Plane: Rhapsody's
Motor: Hacker Brushless C50 14XL 6.7:1
Controller: Jeti/Hacker Master 77
Batteries: Thunder Power 10S3P 6100mAh 42V
Prop: APC 22x12E
Radio: Futaba 9Z WCII
Servos: Ail/Elv 9650 Digi, Rud 9151 Digi
Rx: 148DP
Radio Battery: Duralite 1900 Li-Ion w/reg 6V

I want to give a BIG THANKS to Sean Plummer and Scott Todd. They helped me with the long nights of working on the planes, early morning practices, followed by more plane assembly, followed by more practice and more assembly for close to 3 weeks. Without their help, this would not have worked as well as it did.

Other thanks to Charlie Wang at Thunder Power for making packs that are still working (I'm flying the Rhapsody at NEAT Fair and a local Phx pattern contest in Oct). To Fred Burgdorf (sp?) at APC Props for making the 20x15E and 21x14E props in such short notice. Mike Stokes at Futaba for the rushed servos to finish the planes and the last minute graphics from Kirby's Kustom Graphics.

Now I'll skip to the matter at hand. (Check Quiet Flyer for a personal write-up on my experience at the Worlds flying Electric)

The reason I am writing all this is to clear up the issue that "supposedly" I had some of my equipment fail during the Worlds. This is not true. The batteries (all 5 packs) worked flawlessly. I did have one pack that had discharged unevenly and threw me for a loop. One side charged faster than the other did and I thought something was wrong. Come to find out after I cycled the pack once, it rebalanced itself out, and all was well again. I even used that pack for the 3rd Round of the contest. Let me clarify something before I go further. I am completely electric illiterate. I knew as much about Electrics as I do Nuclear Physics. Granted I am learning more about electrics now on a daily basis, but I knew next to nothing about it during the Worlds. I also used the car (running) to charge my packs at the field. This worked well as I didn't need a jump to get my car battery up after I would have drained it practicing all day long. I also found out that the packs liked to be warm (100F) for optimum starting power. Unfortunately during my first round we tried charging a pack at the field with a separate battery and I reached "full" power about 3/4's of the way through the flight. Charge time was 1 hour 40 minutes @ 6A.

As for burning up 4 motors.... this is just as funny. I took 5 tested motor/gb/controller combos with me. IF there was a problem, all I had to do is unscrew 8 screws and swap out a system. As it turned out, nothing broke so all the extra set-ups weren’t needed. The ONLY "problem" I had was some gearbox noise that I wasn't used to hearing. Apparently, the grease in 2 gearboxes wasn't sufficient and they started to make some noise. Therefore, because of that I did change out the system in one plane 2 times. The REASON for doing this is that in F3A competition there is a noise rule, 94db's over hardtop. Well I was 92-93, and most all of it was prop tip noise (someone else can explain how that works). I was afraid that if I was also getting the high pitch noises from the gearbox that I might get above the noise limit and zero a flight.

Now, electric pattern isn't going to be for everyone, it is still too expensive for the average pilot to do (me included if it wasn't for some GREAT sponsors). Will there be more electrics at the next Worlds (2005), probably. Will I do it again, yes. We are working on a few new ideas and will be testing them over the next year. Now that we have a better idea for what is needed, testing shouldn't take too long.