--={Luft}=--

Hi,

I am a beginer and i would like to know if this will be everything i will need for my first flight.

1) GWS Slowstick
2) Futaba 6XAS

If not, what else will i need. Another question i have is, will the servos that come with the radio fit on the slowstick??

Thank you

Luft

tomlescal

this is the setup ive got but i used gws pico servos.it will fly the standard servos but get a really big battery.radio shack sells 9.6volt 1600 nimh that works good if you fold it in half.you will also need a esc,get a big one,it'll be cheaper later in life.i flew mine with a camera strapped to the bottom.south of Joliet tom

flyinrog

My Feedback: (1)

you will need battery paks (2 or 3) and a charger for them, thats a lot of radio for a parkflyer ,but it should last a really long time the slow stick is supposed to be able to use standard servos.. I fly the stick fd........if you go too high a voltage with your battery the motor wont last as long.... however it is a cheap can motor anyway so your looking at 30-40 flights before it starts to get weaker

--={Luft}=--

Thank you guys.

Wright Flyer

When you buy the Futaba radio just ask them to remove the standard servos (probably S3003?) and replace them with four micro servos. There aren't many electric planes that would benefit from the size of servos that normally come with a radio set. Equally the receiver that comes with standard radio sets is probably going to be too big for a light electric plane too. If it was me I'd buy ONLY the transmitter then buy something like a Hitec Feather or Hitec 555 receiver and 3 or 4 micro servs separately

The trick to making things fly slow (which is what you want when you first start out) is to make them as light as possible to reduce the wing loading and this means light receiver, light servos, the lightest motor and battery you can get away with.

Cliff

--={Luft}=--

I decided to go with the Hitec Eclipse 7 radio, because i heard its a better radio then Futaba and the prices are pready much the same. Also i am going to get one of the flight packs from horizon, for the slow stick, i wont to make this as easy as posible, all this parts, its easy to make a mistake, especialy a beginer like me. One question, i heard there are field chargers, does that mean i can take them out to the field and charge my batary realy fast, if so how long do they take to charge the battery. I am planing to get the Hitec CG - 340.

J-S

My Feedback: (1)

"field" chargers hook up to your car battery. the CG-340 comes with alligator clips for the input and output. personally, i cut off the alligators clips for the inputs and put a car lighter attatchment on it. It works great, no soldering is required. here is a link for the car lighter attachment:

RadioShack

If you want to charge the batteries at home, you'll need to get a power supply because the charger only works off DC. power supplies convert AC to DC. There are many different types and prices. you can actually use an old computer power supply but that takes a little bit of electrical knowledge. If you do a search on this forum for computer power supply, you should be able to find explinations on how to do it.

What I've done is take a simple 1A 12V Power adapter and use that for my home power supply. Its a lot cheaper and I don't really need to charge my batteries over 1A anyway because its only a 6 cell 1000 nimh battery. If you're interested in how I hooked all this up, I can post some pics.

The size and type (nicad, nimh) of the battery will dictate how long it will take to charge the batteries.

Hope that helps a little,
Jeremy

--={Luft}=--

Thanks J, that helped alot. So besicly the charger brings the voltage or the curent down so the battary dosnt burn out when charging. I thought you could charge the chargers at home and bring them with you and use them in the park as the power source for charching battarys. The "field" charger gave me that idea i dont know why. Anyways wich battarys are better the nicad or the nimh? Or should i say wich charge faster?

Thanks you for you time guys.

Luft

Wright Flyer

NiCd = high power, short duration, fast charge
NiMh=lower power, higher duration, slower charge.

For a slowstick where you don't need much power but probably want the longest duration possible then NiMh is the better choice though they take longer to charge as you can't force the amps in quite as quickly.

Cliff

J-S

My Feedback: (1)

^^^ what wright said

--={Luft}=--

i heared that those car starters do pready good job at recharching the battarys, so instead of using the car battery you use the car starters, and you can recarge the cas starter too. Has anybody done it this way?

Wright Flyer

Personally I wouldn't run the risk of damaging expensive battery packs (and possibly yourself!!) when you can buy a dedicated delta peak charger for only a few bucks.

Cliff

--={Luft}=--

Delta peak charger? How do they work? Do they work at the same principal as the car starter?

luft

Wright Flyer

I'm not even sure what you mean by a "car starter". You don't mean a 12V charger for lead acid car batteries do you? If you were going to connect a model battery to one of those then invite some friends along for the "fireworks party" (and get someone to bring a video!!) but do everything behind a sheet of bullet proof glass!

A Delta Peak charger is the kind typically used for charging 6/7/8 cell (or more) model batteries. It's true that you connect it to a car battery (not a charger!!) for the input power and then it puts out 7.2/8.4/9.6V to charge your packs. It depends on the size of cells you use but the current involved may be anything from a few hundred milliamps up to 3 or 4 Amps (sometimes even more with REALLY big packs).

As voltage goes into a NiCd (or NiMh) it slowly increases the output voltage from the battery. At some point the cells become full and the pack does something odd in that the voltage starts to go down a little bit. This is known as the delta peak. A model battery charger will recognise this and stop feeding volts into the pack. If a charger doesn't have this then either you have to time it, or use a temperature sensor because if you continue to put charge into a battery once it's full at anything more than a "trickle" you will damage the cells and things can get VERY hot!

Cliff

--={Luft}=--

First of all thank you all for your help, i have to apologize, for my poor explanation in the above post. What i know is that some people have used the car starter ( the thing you use to charge your car batteries ) with the model battery charger. So it goes like this:

Car starter --> CG-340 --> airplane battery

Thats the order i would conect everything together.Instead of car battery, the car starter ackts as a power source for the chargetr. The CG-340 should bring the voltage down so the battery dosnt explode like you mentioned in the prevous post, and start charching. I would realy would like to do it this way, i just dont feal comfortable charging from the car battery, i know that the car battery is being charged as soon the motor is turned on, but i just would like to avoid the car battery route.

Thank you

luft

Wright Flyer

No, don't just connect a CG340 to the output of a car battery charger. You will almost definitely destroy the CG340.

What I did for a while at home when I first started out was:

AC mains -> "Car starter" -> spare 12V car battery

and then, later:

spare 12V car battery -> Supernova 250 -> aircraft battery

but, like most people, what I do now is:

AC mains -> old PC power supply --(12V output)-> Supernova 250 -> aircraft battery

I'd recommend you think about doing the same. Most offices/computer stores will have tons of old PCs that you can take a power supply out of. You just need to connect you aricraft battery charger to the black (-ve) and yellow (+ve) wires on one of the four pin plugs that normally connects to a floppy/hard drive.

It's also a good idea to actually put an old hard drive on one of the other 4 pin connectors as most PC power supplies need to be "loaded" in order to operate correctly.

Cliff

goofup

Here's a thought- why not get a Wattage PF-12 Parkflyer peak charger? Charges both Ni-Cad and Ni-Mh, 150 mah to 2000 mah, 4.8V to 14.4V (4-12 cells). The best part is it's AC/DC so it's ready to go at both the home or the field... and it's only $49! Mine works great and will handle just about any battery pack I'll ever get.

let_it_fly

I use a car starter like you are talking about for field charging. it is ez to use and can be carried ez. I use a GWS peak charger and nickel batt. 7 cell is about the limit if you don't want to fry a motor. i use 7 cell 1300 mah packs and get good run times. the use of larger servos and reciver will cause a heavier plane and take more power to fly. i use to hitec 555 reciver and hs55 servos and they are great! the ss is the best park flier for the money and you will have a BLAST with it!

Peter Khor

My Feedback: (4)

Just to clarify, I suppose this is the type of car starter that is being refered to, as opposed to a car battery charger (which you don't want to connect a charger to directly!) Should be able to find one relatively cheap locally, and they do come into good use for a bunch of other stuff. Only thing to remember is to make sure you always recharge the pack after each use and not leave it in a state of discharge.

J-S

My Feedback: (1)

isnt that really just a car battery with a cute case?

doenges

I bought one at Sears ("Instant Power" for $69.00) a few weeks ago and use it all the time. I will soon make some female banana clips so I can use it with my gas plane starter (if I need to). The sears one comes with a cigarette lighter plug-in so my MRC charger plugs to that and from there I charge all my batteries.

Plus, the next time I leave the lights on in the car, I can jump it quickly (happened twice this year).

Dan