My First Electric
04-16-2004, 09:06 AM
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My First Electric
I just finished my first electric. I have been flying glow for a little while, and I wanted to build an electric to fool around with. My instructor at the field reccomended I look at a few planes, and one of them was the NE Sailplanes Cadet. It looked good, and assembly didn't appear to be too intimidating, so I purchased it.
Contrary to the comments posted on this forum, the folks at NE Sailplanes were easy to work with. My transaction was quick, and I had my plane in about a week. It was wrapped properly, with all of the covered parts wrapped nicely in bubble wrap. Once I received it, I had some questions about the type of battery reccomended. They answerd the phone promptly (even once on a Saturday!) and were extremely helpful.
The instructions for assembling this ARF were pretty straight forward. My only gripes with this plane were
1) It came with two pushrods that were a little bit shorter than I needed. I substituted longer pushrods and cut them down to length.
2) The geared 280 motor instructions were written in Czech [
]! So I basically had no information on the motor (which I needed later after realizing the gearing makes the prop spin in the opposite direction)
3) The instructions called for glueing the servos to the side of the fuselage. I wasn't thrilled about that, so I took two small hardwood 'crossbeams', and screwed the servos to them, and then glued balsa supports on either side of the fuse to support the two servos.
The website said that someone could build this in a single evening....I don't think so! I spent several evenings assembling this plane. I will admit it was a lot of fun putting it together, but I don't want anyone out there thinking that this is a RTF. One nights worth of soldering, One night for fuselage assembly, One night for pushrod installation (carving out the tailboom just right), One night for installing the radio and motor, and then a few hours to tweak and get it just right. Maybe I am a perfectionist, but I didn't want to flush my dollars down the drain on shoddy assembly.
I had to buy the following items to finish the job....
Hitec Feather Receiver (and Xtal)
2 HS-55 Micro Servos
1 Castle Creations Pixie 20 ESC
Dubro Quick Links (I didn't want to make Z bends per instructions)
2 600mah 2/3AA 9.6V NiMh Battery Packs (one needed, one for swapping out). Should give me 15-20 minutes of flying time per batt
Velcro (to secure the battery packs to the access hatch, and to fix the receiver to the fuselage)
2 Sets Deans Ultra Plugs (2 female for Battery Packs, 1 male for ESC)
Eflight Pinnacle Battery Charger (some people might already own a charger....i didn't)
Expect to drop about $200-$300 when all is said and done. I might have bought better equipment than I needed, but I wanted to put quality items in this plane (the most expensive part was the ESC, which is extremely light, and rated for 20 amps, so I can use it in something larger later). Items like
First flight is this weekend, and I can't wait. I will keep everyone posted....cross your fingers!
More Info on this Plane at
[link=http://www.nesail.com/detail.php?productID=188]Northeast Sailplanes Cadet[/link]
Contrary to the comments posted on this forum, the folks at NE Sailplanes were easy to work with. My transaction was quick, and I had my plane in about a week. It was wrapped properly, with all of the covered parts wrapped nicely in bubble wrap. Once I received it, I had some questions about the type of battery reccomended. They answerd the phone promptly (even once on a Saturday!) and were extremely helpful.
The instructions for assembling this ARF were pretty straight forward. My only gripes with this plane were
1) It came with two pushrods that were a little bit shorter than I needed. I substituted longer pushrods and cut them down to length.
2) The geared 280 motor instructions were written in Czech [
]! So I basically had no information on the motor (which I needed later after realizing the gearing makes the prop spin in the opposite direction)3) The instructions called for glueing the servos to the side of the fuselage. I wasn't thrilled about that, so I took two small hardwood 'crossbeams', and screwed the servos to them, and then glued balsa supports on either side of the fuse to support the two servos.
The website said that someone could build this in a single evening....I don't think so! I spent several evenings assembling this plane. I will admit it was a lot of fun putting it together, but I don't want anyone out there thinking that this is a RTF. One nights worth of soldering, One night for fuselage assembly, One night for pushrod installation (carving out the tailboom just right), One night for installing the radio and motor, and then a few hours to tweak and get it just right. Maybe I am a perfectionist, but I didn't want to flush my dollars down the drain on shoddy assembly.
I had to buy the following items to finish the job....
Hitec Feather Receiver (and Xtal)
2 HS-55 Micro Servos
1 Castle Creations Pixie 20 ESC
Dubro Quick Links (I didn't want to make Z bends per instructions)
2 600mah 2/3AA 9.6V NiMh Battery Packs (one needed, one for swapping out). Should give me 15-20 minutes of flying time per batt
Velcro (to secure the battery packs to the access hatch, and to fix the receiver to the fuselage)
2 Sets Deans Ultra Plugs (2 female for Battery Packs, 1 male for ESC)
Eflight Pinnacle Battery Charger (some people might already own a charger....i didn't)
Expect to drop about $200-$300 when all is said and done. I might have bought better equipment than I needed, but I wanted to put quality items in this plane (the most expensive part was the ESC, which is extremely light, and rated for 20 amps, so I can use it in something larger later). Items like
First flight is this weekend, and I can't wait. I will keep everyone posted....cross your fingers!
More Info on this Plane at
[link=http://www.nesail.com/detail.php?productID=188]Northeast Sailplanes Cadet[/link]
05-24-2004, 02:01 PM
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RE: My First Electric
I had the maiden voyage this weekend. It was a calm day, so my instructor and I trimmed it out and sent it flying.
1) The instructions said it could taxi....no way! We had to hand launch this thing to give it the kick in the pants it needed to get going.
2) It is truly a slow flyer. It flew quite nicely and would make an excellent first plane for anyone who wanted to get started in e-flight.
3) It could use a bit more power. The 8 cell 600mah NiMh batteries gave it enough power to be able to fly nicely at full throttle. The switch to li-poly or a bigger engine might give it enough go to really fly
4) Controls were nice and predictable.
Anyone interested in assembling their first balsa plane should definitely check it out.
G
1) The instructions said it could taxi....no way! We had to hand launch this thing to give it the kick in the pants it needed to get going.
2) It is truly a slow flyer. It flew quite nicely and would make an excellent first plane for anyone who wanted to get started in e-flight.
3) It could use a bit more power. The 8 cell 600mah NiMh batteries gave it enough power to be able to fly nicely at full throttle. The switch to li-poly or a bigger engine might give it enough go to really fly
4) Controls were nice and predictable.
Anyone interested in assembling their first balsa plane should definitely check it out.
G
05-26-2004, 07:39 AM
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RE: My First Electric
More cells will burn out the motor for sure.
Does this plane have a gearbox? Your next step would be to swap out for a hotter Speed 300 motor, but dropping it in place of the Speed 280 that's in there now, it would be drawing too much current, and would burn out quickly.
Does this plane have a gearbox? Your next step would be to swap out for a hotter Speed 300 motor, but dropping it in place of the Speed 280 that's in there now, it would be drawing too much current, and would burn out quickly.
05-26-2004, 03:14 PM
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RE: My First Electric
I have a geared 280 motor with a 20 AMP Castle Creations ESC. Are you saying that I should move up to a 300 motor? If so, wouldn't I need to switch out the gear box as well (don't I then want to turn a bigger prop?) ?
Any suggestions would be appreciated. I really like the way it flies, but it would be nice to fly it at 1/2 throttle this way, with the option of going full power for takeoff and other maneuvers (that will probably break it anyway!
)
Any suggestions would be appreciated. I really like the way it flies, but it would be nice to fly it at 1/2 throttle this way, with the option of going full power for takeoff and other maneuvers (that will probably break it anyway!
)
