danf

I was excited about the value offered by this "RTF" plane when I first ordered it. $129 for a 54" plane, radio, 4 micro servos, 2 brushless motors, 2 ESCs, and the LiPo to run it all seems like a great deal!

But it seems that old addage "you get what you pay for" is quickly becoming true in my case. My initial disappointments were small and easily overcome; The instructions aren't clear. The plane is anything but RTF, joining the wings requires careful application of an xacto knife, the hardware pack is missing items, the packing list does not match my plane (it refers to the brushed version, but Igot the brushless). Like I said, nothing insurmountable in the first two days.

But today the disappointment has gotten deeper. I hooked up the ESCs to the motors, battery, and receiver to make sure everything is turning right before I start installing parts. At half throttle only one motor is spinning. At full throttle one spins noticeably slower. Plugged the slow motor into the fast ESCand vice-versa and found that this behaviour follows the ESC - ok bad ESC - again not insurmountable, but I ordered this thing for a float fly that is rapidly approaching, delays in shipping cost a week more than expected of my training time, unexpected building is costing a few more days, and now this problem threatens to cost another week.

Happily, nitroplanes.com has agreed to cross-ship. Unhappily, they won't send the replacement until Igive them the tracking number for the outbound shipping, which Ihave to pay for. That's adding injury to insult; you ship me a broken product, don't trust me to return it (that's the insult) and then expect me to pay return shipping (that's the injury). As I stated, my disappointment is running very deep.

Nitroplanes.com - you have one opportunity left to earn back my business - the new ESCs had better arrive, work perfectly, and not be delayed for any reason. Otherwise, you will get my entire order back and Iwill stick to local and well-known businesses.

opjose

The fact that both motors do not spin at the same speed does not represent a problem with the ESC.

You need to set/program the throttle range for both ESC's before the props will spin equally.

This is typical for multi-engine electrics.

This has been discussed in other threads so I'll refer you to them.

danf

Hey - thanks! I'd really love to hear about that... too bad the tech support people were not able to help me with that on the phone - that could have saved me some frustration and shipping costs and you guys the cost of the new ESCs. I'll look forward to seeing you post those links.

Would also be nice if the manual included information about programming the ESCs. I just double-checked the manual to make sure I wasn't being totally stupid and I don't see anything in there about programming the ESCs. So this is my first brushless electric and I've proven myself ignorant. However, Ihave to say that hearing now that there was a solution only serves to deepen my disappointment with this purchase.

opjose

Most new RC'rs are quite used to the "do it yourself" mentality that prevades most of the stuff that is available to us.

Even big name RTF planes have similiar requirements, and you practically have to know what you are doing just to set the plane up.


e.g. Newbies know nothing about trimming a plane in flight, let alone programming an ESC, etc.. and flight trims are NEVER talked about in any manual.

This poses a double edged problem for a novice, who quickly discovers that there is something wrong ( or sometimes they don't realize it! ) with their plane, along with their inability to fly AND deal with this.

That is why the mantra around here is to tell people to seek help, join a club, and get an experienced flyer to look over their work, pre-flight their plane and also take it up for a maiden flight.

I've had people show up at our club, with obvious problems with their setups, oblivious to those problems... 15 minutes worth of work later and they are happy campers... but if you do this all yourself, you tend to end up frustrated.

Just to guage your experience level, have you flown, taken off, and landed RC planes before?



Anyway check out these threads where I've talked about programming the ESC's for the throttle range.

Several people with similiar complaints about mismatched motor power have fixed it the way I talk about...

[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_9358485/anchors_9366602/mpage_1/key_/anchor/tm.htm#9366602]Link 1[/link]

[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_9541088/anchors_9541796/mpage_1/key_/anchor/tm.htm#9541796]Link 2[/link]

[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_9330282/anchors_9364141/mpage_1/key_/anchor/tm.htm#9364141]Link 3[/link]

A calibration proceedure is somewhat common for most ESC's, but things become more difficult with two motors.

danf

Yep - been flying more than 30 years - this is only my first brushless electric... To be quite honest, your most recent message is offensive and condescending, not to mention wildly inaccurate. If you advertise RTF, then you darn-well should be shipping a product that's going to come out of the box when I get home at 4:30pm and be in the air by 7pm. That's what your competitors over at Horizon and Tower and other places are doing.

Anyhow, I'll figure this out, but you guys really ought to consider putting some documentation in your product, not to mention hiring some people on the tech support lines who can figure things like this out... As I'm reading, Isee that many of these ESC manufacturers have different procedures for setting up, so your assertion that your customers just ought to know how to do it without any documentation provided is just plain nonsensical.