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Air through your plane... - 10/26/2005 2:57:13 AM   
patternflyr



Posts: 169
Joined: 1/16/2003
From: Griffin, GA, USA
Status: offline 		Hello,

I am converting a former glow airplane to electric. The plane is a Silhouette and the batteries could be made to access from either the top, through the canopy, or the bottom, through the chin cowl. Right now, I have removed the firewall and pipe tunnel, so I have a big, empty airplane. I assume that just for the ease of removal, changing the batteries from the top would be preferable. I would like to see some pictures of other people's airplanes to see how you mounted everything and routed the air through the fuse to cool the engine and batteries. Also, any pointers that you may offer would be appreciated. I will be using the Plettenberg 30-10.

Thanks, Emory.
       Post #: 1

RE: Air through your plane... - 10/27/2005 9:59:44 PM   
Dean Pappas


 

Posts: 165
Joined: 1/27/2004
From: South Plainfield, NJ, USA
Status: offline 		Hello Emory,
Based upon my experiments with my electric testbed Funtana, you want to design your cooling setup with a few ideas in mind.
To begin with, everybody seems to be having motor temp problems, when they rely on unducted cooling. What you need to do, is to build an airbox that surrounds the entire front of the motor, into the cowl, and feed it fresh air from either cheek scoops, or the top third of the chin scoop. The airbox needs to be at least 1/2" deep, from front to back, and the air should be kept from leaking out behind the spinner, by a fairly tight gap. In order to do this with the Pletty, you may have to put a short extension on it, to get the prop face well forward of the body of the motor. 1/2" or so should be fine.

The airbox dumps into a a sleeve that goes around the motor with maybe 1/8" gap all around. This will force as much of the intake air, as possible, through the motor's vents, and some over the outside of the magnet ring. Doing this, My Axi 5330 sees a very modest temperature rise. I'll try to either take a picture, or make a drawing to post later. The warm air that comes out of the motor dumps into the volume that is "in front" of the firewall. It needs to be dumped overboard, with some sort of rear facing scoop. It could look like the exhaust stacks on a Merlin! If the airflow sucks this hot air out, that's even better. Now you have a use for the back end of those cheek cowls.

The Speed controllers seem not to be too much of a problem: I put mine (first a Castle HV-45 then a Castle HV-85) inside the duct that feeds the battery compartment. Try to put the battery in a tunnel that has 1/2" to 1" gap all around the pack, and forces the air over it. This will be much easier to do in the belly pan! If you have two batteries laying side-by-side, put 1/2" gap between them, and make sure that some air has to flow though the gap. The exit from the battery box is important too. Some sort of rear facing scoop is best, and it needs to have the same area as the chin scoop (or portion) that feeds it.

All this, including photos, will end up in the "Electrifying the Funtana" article ... coming to an issue of Flying Models, near you.

later,
Dean Pappas

(in reply to patternflyr)
       Post #: 2

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