Radio Control Combat - 2011/05

116 MODEL AVIATION
durability during the winter club Combat.
“The motor is the Turnigy 3536-1400 kV,
speed control is the Turnigy K-Force 40A
and the battery is a Turnigy 4S 2650. After
the initial test flight, it turned 16.8. I bumped
the end point up, and it hit 18.1.
“I have a Phoenix ICE 50 speed control
that I am going to try to set the rpm at 17.5 on
and see how it feels throughout the entire
round. There should be plenty of juice
available to hold 17.5 throughout the entire
flight, I hope.
“With the data I have seen, 17.5 through
the loops would definitely be beneficial.
You’ll lose the unloading in
level and diving flight
though.
“After some testing I got
to do some testing with the
Phoenix ICE 50. I couldn’t
get my laptop up and
Also included in this column:
• Tangerine Combat Challenge
William Drumm’s experiments with electric SSC
[[email protected]]
Radio Control Combat Don Grissom
Pilots with their airplanes at the Remote Control Association of Central Florida’s Tangerine Combat Challenge, which took
place in February.
To keep the battery protected and his electric SSC
model balanced, William Drumm placed the battery
behind the motor in a cutout of the wing.
The electric SSC model that William designed is basic, making it easy
to produce.
IT IS SOMETIMES amazing to see the
advances that have been made in electricpowered
Combat in the past few years. Every
year it seems as though more people are
trying electric power for Slow Survivable
Combat (SSC).
Last year William Drumm was one of the
top SSC pilots. He flies an airplane that he
designed and built at his home in Wisconsin.
Following is some information about the
setup he is using.
“Here is my first venture into E-SSC.
Hopefully, I will be able to test out the
running so I set the ESC to Governor mode to
try out first.
“At first, I couldn’t get it to go. I played
around with the magnetic poles number and it
finally got turning. Not a lot of rpm, but it
turned at least. I bumped the poles number up
again and more rpm.
“I did a little math now and figured 14
was the right number for this motor (Turnigy
3536-1400 kV). I tried putting in 17,500 for
the full throttle setting, but it changed it to
17,465 as with the other throttle settings.
“I figured the middle rpm setting of
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17,000 would allow you to slow down a little
to match the speed of a drone. 14,000 turned
out to be just about right when coming in for a
landing. I tached it before I left for the field
and it was at 17,520. The rpm data says 17,465
for most of the time with spikes up to 17,570.
“I definitely liked the way the airplane
flew. Pulled really well through loops and
turns. Much better than my initial test flight.
“Now to test just setting the ATV
[adjustable travel volume] back until the rpm
hit 17,500. I’ll see how much it unloads in the
air and how it feels tomorrow. I’m thinking the
Governor mode is going to be better for feel
for the entire round.
“I know you have to reverse the throttle on
Futaba transmitters to get speed controls to
work and did that to start with. I couldn’t get it
to arm either. I set the throttle trim all the way
back. Still nothing. Travels to 120%. Nothing.
“Then I played around with the number of
magnetic poles in motor in the ‘Enter Motor/
Gearing Information’ section. Tried 4 at first, I
think, Hey, it works. Real slow, but it works.
Bumped it up to 8. More rpm.
“I assumed the rpm to poles was linear and
did a little math and figured that 14 would get
me to 17,500. If I recall, you are using a
different motor, so it might not be the same.
The travels are back to 100% and it still works.
Trim is all the way down and I think it doesn’t
have to be.
“That’s how I got it to work.
“I did notice that the ESC doesn’t get set
properly from time to time. What I ended up
doing to make sure everything gets set is,
under ‘Device Commands’ you can read the
settings to make sure that it is set to what you
want.
“I’d completely reset the model in your
transmitter and start over. You never know
what you played around with in those darn
computer radios. One other thing to check is
that you have the current version of the
CastleLink software.
“I got around to testing out the Nano-Tech
batteries today. I was having issues with
maintaining the rpm. I tried standard Li-Poly
batteries and had the same problem. The
Nanos were not as bad, but still not like my
initial testing with the standard Li-Polys. I was
only getting about 2 minutes at 17,500.
“After scratching my head for a while, I
realized that when I hooked up my ESC (ICE
50 Lite—no heat sink) with CastleLink, it said
that there was an update (v3.26 Beta) for my
ESC. I thought ‘why not?’ at the time and
updated the firmware.
“But the version on my initial ESC (ICE
50—with heat sink) I was using was v3.2. I
downgraded back to v3.2 and it held rpm for 3
minutes and ended up at 17,150 at the 5
minute mark.”
William has some good information on the
RC Combat Association Web site, with graphs
and more information about his SSC setup. It
was great to see the whole process he went
through to get these airplanes ready.
Since the wintertime does not provide much
time for flying RC Combat, it was great to see
William drive down to Florida to the
Tangerine Combat Challenge. It was originally
going to be held in January but was moved
back a few weeks to February 19-20.
The event was hosted by the Remote
Control Association of Central Florida
(RCACF), and its Tangerine Field is located
just north of Orlando. The contest CD was
Chris Handegard, who has put on many events
throughout the years.
I caught a ride with Bob Loescher of Ohio
to the event. We normally wait until we get to
Florida to get a hotel room, so we can be at the
same place as everyone else.
A problem this time was that we were
roughly 45 miles from Daytona International
Speedway during the Daytona 500. So we
were lucky to be able to get a room before the
event.
The first day we started with 10 rounds of
Open B. We were lucky that the club had
people to help judge, which allowed us to go
all up for the 10 rounds. This gave us time
between rounds to work on our models.
William Drumm was the top pilot in Open
B, with a very high score. I was able to walk
away with third place after having a good day
of Combat.
After we finished Open B, we moved
directly into five rounds of 2948 Scale
Combat. This is one of the most exciting
classes to watch.
There were many nice airplanes in Scale,
and Chris Handegard with Bullet Proof
Models created most of them. One of the most
common was the P-47N that he produces.
Chris flew the whole contest with one
airplane, which was surprising since it was a
twin. The J1N1-S Gekko (Irving) was one of
the fastest models in the air. He powered it
with two Magnum .15 XLS engines and plans
on making a kit of the model once he works
out a few issues.
The wingspan is 60 inches instead of the
normal 48, since it is a twin. Chris did have
some issues at times with losing an engine but
was able to get the aircraft on the ground every
time with little to no damage.
Chris won the Scale event with his Gekko.
Craig Buttery came in second with some great
flying as well.
After finishing 2948 on Sunday, we started
SSC. This was a chance to see how the
William Drumm electrics would hold up.
He had five models ready to go at the
beginning of the contest and ended up needing
all of them. A problem he had was sand
getting into the engines. The field was
extremely sandy, and, unlike our gas engines,
you cannot clean electric components that
easily.
William was strong in the air, with a lot of
cuts and few problems making it through the
rounds as long as he had no midairs. He was
able to complete only nine rounds of the 10,
although he did not need that many to win the
contest.
Following the event, William said that it
was a success as far as the electrics go. There
are still issues with durability, but for the most
part electric power looks to be the future of
Combat.
The RCACF put on a good event, and it
was great to have so many club members at
the field helping with the contest. MA
Sources:
Radio Control Combat Association
www.rccombat.com
Remote Control Association of Central Florida
www.rcacf.com
Magnum Engines
(800) 854-8471
www.hobbypeople.net
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