RE: Extreme Flight 87" Yak 54 - Build & Fly
Dave, I think the whole thing really hinges on weather or not you will exhaust your batterys in a normal day of flying.
as far as the fail safe switch. Get a load of this. I already had one fail and it rusulted in a crash. How can that be??? One of the wires to the switch broke at the solder joint, that ment NO POWER! So in a sense no switch is completly fail safe if the incoming, or outgoing power wire breaks where it's conected to the switch or the reciever. I'll never run one switch again! Failsafe.... BS! \\
The same goes for the reduntant battery, now I'm not an expert but I'm guessing that there is only one lead wire coming off that battery and going to your reciever, so the same applies. If a wire or solder joint breaks, your coming down post haste. (maybe I'm wrong and they run 2 wires, and they plug into seperate channels of your reciever. if so I'm wrong.... sorry in advanve.)
BTW I had this happen to me too, the stinking solder joint broke on the battery. If you really want a redundant system, you need two of everything seperate from each other. Thats the way it's done in General aviation. One last thought, If I was going with lipo's and regualtors, I'd also want two recievers. If one of your regualtors fails and lets too many volts through it will burn out your reciever. That will ruin anybodys day.
John