RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbecue, etc.  
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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbec... - 9/2/2005 8:11:08 PM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline 		Well, don't get me wrong. It's a great little plane. But like most kits, there are a few things you can do to really improve it.

If you want to do any sort of tricks, you will need more power. The best thing would be to get a brushless motor and lipo batteries. More power and less weight that way.

As for the quirky behavior lately, I think it's just the wind at the field I'm flying at, which have kicked up again today. It's wooded on one side with a few extra trees here and there. It's a baseball field, and the woods are behind the first base line, and extend out from there. The wind has lately been coming from first base if looking from home plate, which is down the edge of the trees. So I think there are some weird turbulence spots going on. Yesterday, there was virtually no wind, and it flew great (except for that little bermuda triangle spot, haha). Other than that, it flew steady and very smooth.

< Message edited by twinturbostang -- 9/2/2005 8:12:37 PM >

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/2/2005 11:20:36 PM   
Flypaper 2



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From: Kingston, ON, CANADA
Status: offline 		The wind coming over the tops of the trees on the downwind side are vortices and can drive your plane into the ground. There is a low pressure area right next to the trees so the wind blows over the trees, downward and back towards the trees, into the low pressure area, then back up again, like a mini tornado. The harder the wind blows the worse it is. Plane gets a little out of shape

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbec... - 9/3/2005 1:01:02 AM   
Flypaper 2



Posts: 4308
Joined: 3/29/2002
From: Kingston, ON, CANADA
Status: offline 		Highpines:
Only change my student made from original at the beginning was to put a lipo 2100 ma batt. in to get longer run time, like 1/2 hr. Ran fine on the 400 brushed motor at reduced throttle setting for training speed. BP 21 brushless came out for a very good price so he put that in it. He hasn't crashed it yet so I can't comment on the durability end of it

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbec... - 9/3/2005 5:24:04 AM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline 		Good grief. I figured out why it was not behaving well. The wing was loose! It looks like the last crash when the wing separated from the fuse tore the front attachment point some. It's a pretty cheap design, that just uses a plastic piece glued to the fuse with spikes to "bite" the foam of the wing. I even glued two carbon rod "spires" on either side to help it. But it ripped the foam on the wing enough that the front mounting point was loose. I could wiggle the wing around by at least a 1/4". That's probably bad right?! I'm going to devise a better mounting system. I think I will remove the plastic piece from the fuse, and in it's place I will take a piece of ply with a square hole cut in it and glue that in. Then take a square balsa stick (like a motor mount stick maybe) and glue that into the wing. Then there will be a positive locking system.

Another thing I noticed is the motor is not in straight. It's pointing toward the starboard side. Is this normal? Or did I screw up something?? See the attached picture below. Blue line shows the fuselage axis, red line shows the motor stick axis.

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< Message edited by twinturbostang -- 9/3/2005 5:26:11 AM >

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/3/2005 6:29:41 AM   
Time Pilot



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Joined: 10/25/2003
From: Vancouver, BC, CANADA
Status: offline 		A bit of right thrust is okay, as long as it's pointing to the right because it went in that way and not because it's also loose.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/3/2005 6:43:03 AM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Time Pilot

A bit of right thrust is okay, as long as it's pointing to the right because it went in that way and not because it's also loose.

Is that to counteract the torque of the motor? Perhaps that was built in and I just didn't see it before now. *shrug*

Gona stop by the crafts store tomorrow and pick up some balsa sticks and light ply to build a better wing mount. That should lock it down good.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/3/2005 11:44:57 AM   
Flypaper 2



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Status: offline 		Get aircraft ply not liteply. Liteply is not much stronger than hard balsa.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/3/2005 5:53:11 PM   
highpines


 

Posts: 56
Joined: 5/17/2005
From: , AZ, USA
Status: offline 		Thanks for the info on other experiences with the E-Starter......My SS and Tiger Moth both have outrunners and 3-cell lipo's so thats what will go into the E-Starter. Minimum of 2000mah. Outrunners and 3-cell's just blow me away.....I will never go back to brushed!!......... Thanx

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/3/2005 11:10:16 PM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
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From: Germantown, MD, USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: highpines

Thanks for the info on other experiences with the E-Starter......My SS and Tiger Moth both have outrunners and 3-cell lipo's so thats what will go into the E-Starter. Minimum of 2000mah. Outrunners and 3-cell's just blow me away.....I will never go back to brushed!!......... Thanx
So far I've been running with a 750mah Ni-MH, and I get flight times around 7 minutes. So even a 1320 or 1500 lipo would be great. That should give flight times of 15 minutes or so. Maybe more actually. My pack is heating up quite a bit, which is a whole lot of wasted energy I'll bet. So the right type of battery in there (even at same capacity) would probably last longer.

I'm going to try a TP 1320 lipo pack in there. I should get around twice the flight time (due to the larger capacity and better efficiency), and it will also weigh less (85 grams versus 120).

Speaking of which... does anyone have a brushed speed control that works with lipo's that they would like to donate to a good cause??

< Message edited by twinturbostang -- 9/3/2005 11:11:03 PM >

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/4/2005 1:10:22 AM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline 		Got the new wing mount on and it works great. Wing is nice and solid now. Flew it also and it did really well.

Flypaper 2: I was assuming that's what it was called, but maybe I was wrong. Whatever stuff I got is nice and sturdy. No worries at all.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/5/2005 3:31:09 AM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline 		Flew great today. No wind. Mostly did patterns around the field and worked on flying smoothly through turns and stuff. I did get a bur up my a$$ though, and tried a roll. It wasn't pretty. lol But I pulled it off.

Tomorrow I'm ordering a TP 1320 lipo. Just not getting enough flight time in. After 3-4 minutes I can tell the voltage is dropping. And at 6-7 minutes, it's time to come back in. If I go with a 1320, that should give me a bit more flight time. The 3S is also 11.1V (instead of 9.6) so that should give me a little bit more power also. I will need to swap out the esc though, with something that can handle lipo's. Does anyone know if there is a lipo compatible esc that works with brushed motors?

< Message edited by twinturbostang -- 9/5/2005 3:32:12 AM >

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/5/2005 5:40:12 PM   
will


 

Posts: 252
Joined: 12/1/2001
From: Saluda, NC, USA
Status: offline 		The Pixie 20 has the features you need. You can see it here.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe... - 9/5/2005 6:33:44 PM   
twinturbostang



Posts: 802
Joined: 8/29/2005
From: Germantown, MD, USA
Status: offline 		Yeah, I saw that one. And I was thinking about getting it. But I didn't see any mention of lipo's, or "2-3 cells" or anything like that. So I wasn't sure if it was compatible or not. It says "five to seven cells", "eight cells", "nine cells", etc.

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RE: E-Starter woes. Short flight time, battery barbe..