That GWS 45 amp is a great deal, and should be doable soon. What size battery would the 45 amp need with the motor I have?

From BP Hobbies listing page ( [link]http://www.bphobbies.com/View.asp?id=A0780192[/link] )

2-4 cell Li-po or 6-12 cell Ni-cad/Ni-mh

Up to 4 amps on the BEC tap.

ken

Any specific mAh power in particular preferred? What is BEC tap?

The Mah of the battery does not matter. Mah is Millamps hours. This is basically a measurement of how long your battery can deliver power. The ESC doesn't care if a battery is 600 Mah or 6000 Mah. It's the voltage of the battery that matters. And that would be determined by the number of cells in the specific battery back, as is indicated above. 2-4 cells for Li-po (or approximately 15.2 volts for a 4 cell Li-po), or 6-12 cells for a Ni-cad/Ni-mh (or approximately 16.8 volts for a 12 cell pack)

BEC = Battery Elemination Circuit.
This is what is used to power your receiver so that you do not have to have a seperate battery for the radio. It runs off of the ESC. The specs above mean that the BEC, or your receiver and servos, cannot draw more than 4 amps.

Ken

Don't mean to sound stupid, but does that mean the higher the mAh the longer the flight time?

Yes. That is dependant on how much juice the motor is drawing.

mAH stands for Milliampere-hour.

For example, a battery rated at 1500 mAh can power a device drawing 100 milliamps for 15 hours, or a device drawing 150 milliamps for 10 hours

Ken

Ken

But will the 40amp ESC work for now until I can get the 45amp? Or will it burn something out? If it's not a good combination, why would they sell them as a combo?

Unfortunately, a lot of people sell things as combos that aren't necessarily ideal matches. I don't mean to sound like an ad for Hobby City, but the thing I like about them is that they are cheap enough that you can try different combos without going broke. My motor cost $25 and my ESC cost about $40.

Like Ken said, the ESC is rated for the max that can be pulled through it. It does not hurt to oversize it. Take a look at this:

http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...eed_Controller

And this motor looks to be equivalent to yours:

http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...r_Eq:_AXi_2826

And together they cost less than $70.

As for trying out what you already have, I would. On the bench, with the wing off, and the plane restrained, just slowly increase the throttle while monitoring the temperature of the battery and ESC. If you know someone who has an amp meter, that would be even better. You will get a good feel for the amount of thrust you are going to get out of your setup, your expected flight time, and how hot your equipment is going to get. If your ESC gets too warm, just shut down the throttle.

Good luck.

The other thing I forgot to mention, is that at the bottom of the product pages, people post exactly which models they use the equipment in, with which motor/esc/prop/battery combinations, and a lot of them have measured the amp draws. This information was very helpful to me in setting up my first electric, as I was able to compare the size of my plane with a bunch of other real world applications.

I know that you can't believe everything you read, but if enough folks say that they have used it succesfully, I tend to believe them.

Good luck

If someone can find ESCs with the connectors already attached in the 45-60amp and $50-$70 range please give me the link and I will purchase it right away. I do not want soldering involved as I do not want to spend extra on a soldering gun to do this one job, and I always do a lousy job soldering when I tried.

While I'm not saying it's impossible to find a ready made setup, but it's very hard to participate in electric aircraft without some soldering. Like anything else in this hobby, the only way to get better at it is to practice doing it. Simply get a roll of wire, solder, and flux and start practicing making solder joints. It really doesn't take too much time to learn to do it properly. But if you're going to be flying an electric plane then it's a skill that is going to be worth learning.

My dad was in electronics and when I was 8 years old he taught me how to solder. He made me do just like I said above, sit and practice soldering until I got it down pat. I didn't enjoy it when doing it, but now I thank him every time I heat up my soldering iron. It's a skill that comes to use in this hobby quite often.

Ken

Then in this case that makes the decision to convert to electric a very poor decision. Learning soldering skills and acquireing the proper tools is indeed part and parcel of flying electrics that one must do if he expects to progress much past the toy store variety of parkies.

John

I have a cheaper version something like this:

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00954094000P

Mine has a soldering tip. Soldering bullet connectors is easy. They have that little "cup" that the wire goes into. I just hold them cup side up with a pair of vise grips, put a drop of flux into the cup, and heat it up. I hold the solder in the cup until it melts, and then push a bit of solder in until it is about 3/4 full of liquid solder. Then I just poke the end of the wire (with a drop of flux on it) into the liquid and hold it until it cools down.

The torch is also good for shrinking the heat shrink when you are done.

I haven't seen any ESC's with bullet connectors installed, but I can solder them on in about 5 minutes, and I am just learning to solder properly.

OK, with that being the case (and I know you are right) then I like this one mclina pointed out http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...eed_Controller

Can anyone point me to a good soldering gun, not expensive, that will do simple soldering? All the hardware stores around here start at $65 and go up.

This is the one I have:

http://www.hobbico.com/tools/hcar0765.html

I think it was around $20-25 and I get the butane refills from a cigar store for a couple of bucks.

If your looking for a low cost soldering gun to use for your hobby stuff you can get a 180 watt soldering gun from Harbor Frieght for $12.99. [link]http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=4328[/link]

Ken

Cool where can I find that online?

[link]http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0095P?FVSEARCH=HCAR0765&search=Go[/link]

However, if you're looking for a small butane torch you might just check your local Lowe's/Home Depot. They should both have them and you don't have to pay shipping.

Ken

I hate to be the one that throws a wrench into the running engine, however here goes...

When making changes to the original 'design' or selected components, like for instance, changing from LiPo to NiMh, or increasing the size of the motor, remember to include the weight of the new components in your original calculations to determine the weight to power ratio.

CGr.

Went out today to get the
nylon spacers - four 1", eight 1/4"
6/32 bolts, washers and blindnuts
and #8 screws

I wanted to be prepared in case I needed the screws instead because of the situation I have.
I can not get into the tank area to set the blindnuts so I have two choices and I need to know which would be more secure.
1) simply screw them into the firewall with the #8 screws or
2) set the blindnuts on the outside of the firewall going in through the front, and us the bolts.

Neither of those is going to be a good situation. The number #8 screws are less than desireable. And if you put the blind nuts on the front of the firewall they will simply pull out. You need to install the blind nuts on the back side of the firewall. It's not difficult to do and there are several different methods for inserting a blind nut into the tank area.

Ken

Any ideas how to get into a tank that is fully sheeted?
As you can see in the photos it is a very tight fit.

When I get home tonight I'll make up a diagram on how to do that. It's really not that hard to do.

Ken

I just had to do this on a rebuild of my Four Star. I filed down the tip of a piece of music wire (1/8" maybe) so that I could just force it into the hole on the flat side of the blind nut. Then I held the plane vertically and carefully fished the music wire up throug the fuse. When I got it over the hole, I threaded in a bolt from the front and tightened it down until the blind nut was pulled into the wood. It was an awkward, humorous process, but I got all four of them in without much pain.

I have also seen a method of putting the nut on the end of a wire and fishing it through, but I could not pull the wire hard enough to seat the blind nut into the wood.

I'm looking forward to Ken's suggestion. I'm sure it will make me feel like a dope.

That's exactly one the things I was going to suggest. Another thing you can do is get a long piece of all thread and push it through from the firewall side. Then screw the blind nut on in and pull back to the backside of the firewall.

Ken