I need three 24" extensions, two 12" extensions, and a 6" extension. I have found inexpensive JR Sport servo extensions, and fairly expensive 'aileron extensions'. Do I really need the more expensive ones?

Here's some links:
http://www.advantagehobby.com/produc...889&quantity=2
http://www.advantagehobby.com/produc...cat=535&page=2

thanks.

Hi...servo extensions are made with bascially two gauges of wire. The bigger gauge wire carries current better with less voltage drop over a given length. What you need is dependent on what you are running for servos. If you have a small to medium plane with like one servo per lead or function then the less expensive wire will work O.K. But if you have lets say some high torque digatels on long leads then I would go with the better wire....twisted wire is supposed to be better but I'm not sure on that point. The cost ofd "regular" or "standard" wire is not that much less than "premium" wire. On those 24" wires I would go the high end wire no matter what. Don't misunderstand me on one point. The smaller gauge wire will work on any servo same for the high end wire. The main differance is how much voltage drop you will have... this will effect how well the servo works in the end.

The JR extension you refer to is a regular duty extension...the Hitec is the good one .......... more money yes but better as well.

Perhaps if you let us know what type of model your servos are going in you can get a better idea if you need to spend the extra money for the better leads. Also the type of servos and the size of the battery in the reciver end of the system.

Look at all the extra failure points you are adding to the system with those "stab in" connectors. I buy bulk servo wire and shrink tubing. Strip the insulation, twist the bare copper ends together, lay flat and slide the shrink tubing over the twisted "knot", then shrink away. The trick is to barely score the insulation and pull it off with your finger nails so that the fine copper strands don't get knicked.

Ok. They are JR Sport Digital (821?) servos, .72oz torque. Hobbico Hydrimax 4.8v battery, 2000mah. I'll either look in to the higher gage or extending the wires (with my soon to be newly acquired soldering skillz?)

So cut the plug off the servo and patch in the required length of wire, making two connections on each wire?

Sal gave you the info needed for the extensions, they also come with gold plated ends. Bigger is better!! The reason for the gold is it isn't supposed to tarnish. Standard ends should be removed every year and cleaned, I used the spray electrical cleaner and plugged them in and out. Being because I'm me and very lazy I didn't clean mine every year and sometimes I ended up with sluggish servos or servos not working at all. My giant scale planes were just too much work to maintain. That's why today I buy bulk wire and lengthen my servo leads by soldering on the wire length I need. Just pure lazy is all.
When you get all your lucky soldering stuff you need just ask and I will do A photo show for you. When at Harbor freight pick up one of those cool little extra hand things with all the gator clips to hold stuff, it's easy but I won't do it until you are ready!!
That Lazy thing again. That and I have A bunch of stuff going on in my shop right now.

Just putting a soldering iron to wire does not mean you have the skills. My dad was an Communications Specialist with the Forest Service, which meant that he maintained all of the radio equipment for the forest he was assigned to, and when I was 8 years old he made me learn how to solder. I must have made a couple hundred solder joints until he said that I had learned how to solder and could then solder something "important". I hated him at the time for making me do that. But now every time I heat my soldering iron I thank him for teaching me that way, because I can trust my solder joints to not fail. And trust me, if you don't have a good solder joint you might as well just point the plane straight at the ground and open the throttle. Because that's where the plane is going to wind up eventually anyway, so you might as well get it over with.

If you want to solder servo leads then you had better do it right, because there is no quicker way to cause servo failure. I'm not trying to be harsh here with you, but rather being honest as I tell you this. You have a habit of being over confident in your abilities and moving on too quickly. So I would be pretty safe when I say that I can see you making one decent solder joint and then move on to making the soldered extensions on your plane, and this very overconfidence can lead to cold solder joints that fail in the air. If you really want to do a good job then you need to work on learning to solder, and when you finally make a decent/good solder joint you need to do about 50-60 more to make sure you've got it right. You may think that I'm trying to flip or funny, but you really should be able to make a good decent solder joint EVERY time you solder wires together if you want to make your own servo extentions.

So how do you make a good solder joint?? Here's what you need to do.
[ul][*] For soldering wire together you don't want a high wattage soldering iron/gun. Too much heat can cause as many problems as too little heat. A good 20-25 watt solder iron is just about perfect for soldering wire together. [*] Make sure you have good rosin-core solder. DO NOT USE acid core solder on wiring. The acid will corrode the joint over time and cause it to fail. For making solder joints for servo wiring I use 60/40 rosin-core solder from Radio Shack (Part #64-009). It's a small diameter (.032" ), the smaller size makes it easier to work with on the smaller wiring we use for servos.[*] The next thing you MUST have to get a good solder joint is Flux. Since we are using rosin solder, make sure you get rosin flux. Make sure you don't get acid flux for the reasons that I listed above. I use Radio Shack # 64-021.[*] Plug your soldering iron in a good 5-10 minutes before you are ready to solder you joint. You need to make sure that it's fully heated before you start soldering. If the iron is too cold you will wind up with a bad joint. You will also need a sponge or old rag to clean the soldering iron tip. Wet the sponge/rag and wring it out so that it's damp. With the soldering iron hot completely wipe the tip of the iron off on the sponge/rag. [*] As the iron is heating you can prep your wires. One important thing in making a good solder joint is to have your work secure. If the wires move around when you touch the iron to them it's hard to get a good joint. You can make a simple soldering jig by simply gluing two wood clothes pins to a piece of wood an inch or two apart from each other. With these you can clamp each wire in a clothes pin which will hold your joint secure as you solder it.[*] Next you need to connect your two wires together. Remember that the solder it going to make the mechanical bond between the two wires, so you don't have to twist them together like you were making a safety rope. First remove the insulation from the wire. This again takes a little practice so you don't score and weaken the wire beneath the insulation. I score the insulation with a knife, not completely cutting through it, and then pull the insulation the rest of the way off. You don't need a lot of exposed wire to make a good solder joint. I usually remove about 1/4" of insulation, but as you first get started you can remove 1/2"-3/4" and get shorter as you get more comfortable making solder joints. Many people will hold both wires side by side and twist the exposed metal wires together, and this will work. I solder my wires so that the wire is actually straight in-line with the wire, I will lay both exposed wires so that they are side by side with the wire in a straight line and lightly twist them together. One other thing to do here is make sure you slide your heat shrink over the wire BEFORE you solder it, because after you solder it there is no way to put heat shrink on.[*] Now you need to put your flux on the wire. Just a small little dab is all that you need. What the flux does is as it heats it cleans the metals so that they better accept the hot solder. [*] Now you are ready to solder. With the iron hot and the tip clean you need to "tin" the tip of the iron. You want to melt a very little bit of solder so that it flows over the tip of the soldering iron. This melted solder actually helps transfer heat from the iron to your work area. You don't want a huge "blob" here, but just enough to cover the tip of the iron. [*] Now put your iron on your wires. The first thing you will see is the rosin "melt" away from the heat of the iron. This is exactly what it's supposed to do. With the iron on the wire you now apply solder to the joint. DO NOT touch the solder to the tip of the iron here. You need to touch the solder to the wire of the joint you are soldering. When the joint is hot enough the solder will melt. You know it's right when the solder "flows" throughout all of the wire of the joint. Be prepared because once you get good at doing this the entire process of heating and flowing the solder only takes a second or so, it goes pretty quickly. You don't want to leave the heat on too long because it can melt insulation off of the wire, deform and shrink your heat shrink further down the wire, and if you get it hot enough you can damage components on the other end of the wire.[*] After the joint has cooled you need to take a rag and completely wipe the joint clean, removing all of the flux from the joint. If you don't do this the flux can actually corrode and damage the joint later on.[*] The last thing to making a good solder joint is to slip your heat shrink into place and shrink it over you joint.
[/ul]

Trust me, this skill is well worth learning and learning correctly. If you do it will serve you well the entire time you are in this hobby. If you don't learn it properly then don't even think about making servo extensions on your own.

Ken

Well in that case I'll use heavy duty plug-in extensions for now. That's what the manual said anyway, and I can practice soldering all winter long.

I appreciate the honesty here. Thank you

You don't need to solder splices in servo leads, in fact you don't want to if you follow along with MILSPEC and aerospace standards for field wiring. They did away with solder type connections in the wiring harnesses back in the early 1970s. Too many Cobra gunships bit the dust due to soldered connections work hardening and finally breaking loose. Same goes with other aircraft/machinery. It took too long for the old school types to finally admit that soldering was an inferior technique to a simple mechanical [union] splice. Some guys needlessly died or got maimed as a result. My soldering teacher in the Armys' electronics school was one of those pilots. Soldering is only done at the component level on circuit boards.
A good twist job and heat shrinking is all you will ever need. The only part of the system where soldering is a must is in the RF section.....for our purposes that means the antenna wire.
I'm sure that 99% of the guys in this hobby who extend their servo leads with soldered connections never have any problems, but I'm just here to tell you that it isn't neccessary plus give you some background as to why that is so.

Just splice the servo lead...give me break.

There's different UL wire ratings ..

Even if the pins are gold plated and your servo's lead arn't ...that would be retarded.
Even if the pins on the extensions are .30 mil gold and the pins on your RX is only .15 mil...that's retarded too.lol
The pins on the connecters are crimp or solder anyway.

Splicing the line is better than adding connectors. It'll would be full contact and it won't get expose
to HUMINITY or AIR, which will cuase corrosion over time...That's why you want gold contact to minimized corrosion.

What you're doing by adding extension is what the military would term as splicing.

It'll only cost $.25 to manufacture those extensions. If it came out of china...less, less

The only extenstions I ever use or buy are short ones to provide an easy Plug in point to the Rx for purposes of easy wing removal or other major sub assembly removal

Keep on hand bulk servo wire usually from Servo City in regular and heavy gauges depending up on my requirement. Its simple for say something like extending for an aileron servo, Just cut the servo wire in two and splice in the exact needed length solder and shrinkwrap. In this way There will be no losses to poor high resistance connectors or any danger of separated connectors in an inaccessable place.

John

flyx, I don't think you understood my post.

Maybe not, but I use to manage an electronic assembly plant. Anywhere from Cloning machines, medical equipemts.
We try to stay away from aerospace.lol But we do make narly harness assemblies or rocket luanchers
It's screwie.lol I have to request documents from Tyco sometimes of how often they calibrate their equipments...that's fun.lmao

That's why it cost so much on the tail in is becuase I have to charge at least $1 -ea. if i get an order for 10,000.
That's less than $10,000 profit for an oder. Then the distributors have to charge their profit. The the whole sale or retail.
that's why it's $3-5 for an extension.

I rather work on multi million dallor orders becuase it takes almost the same amont of energy to makesure everything gets
shipped out perfect.

Soldering was once taught in school from the 7th grade to the 12th grade in A class called radio shop if you elected to take it. There was even A company called Heath Kit that had true wonders to be purchased but all assembly was required. I still have my Tach, it reads the low RPMs very well but somehow over the years it lost it's way and can't read the high RPMs?? Some of the guys even made there own radios for crashing, oops, flying there RC aircraft.
Being color blind I had some outstanding plug in's but over the years I learned how to use the testing equipment just to avoid these little mishaps.
It's A shame to have lost these classes but for the most part they aren't needed anymore in our country.
It's nice to see it's still alive and well here on RCU and people are willing to teach.
Mr. Pig, I too remember learning the right way, the wrong way and the Army way. I also remember having A 30 inch waist too.

Gray Beard,
Man I miss those Heath Kits. My dad and I built many of them over the years. They even had a RC radio that we built. The biggest one that my dad built was the 25" color TV. Being a radio tech he had access to an O-scope, so it was easy for him to get it up and running. They still had that TV when I was moving out for collage!!!!

Ken

Combatpigg did use the term "field wiring� which I presume implies the requirement to connect wires in battle fields. I would assume using Ken’s technique for proper good soldering procedure would be a luxury battle field conditions don’t provide .Nevertheless our hobby equipment are just as that; for hobby use and reliability standards are way below mil specs. Probability to have a servo malfunction is a lot higher than even a semi good soldered wire joint. IMHO

Field wiring is the portion of the system that connects the central control or power source to the outlying loads or utilization equipment.

Like I said earlier, soldering works, but well twisted wire ends that are held captive by heat shrink will never fracture, never come apart, [never show a micro-ohm's worth of difference at 5 volts and 200 mah]. The heat shrink exerts alot of pressure on the twisted splice and locks it in. It works perfectly.
If there was a problem with this method, it would have shown itself to me about 20 years ago.
Obviously, solder has to be used by the hobbyist to make reliable battery packs, but I make sure to immobilize the wire after the solder joint so it doesn't fracture.

I like this splice idea. sounds like it stays flexible and impervious to vibration. Please describe how they are twisted.

Expose about 1/2 inch of wire on each wire to be joined. Line up the bared ends of each wired so that they are side by side and use your finger tips to twist them together to form a tight group. Now with the very light gauge stuff, I roll the bare copper into a tight, compact ball before heat shrinking.
The heavier type wire that has been joined by twisting, just needs to be folded so it lays lengthwise with the wire it has now joined, then heat shrunk.
Go ahead and give your work a test tug to see how well it is connected, I don't bother with the test tug, this method has never failed.
The green heat shrink that is sold by Dubro works well.
The key to success is to have a light touch when scoring the insulation to strip the wire. Just barely score it by rolling the wire in your fingertips against a #11 blade. It might take a little practice, it isn't hard to get to where you harm 0% of the strands.

Expose about 1/2 inch of wire on each wire to be joined. Line up the bared ends of each wire so that they are side by side and use your finger tips to twist them together to form a tight group. Now with the very light gauge stuff, I roll the bare copper into a tight, compact ball before heat shrinking.
The heavier type wire that has been joined by twisting, just needs to be folded so it lays lengthwise with the wire it has now joined, then heat shrunk.
Go ahead and give your work a test tug to see how well it is connected, I don't bother with the test tug, this method has never failed.
The green heat shrink that is sold by Dubro works well.
The key to success is to have a light touch when scoring the insulation to strip the wire. Just barely score it by rolling the wire in your fingertips against a #11 blade. It might take a little practice, it isn't hard to get to where you harm 0% of the strands.

I use the servo extensions myself. Plug them in and be sure to tape them together good and your set. Use them on a Sundowner with 24" and 821's also.
Have never had any problems. Say you happen to crash that plane and want to use the servos on another as we all do then you have 36" of wire to deal with. You either have to wad it up or cut it off and start over again. I suppose I crash to much and end up swapping servos around oftener than most. But do remember to put good tape around the connections the can come unplugged while moving them around and stuff. Good luck but you don't have to solder them and you will still be alright. For sure if not the manufacture would reccomend the other. But if you do decide to solder follow the tip RC Ken suggested. I also am just barley average at soldering anything and in this Hobby you will find alot of stuff to solder so getting a good gun is to your benifit. Plug em up and TAPE THEM GOOD and go fly your plane. GOOD FLYING TO YOU.

There is some good advice in the responses here. In my job, I see a lot of botched wiring harness repairs due to poor crimping or lousy soldering.

If you use extensions, bigger wire is usually better just like everyone has said. This is especially true as the wire gets longer. Also be sure to use some heat shrink, dental floss or something else to keep the plugs secure.

If you splice and make your own, do it good no matter what method you use.

You may be building a model airplane but it is STILL an airplane. You don't want to create some weak link and invite problems if you can avoid it.

This is a little off topic but I thin those classes are still needed. Who's going to fix or build everything in the future? My company has been forced to go out and actively recruit service technicians now. One thought we had was to plant the seed at the high school level and get them thinking about us. Problem is all of the good industrial education programs up and down the valley are disappearing. No more wood, no metal, no auto, no electronics, nothing. Plus they now keep the students indoors all day when the weather is hot. I'm only 37 but I remember old classrooms with no AC and being forced to go outside for PE regardless of the weather (Uh oh, I'm starting to sound like my Dad...) . Things are definitely changing.

I'll stop now before I get too far off the subject.

I took 3 or 4 years of 'shop' in high school and never learned to solder - that totally should have been included. That school doesn't even offer shop anymore[&o]

I grew up in an area where a lot of farming was going on, and took 'vocational agriculture' in high school (1974 to 1976). We learned about tools, and did some arc welding, but soldering was not part of the program. I wonder if those classes still exist.

On topic, when I built my Uproar 60 it needed extensions for the tail mounted servos aswell as for the ailerons. I used either Hitec or Hobbico 'Heavy Duty' ones. I secured them with dental floss tied around the connectors.

I learned the hard way about securing connectors. My first ARF trainer needed the battery mounted in the tail. Used a servo extension and didn't secure the connections. The connection came loose and The plane was destroyed. When I'm TRYING to disconnect a servo it seems like the connectors are very tight. But, hide a connection inside a wing or fuselage and it instantly becomes an unreliable point in the system.