electric help
 

Hoping to build a light indoor electric plane. Not worried about design, i am very good at autocad. What i am more worried about is the electronics factor. i want to build a plane that runs on a AAA or AA battery. the main reason for this is that there is no recharge time. so i don't have to wait. But it seems all the motors i find need a higher voltage. Also what type of chip, reciever, servos, motor, propelor, and transmiter should i get? what should i do about the voltage problem? The reason i want AA or AAA is so i don't have to recharge them. Right away. If i have 15 AA batteis If the flighttime for one is 10 minutes i can fly 150 minutes uninterupted, thats 2 and ahalf hours. I can charge them on a slow charger at night. (Accually can go on further because only takes 2 hours to charge one.) thats why i want them.

Alex,

Any help would be greatly appreciated

electric help
 

look up an IFO, if you are going to recharge a battery, why not use a pak and recharge 6 at a time cause your gonna need at least a 6-cell pak to run a motor and servos and rx...Rog

electric help
 

Flyingrog is right. Your logic is all messed up, thinking that 15 batteries will let you fly for 2.5 hours.

1- hooked in series, the amps will burn the motor up.
2- hooked in parallel, that's 22.6 volts, again burning a small motor up.
3- it's gonna take a pretty big plane and motor to haul the weight of 15 batteries up in the air.
4- either way, the batteries won't discharge one at a time- no matter how you hook them up they all discharge at the same time. (Using your logic, if you checked the batteries of a flashlight when it's half gone, one battery would be empty and one fully charged. I don't think so!)

Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

Goofup

electric help
 

naw goofup, I'm pretty sure he means flying a plane for 10 minutes on 1 AA battery so that if he has 15 separate batteries then he could fly that long ,, but you wont be able to power the rx,servos and motor with 1.5 volts,, maybe for 2 minutes for 20 feet or so away,,oh and a slow/trickle charger takes ~12 hours to charge........Rog

electric help
 

The only planes that run on a single cell are very small and specialised (less than 1 oz flying weight). They use a custom voltage booster to increase the voltage enough to drive the $100+ extremely lightweight receivers and gear. They also use coil actuators instead of servos. Some of them use IR (infra-red) control instead of radio.

I don't think being very good at autocad is going to be enough :(. The difficult part of design is knowing WHAT to draw not just HOW to draw it.

Steve

electric help
 

I didn't mean 15 hooked together i mean 1 amybe two in and the rest ready once they run out. this way there is no recharge time between flights. Thanks

electric help
 

Might I suggest that you try an established design before you go ahead and design your own? It does not sound like you have much experience with airplanes or electricity.

The GWS Tiger Moth is an excellent indoor flier, and you can buy all the electronics for the airplane in a prepackaged kit, so you can see what goes into one of these planes.

electric help
 

I do have experience with plane flight and electricity. BUt i don't know what is our there in the terms of motors , recievers, ect. Forget the battery part I have given up on that and will just use a normal battery. But i still need to know what types of recievers, transmiters motors, ect i should use. I want to build a plane for my cadd class. But I want to be able to fly it indoors and want to build a small plane.
any help would be apreciated,

Alex,

electric help
 

ok jabs, try GWS and IFO, a lot of the newer small co. use the GWS electrics in them they are very popular.......there are lots of plans out there that you can "redesign"......Rog

ps we have a design contest going on in 1/2a forum now but it has already started and it is glow 1/2a (.010-.061) but some guys have put up there cad drawings

electric help
 

thank you. unfortunatly my autocadd folder is currupted, so i can't design anything untill i get the cd from school. If i can get it. But i do have an hour a day i can work on it there