Greg begins compiling his holiday shopping list
Greg Gimlick | [email protected]
Santa's Big Bag o' Goodies
This being the holidays, it seemed fitting to go through some of the things I've seen, bought, and lined up for reviews. The amazing amount of new electric-flight items is mind-boggling, and with the Northeast Electric Aircraft Technology Fair about to take place as I write this, I know I'll see even more products I can't resist.
Model Electronics Corporation MiniBox and MiniBox Plus
Quality gearboxes for smaller motors have always been a rare commodity. Model Electronics Corporation (MEC) has introduced small gearboxes that join the other two (SuperBox and MonsterBox) in the MEC hangar.
The new MiniBoxes have been designed to fit many small brushless motors, with mounting holes spaced at 5/8 inch (16 mm) and 3/4 inch (20 mm) on centers. MEC solved the mounting problem by creating those two sizes of front and back gearbox plates. All other MiniBox parts are interchangeable.
If you have crash damage to the gearbox, it can easily be repaired, and that is preferable to bending a motor shaft. You can do a complete rebuild on the MiniBox in a few minutes at the field, provided you put a few spare parts in your field box.
Each front plate has three identically spaced threaded holes, allowing the MiniBox to act as a motor mount by being fastened to a bulkhead (screws included). A stick motor-mounting assembly is available for those models designed to use them. The female part of the mount accepts the standard 10 mm x 10 mm square beam. This is a neat gearbox, and you can put it on an outrunner if you happen to have one that spins at too high an rpm for your application. This will also help protect your motor shaft for those 3-D maneuvers that go bad.
Super Airplanes and Gear
I've talked with Jerry Orme of Vision Hobbies several times and had the pleasure of getting to know him and his staff at the Southeast Electric Flight Festival this year. They sell an incredible variety of the new PJS motors and everything you need to get a system in your model. And if you don't have a model, you need to talk to them about that too; they have some great ones. A photo shows one that wowed the crowd this year.
The converted Great Planes Ultimate 160 had one of Jerry's PJS 10000 motors spinning a carbon-fiber 22 x 12 propeller. With a 10S 7400 mAh pack and 95 amps at full throttle, the performance was unlimited. This thing tore up the sky and spent as much time low and inverted as it did upright; it was absolutely incredible!
Jerry also brought a V-tail airplane of the company's own design called the Sweep Vee. This ARF is a joy to fly powered by a PJS 3D 2500 brushless outrunner motor, Mototron 36-amp ESC, and a Poly RC 3700 4S pack. At 5 pounds, I thought the Sweep Vee felt just like an RC Aerobatics model when I flew it. This airplane was true, with no bad habits. I didn't want to give Jerry the sticks back after I flew it.
Must-Have Electronics
Some of us enjoy gathering as much information about our systems as possible, and others just want to know enough to keep their gear in good shape. Whichever group you fall into, you'll be glad you bought the following two devices.
The LiPoDapter+ is from SLK Electronics (the same company that brought you the indispensable ElectriCalc). This little $40 gem allows you to safely charge your Li-Polys and the new M1 cells with your regular Ni-Cd/NiMH charger, such as the Astro 110 or 112 series.
The new unit can charge as many as 10 M1 or eight Li-Poly cells. It can handle up to 8 amps to charge 8 Ah Li-Poly packs in an hour or M1 packs in less than 20 minutes. This rate is limited by your Ni-Cd charger's current and voltage capability. The LiPoDapter+ is a definite must-have for those of us with a great deal of money tied up in older chargers.
The new DPR-100 Digital Power Recorder is from BNB Products. As you might have gathered by now, I like data loggers so I can see what my setups are doing. For years we guessed by doing math and measuring everything before and after a flight, but now we can see it before, after, and during the flight. This can be a real eye-opener.
I recently tested a setup in a Giant Scale airplane that measured 90 amps full-throttle static, but in the air I found that most of the flight was spent between 35 and 45 amps. This is great info to know.
My DPR-100 will handle up to 30 volts and 100 amps, although there is a way to make it handle higher voltage if you need to by using two packs in series and wiring the logger into one side. This will read the total current and half the voltage, but the software can be set to compensate for this to show the actual voltage when it graphs the data.
This data logger comes with all the software and a USB cable to hook it to your computer. The buffer will handle up to nine hours at the lowest sampling rate, but the default rate of four samples per second gives you 40 minutes of data logging for four parameters. This is great, and you can keep logging flights without downloading the data until it's full. The graph will show all parameters together or you can select which one to display or save.
One great thing I learned was that this can be plugged in between the battery you're charging and the charger to record and graph the charge cycle. Suddenly your inexpensive charger does things that chargers costing four or five times as much do. If you're an info freak, you can keep data for all your packs and see if they're beginning to decline.
I have the dual temperature probes and rpm sensors for mine, but in the photo of the graph you'll see that I didn't use the rpm sensor on this flight. This is installed in my LT-25 using a MaxCim system on a 6S pack of A123 cells (the new M1 cells). The red line is the motor temperature and the yellow line is the battery temperature. The blue line is the current and the green is the voltage. You can see that there were a lot of aerobatics in this 12-minute flight, and the voltage was steady throughout. The battery and motor temperature only got up to roughly 107° on a balmy southern afternoon when it was 92° outside.
The DPR-100 data logger installs in seconds and is a definite must-have if you want to know what's going on during your flight or charge cycles—and it costs less than $85.
More Electric Helicopters
In the last column I mentioned that I'd be building the Quick QJ-18 from Helicopter Hobbies. After talking to Harold Little, who is the brains behind the operation, I decided to do the Quick EP-8. It is a bit smaller than the 18 and is more economical to support, with a smaller motor, fewer cells, etc.
As you can see in the photo, this is a high-quality CNC-machined kit. By the time you read this I will have flown it, but for now it's in the final stages of assembly. So far it has gone together like a dream. My EP-8 will be powered by the Hacker 10XL and the 6S packs of Hecell Li-Polys shown. All the components you'll need are available directly from Harold, so getting everything right is simple.
In the world of ARFs it can be intimidating to see all the parts that come in a kit, but I can assure you that it's fun to assemble something as finely machined as this. I'll have more info when I complete it.
A photo shows my Lite Machines Corona 120. It is powered by an Astro 020 motor made for helicopters and a Phoenix-35 controller.
This is the newest version of the Corona and features the aluminum crutch so you no longer have to glue up a plywood crutch. It's an economical way to try out a "real" helicopter because it's a fixed-pitch version and tough as nails. The control linkages are much less complicated than most, but they are effective and serviceable.
The tailboom had a less-than-perfect arrival. I just balled it up in the yard and thought I had destroyed it. When I picked it up I was shocked to see how the main rotor blades folded up and back without breaking anything. They struck the tailboom.
After taking a good look at it, I decided I'd see if I could just bend it straight. With some careful application of brute force I got it straight and nothing seemed to be binding. The dents are still there, but it flies as well as it did before I crashed it. How's that for cheap helicopter training? A regular helicopter would have cost almost as much as this kit just to repair.
I'm impressed with the Corona as a trainer. You won't do 3-D with it, and being fixed-pitch it can be a bit more challenging to maintain constant altitude, but you won't find more bang for the buck in the helicopter market.
I want to thank Jim Ryan for building my Corona for me while I was backed up on some other projects. He makes it possible for me to keep up with this business.
Final Approach
That's it; I'm out of space for the month and year. I hope your holidays are great and your new year is exciting. See you at the field!
MA
Sources
- AstroFlight Inc.
13311 Beach Ave. Marina Del Rey, CA 90292 (310) 821-6242 Fax: (310) 822-6637 [email protected] www.astroflight.com
- Helicopter Hobbies
Box 123 Pageland, SC 29728 (704) 624-6473 [email protected] www.helicopterhobbies.com
- BNB Products
#284 906 W. McDermott Dr. Ste 116 Allen, TX 75013 [email protected] www.bnbproducts.com
- Vision Hobbies LLC
18635 N. 35th Ave. #110-402 Phoenix, AZ 85027 (623) 337-4599 Fax: (623) 337-4877 [email protected] www.visionhobbies.com
- SLK Electronics
2906 Charolais Dr. Greensboro, NC 27406 [email protected] www.slkelectronics.com
- Lite Machines Inc.
1291 Cumberland Ave. West Lafayette, IN 47906 (765) 463-0959 Fax: (765) 463-7004 www.litemachines.com
- Model Electronics Corporation
11512-155 Ave. SE Renton, WA 98059 (866) 507-9956 (excluding Canada) (425) 255-4269 Fax: (425) 255-1558 [email protected] www.modelelectronicscorp.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
