Good evening, all. I am an ancient retiree/music teacher/grandpa, and I have little experience in RC flying. I have been fooling around since the mid-seventies with RC cars, gas and electric, 8th and 10th scales, but am primarily a backyard player since we have had no local competetion for years.
You'd think I'd know for sure about the following after years of fiddling with electric RC cars ( I back-voltaged and burned up too many speed controls to ever be confident about what I was doing) but I am wondering if it is safe to try to use an 8th scale gas receiver-pack to power my Mini-Max. I've been looking at it for a couple of days, wondering if I I will burn up the new GWS 4p receiver and the new Electri-fly C-10 speed control I just got if I connect them up to that five cell receiver pack off one of my 8th scale gassers. I did actually try it ever so briefly, but I may not have the speed control plugged into the proper bay on the receiver; anyway, nothing happened, and I was afraid to pursue it any further! Thanks for reading, and any solid advice appreciated! Glen Priest in Portland, Indiana.

5 cells will be a 6V pack, and most RC gear can cope with this, is the GWS Rx the indoor micro one? the planes that fly these can have 8 cells no problem, the speedcontrol takes the voltage down for the Rx and servos. 6V should be fine tho. however a fully charged 6V pack can be as much as 8V.
the info that came with your gear should give you the specs and how many cells you can run it on

Thanks for the response, "phillybaby"! (I was going to abbreviate that to "PB" and that reminded me of Phil and Debbie Booth of the UK who market the excellent 8th scale on-road missle named, appropriately enough, "PB"!) I will probably screw up my courage enough today to have a go at connecting up the various electronic bits, hoping there will be rotation, control surface deflection, and no smoke! Thanks again! Glen Priest

well dont go peaking the pack just yet, i'd like to know more about what gear you have b4 you plug it all in, but if the specs say its ok, go ferret

Hello again! The motor is the Speed 280, which with its 2.5 to 1 gearbox, is included with the Mini-max. The receiver is the GWR 4P by GWS, and the speed control is the Great Planes C 10 Micro.
The spec sheet for the receiver says, if I am reading it correctly, that the operating power is 4.8-6.0 volts, and current drain is 5mA. Sensitivity is 5u volts.
Indications for the speed control are that it can stand input voltage of 5 to 8 cells, and up to 12 amps Max rated current. Do you think I am safely within these limits?
Thanks again for your quick response! Glen Priest

AHHH you wanna go backyard flying of something.
the cells on their own can be pugged straight into the RX to power servos, but, you plug the speed controler into your main batt and it powers the whole lot, and also drops down the voltage to the Rx to 4.8V, now i would guess you've got a 5pack of AA batts, and at 6V on a 280 motor your going no where.
most indoor flyers are using packs with 1/3AA or 1/2AAA most common sizes, these packs are 7.2V and higher. 7.2 for floating, 8.4 for bit more go, 9.6 + for fun. I'm guessing you've got the geared 280, and on indoor planes here they use the 1/2AAA 270MAh Ni-cads with respectable flying times.
You might want to try the 800Mah 8.4V pack from the Hornet indoor heli, its about as heavy as you want to go and should give a good flight time.
Im afraid, your batts will make it work, but only for taxi-ing.
just not enuff voltage and way to heavy.

Howdy, and thanks! Nope, my receiver pack is an in-line five pack with a purpose built carrier top. They are much shorter than the usual AA batteries in the receiver packs I use in my gas cars and trucks, and are somewhat smaller in diameter than the typical sub C Nicads. This pack is not tiny, of course, and it may in fact be 'way too heavy for E flying purposes. It does not, however, look significantly different from some of the E-Flight packs I have seen over at the AMA area hobby shop.
I don't know if you hear much about the AMA in the UK, but it is big stuff for RC people here; I'm sure %99.9 of the people in our little burg don't know or care about it one bit, but the complex is huge and located near Muncie, Indiana just about 45 minutes from our house. They have nearly seven hundred acres, and the new headquarters building and museum look very impressive from the road. I think it opens soon.
Thanks again! Glen Priest

Sure enough, I smoked another tiny electronic device. Perfect.I tried using the on-road gas car receiver pack to power up the system just now, and actually had the rudder and elevator on the Mini-max responding, though it seemed a Chineese puzzle as to which channel was which and which stick on the Futaba Conquest TX was going to operate which surface. I thought I knew which bay on the receiver was for the speed control, as I could see the left stick (Which I think is to be the throttle) was running one of the two servos.
Connecting the speed control to the appropriate spot on the receiver did nothing, and I was trying to enable the "safe-start" circuit as per directions. In any case in one of the several connect/disconnect cycles I saw a spark in the receiver and after several more fruitless attempts where nothing happened I suddenly got a definite little arc in the little sucker.
I was obviously trying to keep pos/pos and neg/neg where there are just the two, but I still am not certain as to the white/red/black orientation.
I got out a standard receiver and used a standard 4-cell AA pack and the new little servos are fine; the speed control is a question mark and I suspect the receiver may NOT be a question mark.
I wish to crap I had one of you guys here who knows something; my retired teacher buddy who knew LOTS in an intuitive way about ham radio and simple electronics had the misfortune to die two years ago so I don't have anyone on the local scene who knows or cares much about electric RC planes!Thanks for any info. Glen Priest

I have mine here in my hands now...
1 is ailerons
2 is elevator
3 is throttle
4 is rudder or batt
Above those numbers are S + -
If you turn it over now so the crystals side is facing you the top pin is signal ( white wire ) the middle is pos ( red wire ) and the bottom one is neg ( black wire )
I suspect you got the servos connections right, but you got the speed controler opperation wrong.
When you want to use the controller to power the motor you dont pulg the main batt into the Rx, you plug it into the speed controler like i mentioned below. there will be 3 sets of wires, the wire to the Rx is ovbious, the other two normally have 2 pin plugs on.. the bigger red female one is for the batt, the black female one is for the motor, at least it is on my GWS control.
If you pluged the batt into this it would have droped the power and all would be happy and safe, i suspect you still had the batt in the Rx and it tried to draw all the power it wanted though it.
IF!!!! your lucky all you've done is break the track between the + or - pins on the Rx as they are not designed to cope with this power.
if you look closely you'll see all the + pins are joined and so are all the - ones, see if theres any break in there, if there is, resolder the joint and you might just get lucky and have a working Rx again.

The rule is, if you have a speed controler, thats where you put your flight batt.

Thanks again for the info. I thought I followed the instructions very carefully and proceeded with great caution. I'll try again this evening, but I'm afraid I probably cooked the little sucker. I don't *think* I connected the battery to the receiver, but when nothing seemed to be working I may have done exactly that. I had both sets of instruction in front of me every step of the process and went about as slowly as one could go; evidently not as slowly as I should have! Thanks again. Glen Priest

Is there any one in your area that runs any type of RC - boats, cars or planes. You may want to ask one of these people that have been in the hobby awhile for a hand; I'm sure anyone in RC will be more than willing to help you.

Hi, Jim! Wow! Alberta, huh? I have always wanted to go to one of those far north, Jack London type romantic places in the winter and live through a proper blizzard; I'm tired of our puny butt winters down here; we/re supposed to be near 60 deg. F on Sunday! I blame Bush pere for not getting us a headstart in dealing with global warming and emmission issues; we could have started in the 80's had it not been for "The Great Communicator and George Herbert etc. !
End of rant! Interestingly enough (to me, anyway; you be the judge :-) ) 24 years ago this Thursday the mid-western US was locked in a huge blizzard (or what WE think is a blizzard!) and 24 years ago last night I had driven 50 miles to pick up our daughter from college as the storm, largely unforecast, was brewing up; we like to not got home!
Thanks for your thoughts and time on the RC electronic issue; we do have some RC plane guys here and I have known them for 40 years, but I think they tend to look a bit askance at E-power. Real men do nitro, right? :- )
I'm much more inclined to run my gas cars and trucks rather than my electrics, but in the plane world I thought I needed something which had the potential, at least to fly slowly. We're not talking an Electro Streak or an F5B here! Thanks again, and I'll post if I get the thing sorted out. Glen Priest

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. HERE IS A PICTURE OF MY RECEIVER FOR FUTABA

BROWN (-)
RED (+)
ORANGE (S) SIGNAL

Pin 3 is for SPEED CONTROL AND BATTERY

I have one of the Electrifly C-10's. I also have one of the GWS 4-ch RX's.

If using a Futaba TX: (and a Futaba comptible verson of the GWS RX... there is also a JR compatible version)

Ch1 is right stick side-side.
Ch2 is right stick fore and aft
Ch3 is left stick fore-aft
Ch4 is left stick side-side.

OK... you have the picture of the RX above... He's using JR servos by the color code. Orange on JR = white on Futaba. Brown on JR = black on Futaba. Red = red. Plugging the battery in backward = smoke.

*****

The C-10 doesn't like less than 6 cells when yuo try to operate a motor. It SAYS in the instruction you can use 5... but it may refuse to turn on the motor. It will power up the RX OK on 4 cells.

First you have to determine that its all plugged toghether correctly. The red and black for the battery powering the ESC are the traditional + and - (and are moarked with a + at the red wire entering the ESC circuit board. It says Batt pretty clearly on the battery end... and motor clearly on the motor end. The plug for the RX is color coded normally for Futaba.

The motor can be temporarilly be replaced with a 12 volt light bulb from a car tail lamp while testing the ESC and RX. (mo worrying about the plane getting away from you)

Turn on TX, THEN turn on the power to the ESC (plug in the battery) Move the TX stick and trim to maximum. Pause a couple of seconds. Pull the stick and trim to minimum... listen for 3 beeps. (no beeps? put it back to maximum... it should beep) move the stick and watch the bulb grow brighter as you move the stick more.

You HAVE to cycle maximum, pause and then minimum and wait for the beeps or the motor WILL NOT START.

Put the throttle to the setting that gives brightest light... turn off the TX. The light should go out within 5 seconds. (failsafe test. YES, it has a failsafe system!)

*****

I forgot... if using the GWS RX on a 4 channel glow power model... you use a Y harness to put the RX battery in. Does not matter what channel you Y it in with... The + and - pins are all connected to each other.

Hey FH, Thank you for the slap on the head. I have seen recievers marked 7 channel and have only 7 slots. No room for the battery. I wondered how to set it up. Good lord how simple the answer is. I just could never see it. I guess I am just a dummy sometimes.

Glennie PB, as in diamond maybe? I have a friend who ran 1/8 gas. He had a coupla diamonds. It was amazing how fast they could run them and the amount of expertease to set them up. If you can do that you are a better man than me Gunga Din.

Mark Shuman