Red Max

Can anyone tell me if standard ball bearing servos will work okey on a 1.20 size Lanier Stinger? It will not be used for 3-D or complicated aerobatics, only sport flying. It has a G3250 Super Tiger engine. I may switch over to quadra .35 gas.

Zippi

My Feedback: (10)

Red Max,

Follow what the manual for your plane suggest. If it were mine I wouldn't use standard servos on a plane that size. And if you go with a gasser you want to use metal gear servos.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

You could use them if you avoid any radical maneuvers

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Standard servos were all we had when the plane was designed. All the high end servos you see today and are a must use item only started showing up 10 or 12 years ago.

Red Max

I think the way I fly standard will do okey. I am more of a circle flyer, do a loop or roll once in a while. Nothing fancy. Cirrus has servos that are ball bearing and is supposed to be hi torque if you use a 6 volt battery. They sell for around $9.99.

jester_s1

I'd at least get something better than that. You said you will fly gently, but everybody jerks out of a dive or has to correct for an unexpected wind gust occasionally. It's great fun when those cheap gears strip in the air. The $28 Hitecs are a step up in torque from the standard servos and have the Karbonite gears so they will hold up better.
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXFRS6&P=7

Given the total investment in your plane, it's not a big jump to get the right servos that you can trust.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

For your type of flying, those will be fine

flygilmore

If it were my plane I'd use Hitec 645mg as a minimum on 6V if using NiMH.

Red Max

Thanks, minnflyer. I checked out the "getting airbourne" site. This Stinger 1.20 was purchased at a swap meet, and is a little rough looking, but the airframe, etc., is sound. Just a good plane to "week end" with, and not worry about getting it "dinged". I think planes like that are more fun to fly; you dont worry so much about being a little rough with it. It came with a Super Tigre G3250 two stroke, but did not have a carb. I purchased an ASP .91 size carb for it. The barrell where it goes into the engine block was a little too small, and I wrapped two or three layers of aluminum tape around the carb barrell and then put sealant around it before tightening it up. Hope this works okey. I will give it a good run in and check out before putting it into the air. About the servos, I cant really afford to put a lot of money into high dollar servos on this plane right now. One of my fellow modelers at our local field suggested standard would probably work okey for sport flying. I dont fly 3-D.

JohnBuckner

My Feedback: (1)

As Gray Beard and Minn flyer has already pointed out for your use those servos are perfectly fine and you will never know the differance. Running five cell packs is a good idea though and I no longer do any setups with four cell packs especially if you are using 2.4.

I still have a number of aircraft in that size and weight catagory that have served long an well with no special servos.

The whole world does not revolve around 3D

Here is my old Tiger I built Ah fifteen years ago or so blown up to eighty inchs and fourteen pounds Still has the same old whatever standards and I gave away a year ago and the gentleman is flying it constantly just fine.

John

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Just a little ramble about servos. Just about 10 years ago the digital craze came into modeling. Up to that point all we had were analogs. A wee bit before the digitals the analogs were getting stronger and faaster. The nylon gears were still in use and no one was stripping them out. You could buy brass gears and they are good but they tend to wear out faster, nothing a sport pilot would ever notice. Today I see ARF dealers calling for some pretty high end servos on some pretty small light weight planes?? AeroWorks is one of them. If you are into 3-D and most of us aren't, then these high end servos may be something you just have to have in your little planes?? Sport pilots don't need them. I like digitals but I'm not going to be replacing my analogs until they are burnt out, they have served me for years and are working fine. Today, because we have a lot of new type of gear we are being told this stuff is a must have item, too many people are buying into the hype. Sport pilots don't need big powered servos with metal gears with high speed and high torque. Nice to have but if you think about it is it something you really need?? I don't. I have some of the high end items for my big stunt planes but I use what I have on hand for my normal Sunday planes. Only nylon gears I have ever stripped were in planes that crashed hard. Ask yourself, how many standard servos do you see failing on any given weekend?? Gears or motors??

Luchnia

My Feedback: (21)

Very good point! I would estimate that approximately 8 out of 10 guys who fly at our field have older servos and a few have the digital servos. Nothing there is really the high end mega metal gear ball bearing stuff. The fact is in the past year I have only seen ONE servo that I can recall have an issue and it was a very old servo and that was when it was extremely cold at the time and the control surface was stiff and put extra pressure on the servo. The guy went home and cleaned it up, lubed the joints and plane is fine now.

I bought some planes from a fellow that were built in the early nineties and the servos are still working fine. I only replaced one because it was chattering a bit! I do like the digital servos but not planning on replacing them all at once. I will just do that over time.

JohnBuckner

My Feedback: (1)

Luchnia While I am not in disagreement there you have mis quoted Gray Beard as he is the one who said that not me

John

airbusdrvr

I agree with some of the above posts about analog servos. I have discovered that my skill level does not require digital servos. In fact, I have some digitals on a plane or two and they don't fly any better than I do

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Trust me, I can usually tell the difference between an analog and a digital in SOME planes, others, not at all or not enough to ever worry about. These days I buy nothing but digital but I don't waste them on just any old plane. I also get picky where the better servos are going, I always use the best servos on the elevators and rudder with the cheaper servos going on the ailerons. I use analog on my throttles but they are pretty good bearing servos. On an old SPA 60 size pattern plane what I use just depends but because I use the heck out of the rudder there will be a pretty good servo there. I have no strong or hard rules on servos until I get to about 1/4 scale planes, even then it depends on the plane. My kingdom for a big box of high end servos but I use what I have or can afford. With bigger and better coming out every day I can't keep up with the market. I don't even know what is new out there, I don't have anything big or new in the works but when I do I will be looking at the new stuff and looking for the big deal!!

Steve Percifield

My Feedback: (14)

I have to agree with the "experienced" ones in the group. I beleive that the industry has gone a little over board on high end servos. I just saw an ad for a new High Tech servo at 639oz/in ??????

I also just watched a 1986 video of me flying a Byron 1/3 scale Christen Eagle with a Quadra 50. Back in those days we had servos, period. No 32 models to chose from. This airplane had standard Kraft ~45 oz/in servos. 1 on all the ailerons, 1 on the elevator and 1 on the rudder. These were mounted in the fuse with long standard nyrods running to the tail, anchored in 2 places. And guess what, it flew just fine, including rolls, loops and all.

Don't get me wrong, there may be applications for the high end stuff, but for most sport flying, it's not necessary.

steve

Red Max

Hi John. That is a nice looking Tiger. I am going to go with the standard servos, ball bearing. As others have noted, we did not have all the fancy stuff a few years ago, and our planes worked quite well. A lot of folks tend to over power their planes and really jerk them around, and the power to weight ratio really goes out of sight, like putting some of the big gassers on planes that were not designed for them. This starts putting stress on a LOT of things in flight. I like to keep things simple and I put a lot of time into balancing before the first flight. If I was into air racing, 3-D, etc., I would not skimp on servos, but the pressure that is put on our servos depends on how we fly. If our imputs are smooth, there is not likely to be a lot of stress on our servos; anyway, that is my way of thinking. I will use a 6 volt battery to power mine on the larger scale planes. I have a one qtr. scale Sig Spacewalker that I have not yet flown. It has standard BB servos. Someone else built it. It has a two cylinder Magnum 1.60 four stroke engine.

Red Max

Hey Steve. All this new stuff equals money for the mfg. They know a lot of guys who can afford it will go all out and spare no expense, but most of us cant afford that luxury. This has happened on every thing that comes out new and is popular, and the more it catches on, the more expensive the hobby becomes, and the more gadgets are created , "must have" items. The next thing you know, prices are out of sight on the thing we love to do. That is the nature of business, but it puts a damper on the old pocket book . We just have to learn to work around the complications and keep things as simple as we can.

JollyPopper

My Feedback: (6)

I love this sport/hobby and most of the people in it. However, as a group, we seem to have one glaring flaw. Whenever something "new and improved" hits the market, the stuff we have been using successfully for years suddenly becomes junk. I never noticed this more than when 2.4 technology hit the market. Suddenly 72 stuff that we had been so happy with for years became trash. That's just silly. And the same goes for hi-torque servos. The old standard servos are perfectly good in the vast majority of cases.

Rodney

I have to agree with grey beard, minniflyer and buckner, the old standard servos can do the job and do it well. I have also added boost tabs to a few of the very large planes so that I can use the lower powered servos with no problems. Also, metal gears are not as good as the nylon ones in many ways. Metal gears wear out quickly and produce a lot of slop as they age where nylon gears do not. I have never stripped a nylon gear in normal use, now in a crash, yes I have but the servo mounts sheared as well. Nylon can be as good and in many ways superior to the metal gears.