ORIGINAL: DamonR
PlaneKrazee,
You got me thinking about my IBE, I bought the ''WRC Wike R/C Products IBEF Ignition Battery Eliminating Filter - For UNREGULATED LiIon or LiPoly'', which I have installed and powered through my regulated receiver. I looked at the installation page, it says it drops voltage 2 volts, so my regulated receiver is at 6 volts, and my ignition is now 4 volts, is this an issue? To get this setup as the manufacturer intended, I need to tee off my battery and supply power directly to the IBE and tee off the IBE to get the signal from the receiver? This will result in 7.4 - 2.0 or 5.4 volts to the ignition.
- Damon
DamonR I think they mean 2 volts under load. In other words, with CDI unit firing away at full revs, the potential the CDI unit sees is 2 volts less than the supply to their IBE, which is a little too much loss. The RCexl CDI Todd uses for the SAP engine still functions okay at 4 volts but not much lower than that. You won't have much room for error. The wike should work fine if the input volts was higher that 6.5 volts, giving some room for error.
As a diagnostic, if you start to hear some misfiring, it's the first place to check. Make sure you check your airborne battery with a 1 amp load to see the correct volts out. If loaded voltage is less than 6V, the CDI may have some problems firing correctly. Your airborne system will not be in any danger tho unless voltage is very low, less than 4 volts. Point is if you hear misfiring you would have plenty of time to shut off the ignition and land safely
The Tech Aero designs IBE also drops voltage to the CDI (they all do BTW) but much less than that. As I discussed earlier, the TAD IBEC is designed with IMAC and Pattern competitors in mind. We can't afford to lose firing pulses. On my prototype unit, Ed reduced the drop to less that 3/4 volts. With a regulated airborne voltage of 6.2 (that's where I run my JR equipment), the IBEC supplies about 5.4-5.5 V to the CDI when the CDI is demanding the most at full revs
The production units that Todd is selling drop the voltage even less than that. To get such small drop, expensive components had to be used with short wire lengths of a larger gauge. The unit costs 10% more than the competitive units but worth every penny. The point here is beware of IBEs that use long wire leads. These drop voltage considerably. Twisting the leads helps reduce EMI-RFI feedback to the RX but at what cost? The SAP IBEC doesn't rely on long twisted leads for filtering. Low V-drop filter pots are designed in.
Keep in mind that 5-6 volt supply to the RCexl CDI is the sweet spot. Supplying the production SAP IBEC with a supply of 6 volts means the IBE will supply around 5.4-5.5 volts to the CDI at full revs.
The point is that Ed Alt the designer of the Syssa IBEC knows what he is doing. He has optimized voltage output and EMI-RFI filtering/shielding for a trouble free unit. Just drop in and play. FWIW2U
Hope this explains a few things. If something isn't clear, please ask
MattK