MajorTomski

On Board starters, specifically...the German brand sold by Hobby Lobby.

Hi troops. I'm interested in hearing your experiences with these units. Is it worth dragging the extra pound and a half around?

TIA Tom

dr_wogz

My Feedback: (3)

The starterm,a dn teh drive shaft. Modifiing the engine to have teh gear. A dedicated serve to trip teh switch, and teh modification to teh throttle servo control arm / wheel ( so it starts only in the idle postion - gas engine set-up) teh additional HUGE battery pack to drive it more than once or twice. The remote glow starter circuit, and it's battery (if glow) and the fact that it'll never start right eh first time!

I installed one on a freinds CUB, 9' span.. Z-23 engine. I htought it was a waste of money, and asembly time. It does work, but that's all I've heard. Good or bad? Dunno. I think it's one of those "I now know it is a bad idea, but I don't want to prove the others that ' They told me so'"

Personally, I view it as a gimmic.

THEGREATRANDINI

I have a FEMA starter on my 31% Edge 540 (G-62) I love it! The extra weight does not affect this big plane like it would smaller craft. I use a 3S2P lipo battery (1500 FMA's) for a total of 3000 maH. The system draws 21 amps and it will start the engine more times than I want to in one day! The wow factor is very high! Everyone wants to see it work, I spend more time talking about the starter than flying the plane. It is a real finger saver.

Randy Green
Hobby Lobby International
Sales Manager
615-373-1444 ext 209

a.trinder

I have been contemplating building my own onboard electric starter to suit an OS 160FX that will be going in a CM-PRO 83inch Cessna 182. The concept to-date is to us a brushless outrunner mounted on the left hand side with the engine side mounted to the right and making a new steel prop drive washer to replace the original OS alloy one this would allow a .750 ID x 1.00 OD x .6250 width one way bearing [available from Boca Bearings] to run directly on the back of prop drive washer the bearing would be press fitted into a 72 tooth 2mm pitch alloy timing belt pulley [ available from YORK Industries] connected to a brushless motor mounted via a suitable alloy bracket, the motor could be fitted with a 20 tooth alloy pulley giving a ratio of 4 to 1 which would also increase the torque by a factor of 4. The pulleys are designed for a 6mm toothed belt.
What I have not worked out as yet is the size of the brushless outrunner required but I did check the Sullivan web site and their Dynatron Starter on 12v has 340 in-oz of torque which means that with a 4 to 1 reduction ratio we need at least 85 in-oz from the brushless motor and I would like to keep it as small as possible to keep the weight to a minimum, also I would like to be able use the Hyperion 2100mah 3 cell packs that I already have they only weight 180 grams ea.[I might be dreaming here] The speed control could be set to have the brake on in flight mode because if the brushless motor were allowed to to turn in flight it would have a possible shaft speed of 40,000 rpm and the possible emf generated might damage the speed control but as there are so many combinations and confusing part numbers with the electric motors I need to do a lot more research before I can start to put it together.
The machining and mechanical design is the easy part [I am Technical Officer in robotics at one of Australia’s major Universities] as I have access to all the machinery required but I do not get involved to much in the electric side [it is hard to teach an OLD dog new tricks]
So if anybody has any thoughts or ideas it would be much appreciated and I will keep you all informed on the progress through this post.
Regards Alan Trinder