider’s and Dell Erikson’s excellent battery-related questions
Also included in this column:
• Details of Mike Robinett’s Slow
Stick camera model
• Bob Frogner’s thoughts about
electric CL
• A new high-power add-on unit
for the West Mountain Radio
CBA II
• Product alert: Watch for
misrepresentations of true cell
ratings
The Battery Clinic Red Scholefield | [email protected]
An aerial view of the Flying Gators Club field from Mike Robinett’s GWS Slow Stick
which is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel Aiptek camera.
I’VE HAD SEVERAL requests for a
means to monitor field box or electric
flight charging batteries. My first
recommendation is to use that inexpensive
digital voltmeter I keep mentioning that
you should have if you are going to mess
with batteries.
Some have expressed an interest in
something such as a Voltwatch device we
use for receiver packs. With a little help
from Google I recommend that you visit
www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/batmon12.
htm.
Readers Ask: Allan Schneider has asked
some basic but important questions—
particularly for those of you who are
getting your models back into the air after
a long winter.
Q: Is there a finite number of times Ni-Cds
can be recharged or recycled? The guys at
my club believe it is between 700 and
1,000. Thus should one count or keep track
of such things?
A: Many things come into play in the life
equation, not the least of which are
temperature, vibration, depth of discharge,
and the design of the cells themselves. The
cells usually die of separator deterioration
(shorts) long before they die of cycle life.
The mean time to failure at room
temperature is roughly five to seven years.
I doubt if many would put that many full
charge/discharge cycles on in that time
frame.
The easiest way to keep track of your
packs—unless you are the bookkeeping
type—is to get a decent charger/cycler and
check the packs occasionally. This should
be every month or so, depending on your
flying frequency.
Write the capacity/date on the pack. By
the time you have no more space to write,
the pack will probably have dropped to less
than 80% rated and should be replaced.
And no, writing smaller doesn’t make the
pack last longer!
Q: Does recycling have the same effect on
battery life as recharging a partially
discharged battery?
A: A full discharge has more impact than a
partial discharge, although, as I stated, this
doesn’t have a great deal of significance. If
an individual deliberately wanted to wear
out packs, he or she could cycle them
several times a day. That would take many
hundred cycles to reach the end of battery
life.
Q: How do you know when it is time to
replace a Ni-Cd? When it cycles 10%,
15%, or 20% lower than the originally
rated capacity? Is there a capacity
decrease that automatically dictates a dead
cell? I guess 25% for a four-cell battery. Is
this correct?
A: The accepted “throwaway” point is
when the packs will no longer deliver 80%
of the rated capacity. Another good
indication is to charge the pack, let it sit for
a week, and then discharge it. That will
bring out any pending separator failure
(soft shorts) by yielding way less than 80%
capacity.
A dead cell will give you 1.2 volts less
in the voltage reading, or in the rare case of
an open or severely dried-out cell you will get no voltage reading
across the pack. And always look for corrosion around the
connector and the soldered joints on the pack.
Q: How many consecutive cycles do you do to get an accurate or,
say, a usable reading: two, three, or more?
A: For packs that are used frequently—at least once a week—one
cycle will give you a reliable reading. For packs that have been
stored for longer periods, two or three cycles may be required
before you get a stabilized reading.
Q: What is the best “load” to use in cycling mode to get the most
valid or usable reading?
A: The packs are rated at the C/5 discharge rate, so that would be
the one to use. You should not see much difference, however,
between C/5 and C rate discharge.
Q: What are the risks associated with using a battery that cycles
20% lower than the originally rated capacity? Do they fail? Do
they not hold a charge? Will they fail without warning? Is the
only risk its diminished capacity?
A: An Expanded Scale Voltmeter reading
before flight will let you know if a cell has
died or not. Cells that read low in capacity
usually have a high self-discharge rate too,
so if you don’t check them before the
flight they could have self-discharged in a
couple days, leaving you short on capacity
during a flight.
Packs don’t just die all of a sudden, and
they rarely fail in the air unless you call
running out of capacity failing. I put that
in the pilot-error category.
Q: I think I know the answer to this one, but
here goes. Opinions are split in my club. Does
lower capacity affect receiver or transmitter
performance (lower sensitivity or range)?
Those who say yes say so because the voltage
drops along with it, and those who say no say
no because the transmitter and receiver are
built to work within a range of dropping
voltage identical to the voltage drop in our
batteries as it discharges.
94 MODEL AVIATION
West Mountain Radio CBA II battery discharge analyzer is
dwarfed by prototype of Camlights 350-watt discharge unit.
Mike Robinett’s Slow Stick camera airplane provides a simple
approach to quality aerial photography.
Bob Frogner has applied electric power to his simple 1/2A Control Line model.
A: The receiver and transmitter performance is not that sensitive to
the slight voltage drop that you might get with a pack near the end of
its life. I did a range check using three alkaline cells (4.5 volts) for
the receiver and couldn’t detect any deterioration. I found the same
thing with eight primaries down to 1 volt each in a Hitec threechannel
transmitter.
Dell Erikson of Minnesota wrote:
“After having my digital camera stop working when it gets cold,
I thought about what may happen when I fly RC airplanes. When I
have flown in the winter the lowest temperatures were in the teens or
twenties and I did not fly for long.
“My guess is that, like my camera, control will fail. And then
possibly ‘fly away’ or be locked into the settings (turn, up, down ... )
when loss of battery power occurred. I hope I am wrong.”
Other than diminished capacity of the battery pack under severe
cold conditions, I have not heard of any problems with the radio
system. Where am I going to get 0 degrees Fahrenheit conditions to
test radios here in Florida?
When I lived up North (ugh) I flew frequently in the wintertime
(which seemed to be 10 months of the year), but never when it was
temperature.
Otherwise, think warm thoughts. It
only got to 60° here today (January 6).
Does anyone else have anything to offer
regarding cold-weather flying, other than
sympathy?
I thought Mike Robinett’s (mrobinett@
cox.net) Slow Stick camera model might
be of interest. There’s not much to look
at, but his objective was to get a low-cost
camera airplane in the air—and the
results were outstanding. A photo shows
an aerial view of his club field.
Mike’s GWS Slow Stick is powered
with an E-flite Park 400 outrunner
brushless motor with a 20-amp ESC and
E-flite three-cell, 1800 mAh Li-Poly
batteries and has an 11 x 7 APC Slow
Flyer propeller.
The camera is an Aiptek 1.3-
megapixel modified for RC with a
“'backpack” switch to trigger the camera.
A photo shows the model’s camera
installation.
Now that I have drifted out of my
battery-column charter I’ll share Bob
Frogner’s experiments with electricpowered
CL. He wrote:
“I have been experimenting with ECL
for a little while now and I think there is
a definite place for electrics in Control
Line flying. There has been a lot of talk
about the Stunt fliers and some articles on
96 MODEL AVIATION
their airplanes. I have taken a little
different approach that I think might get a
few more people trying this scheme out.
[A photo shows Bob’s inexpensive smallfield
Control Line model.]
“I have built a couple of small, 1/2Asized
airplanes. They do not require a
large (expensive) motor and many
batteries to fly.
“The latest is a foam-wing 1/2A
Combat airplane. The wings are
Styrofoam (from Hacker blanks available
from the Core House) and the rest is just
simple building similar to the flat foamies
that RCers are using. It has a 4mm
Depron and 1/32 plywood nose section
with a motorstick attached, a carbon-fiber
boom for the tail, and lightweight
covering.
The motor is a HiMaxx 2812-850 with
a Phoenix-25 ESC. I use a Z-tron timer
(which works great) and run a Thunder
Power 1320 Li-Poly battery. I fly on 38-
foot .008 lines and believe it would fly
well on 42-foot lines as well. It has plenty
of power and can do any maneuver you
could do with a gas-powered model. The
total cost for the power system, Z-tron,
and battery is about $200, which makes it
much more economical than the full-sized
Stunt airplanes.
“You don’t need a large airplane to
enjoy the benefits of electric power for
Control Line. It’s really great to have
consistent power all through the flight
and have a timer so you know exactly
when the motor will stop. I think in the
future there will be many more ECL
airplanes and I would like to promote the
keep-it-simple idea to get more people
involved.”
Big Stuff: As electric power continues to
get more sophisticated, so does the
equipment for testing batteries. I got a
prototype monster on loan to do some
high-rate Lithium verification (up to 100
amps), so I can tell you what these
continuous C rates on Li-Polys that are
being touted really mean.
West Mountain Radio is also
promising a high-power unit as an add-on
to its Computer Battery Analyzer II. I
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/05
Page Numbers: 92,94,96
92 MODEL AVIATION
Red answers Allan Schneider’s and Dell Erikson’s excellent battery-related questions
Also included in this column:
• Details of Mike Robinett’s Slow
Stick camera model
• Bob Frogner’s thoughts about
electric CL
• A new high-power add-on unit
for the West Mountain Radio
CBA II
• Product alert: Watch for
misrepresentations of true cell
ratings
The Battery Clinic Red Scholefield | [email protected]
An aerial view of the Flying Gators Club field from Mike Robinett’s GWS Slow Stick
which is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel Aiptek camera.
I’VE HAD SEVERAL requests for a
means to monitor field box or electric
flight charging batteries. My first
recommendation is to use that inexpensive
digital voltmeter I keep mentioning that
you should have if you are going to mess
with batteries.
Some have expressed an interest in
something such as a Voltwatch device we
use for receiver packs. With a little help
from Google I recommend that you visit
www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/batmon12.
htm.
Readers Ask: Allan Schneider has asked
some basic but important questions—
particularly for those of you who are
getting your models back into the air after
a long winter.
Q: Is there a finite number of times Ni-Cds
can be recharged or recycled? The guys at
my club believe it is between 700 and
1,000. Thus should one count or keep track
of such things?
A: Many things come into play in the life
equation, not the least of which are
temperature, vibration, depth of discharge,
and the design of the cells themselves. The
cells usually die of separator deterioration
(shorts) long before they die of cycle life.
The mean time to failure at room
temperature is roughly five to seven years.
I doubt if many would put that many full
charge/discharge cycles on in that time
frame.
The easiest way to keep track of your
packs—unless you are the bookkeeping
type—is to get a decent charger/cycler and
check the packs occasionally. This should
be every month or so, depending on your
flying frequency.
Write the capacity/date on the pack. By
the time you have no more space to write,
the pack will probably have dropped to less
than 80% rated and should be replaced.
And no, writing smaller doesn’t make the
pack last longer!
Q: Does recycling have the same effect on
battery life as recharging a partially
discharged battery?
A: A full discharge has more impact than a
partial discharge, although, as I stated, this
doesn’t have a great deal of significance. If
an individual deliberately wanted to wear
out packs, he or she could cycle them
several times a day. That would take many
hundred cycles to reach the end of battery
life.
Q: How do you know when it is time to
replace a Ni-Cd? When it cycles 10%,
15%, or 20% lower than the originally
rated capacity? Is there a capacity
decrease that automatically dictates a dead
cell? I guess 25% for a four-cell battery. Is
this correct?
A: The accepted “throwaway” point is
when the packs will no longer deliver 80%
of the rated capacity. Another good
indication is to charge the pack, let it sit for
a week, and then discharge it. That will
bring out any pending separator failure
(soft shorts) by yielding way less than 80%
capacity.
A dead cell will give you 1.2 volts less
in the voltage reading, or in the rare case of
an open or severely dried-out cell you will get no voltage reading
across the pack. And always look for corrosion around the
connector and the soldered joints on the pack.
Q: How many consecutive cycles do you do to get an accurate or,
say, a usable reading: two, three, or more?
A: For packs that are used frequently—at least once a week—one
cycle will give you a reliable reading. For packs that have been
stored for longer periods, two or three cycles may be required
before you get a stabilized reading.
Q: What is the best “load” to use in cycling mode to get the most
valid or usable reading?
A: The packs are rated at the C/5 discharge rate, so that would be
the one to use. You should not see much difference, however,
between C/5 and C rate discharge.
Q: What are the risks associated with using a battery that cycles
20% lower than the originally rated capacity? Do they fail? Do
they not hold a charge? Will they fail without warning? Is the
only risk its diminished capacity?
A: An Expanded Scale Voltmeter reading
before flight will let you know if a cell has
died or not. Cells that read low in capacity
usually have a high self-discharge rate too,
so if you don’t check them before the
flight they could have self-discharged in a
couple days, leaving you short on capacity
during a flight.
Packs don’t just die all of a sudden, and
they rarely fail in the air unless you call
running out of capacity failing. I put that
in the pilot-error category.
Q: I think I know the answer to this one, but
here goes. Opinions are split in my club. Does
lower capacity affect receiver or transmitter
performance (lower sensitivity or range)?
Those who say yes say so because the voltage
drops along with it, and those who say no say
no because the transmitter and receiver are
built to work within a range of dropping
voltage identical to the voltage drop in our
batteries as it discharges.
94 MODEL AVIATION
West Mountain Radio CBA II battery discharge analyzer is
dwarfed by prototype of Camlights 350-watt discharge unit.
Mike Robinett’s Slow Stick camera airplane provides a simple
approach to quality aerial photography.
Bob Frogner has applied electric power to his simple 1/2A Control Line model.
A: The receiver and transmitter performance is not that sensitive to
the slight voltage drop that you might get with a pack near the end of
its life. I did a range check using three alkaline cells (4.5 volts) for
the receiver and couldn’t detect any deterioration. I found the same
thing with eight primaries down to 1 volt each in a Hitec threechannel
transmitter.
Dell Erikson of Minnesota wrote:
“After having my digital camera stop working when it gets cold,
I thought about what may happen when I fly RC airplanes. When I
have flown in the winter the lowest temperatures were in the teens or
twenties and I did not fly for long.
“My guess is that, like my camera, control will fail. And then
possibly ‘fly away’ or be locked into the settings (turn, up, down ... )
when loss of battery power occurred. I hope I am wrong.”
Other than diminished capacity of the battery pack under severe
cold conditions, I have not heard of any problems with the radio
system. Where am I going to get 0 degrees Fahrenheit conditions to
test radios here in Florida?
When I lived up North (ugh) I flew frequently in the wintertime
(which seemed to be 10 months of the year), but never when it was
temperature.
Otherwise, think warm thoughts. It
only got to 60° here today (January 6).
Does anyone else have anything to offer
regarding cold-weather flying, other than
sympathy?
I thought Mike Robinett’s (mrobinett@
cox.net) Slow Stick camera model might
be of interest. There’s not much to look
at, but his objective was to get a low-cost
camera airplane in the air—and the
results were outstanding. A photo shows
an aerial view of his club field.
Mike’s GWS Slow Stick is powered
with an E-flite Park 400 outrunner
brushless motor with a 20-amp ESC and
E-flite three-cell, 1800 mAh Li-Poly
batteries and has an 11 x 7 APC Slow
Flyer propeller.
The camera is an Aiptek 1.3-
megapixel modified for RC with a
“'backpack” switch to trigger the camera.
A photo shows the model’s camera
installation.
Now that I have drifted out of my
battery-column charter I’ll share Bob
Frogner’s experiments with electricpowered
CL. He wrote:
“I have been experimenting with ECL
for a little while now and I think there is
a definite place for electrics in Control
Line flying. There has been a lot of talk
about the Stunt fliers and some articles on
96 MODEL AVIATION
their airplanes. I have taken a little
different approach that I think might get a
few more people trying this scheme out.
[A photo shows Bob’s inexpensive smallfield
Control Line model.]
“I have built a couple of small, 1/2Asized
airplanes. They do not require a
large (expensive) motor and many
batteries to fly.
“The latest is a foam-wing 1/2A
Combat airplane. The wings are
Styrofoam (from Hacker blanks available
from the Core House) and the rest is just
simple building similar to the flat foamies
that RCers are using. It has a 4mm
Depron and 1/32 plywood nose section
with a motorstick attached, a carbon-fiber
boom for the tail, and lightweight
covering.
The motor is a HiMaxx 2812-850 with
a Phoenix-25 ESC. I use a Z-tron timer
(which works great) and run a Thunder
Power 1320 Li-Poly battery. I fly on 38-
foot .008 lines and believe it would fly
well on 42-foot lines as well. It has plenty
of power and can do any maneuver you
could do with a gas-powered model. The
total cost for the power system, Z-tron,
and battery is about $200, which makes it
much more economical than the full-sized
Stunt airplanes.
“You don’t need a large airplane to
enjoy the benefits of electric power for
Control Line. It’s really great to have
consistent power all through the flight
and have a timer so you know exactly
when the motor will stop. I think in the
future there will be many more ECL
airplanes and I would like to promote the
keep-it-simple idea to get more people
involved.”
Big Stuff: As electric power continues to
get more sophisticated, so does the
equipment for testing batteries. I got a
prototype monster on loan to do some
high-rate Lithium verification (up to 100
amps), so I can tell you what these
continuous C rates on Li-Polys that are
being touted really mean.
West Mountain Radio is also
promising a high-power unit as an add-on
to its Computer Battery Analyzer II. I
