I'm building my first gas plane it's a corsair with a DLE20RA. I am planning on using a single battery setup and had some questions.
I'm planning on using a Ignition battery eliminater by Down and locked and plug that into an open channel on my RX and the other end into the electronic ignition. I don't really know a whole lot about these but this IBE is also a kill switch as its controlled by one of the channels. I'm using a 5 cell 2500nimh battery powering the rx. I've been told to use separate batteries so if the engine dies I will still have servos. My question is, if my rx has power then my servos have power so why would I need a separate ignition battery? Will my setup work?

I'm not familiar with the Down & Locked IBEC. Most people I know use the Tech Aero IBEC (excellent product). You should only need 1 battery. 2500 mah NiMH should be fine.

Same here, no experience with that product but I've been using the TechAero iBEC in a large number of gassers for several years

You're a little off in your understanding of the engine issue. It's not a problem if the engine dies. You'll have a chance to land it dead stick just like with a glow engine. What's a problem is the very rare instance of the ignition shorting and draining the battery. In a dual battery setup, that only result in a deadstick landing. But in a single battery setup, your whole system will shut down.

How many times have you seen that? Because in many hundreds of flights with that setup, I've never seen them happen. Just sayin

But when it does, you are now the proud owner of a pile of sticks.

Well playing the odds, there's a lot more likely crash modes that we don't mitigate against that I probably won't be losing much sleep worrying about something that I've never experienced or seen despite the number of flights I get per year and the number of events I attend.

I've never seen it happen, Barracudahockey. I was merely passing on the typical reason given for a dual battery setup and clarifying the electrical scenario that would result from a shorted ignition. I personally think the CDI ignitions we have now are very reliable, making that concern practically a non issue. I worry a lot more about failed switches than I do a shorted ignition.

That's an excellent point and why I use power safe receivers on anything larger.

Hmm: One of these Power Safes?

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/jr-r...-recalled.html

Discussion here:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-j...um-recall.html

John

I'm well aware of the recall on the new telemetry receivers, I've been using the older non-telemetry ones with no problem since they came out

JMO. I like the two battery system. The way I see it, if I lose the battery to the ignition, I have a dead stick landing. I've had plenty of practice doing those. If I lose the battery to the servos. I'm screwed and its goodbye airplane. I've never had a critical battery loss for the receiver and servos.

I experience a bad batt in my 30cc Citabria ( one batt ) I discover it by doing what I do every time before TO I run the engine at full throttle and move all of the sticks to full deflection, doing that the engine was misfiring, the batt had been charged the night before, it also was two years old, I now use two switches with one batt just in case.

I believe that by keeping track of your batts and checking them before each flight plus the little exercise​ before TO can keep you from loosing an airplane because of a bad batt, I saved my 19 years old CG Piper Cub when it was around 4 years old, I discover it had a bad batt before the first flight, the batt had been charged the night before ( it was old also )

When I say keeping track it means checking them constantly, I checked the capacity on my 27% Gee Bee batts ( two batts ) one fail the moment I began to discharge it, one cell dropped below 3v right away and this is right after been balance charged, that batt also didn't peak at the usual 7.2v but around 6.8v, that was a given that the pack had to go after been used for nearly three years, I got two new 1800 LIFE packs on the way which I will charge to full then discharge downtown 6v only, note time and mah then recharge and note time and mah, that will tell me if the pack is good and how many flights I can fly with the pack then cut that in half, with two of them I should be able to fly at least 8 flights without sweating it.