I have been told that makeing my own servo extensions by soldering the wires it effect the servos &cause the battery to discharge sooner

Not true and stupid! Everyone is soldering longer leads onto servos now. How could this effect the servos or battery, other then by slightly decreasing the power available at the servo. How long of leads are you going to use and what difference would there be, between using soldered leads and extensions? Obviously, do not make the soldered connections with the battery connected and use heat-shrink tubing to insulate the bare wires from each other.

Yeah, someone was blowing smoke up your tailpipe. If you do it correctly, they should be more efficient than extensions. Not enough to notice, but a soldered joint is more efficeint than a plug.

That's right up there with lubricating your exhaust bearings and checking your turn signal fluid.

Don't forget to drain the pitch out of your prop

You should see all the pitch I got out of my prop. When it was all done I had a 13/0

In the Coast Guard, we had the newbe's looking over the side as we poured detergent (Joy) in at the bow then running back to the stern checking for prop wash

We also told them to get us about 10 feet of water line...

And, of course, there is always the Mail Buoy ploy.

Once, we were on patrol and told the newbe's that the SS Fifi LaFlem was coming out to give us a USO show.

Always fun to fool with the new guys.

CGr.

Technically wire's a low value resistor, and no solder joint's a perfect conductor so yes, making your servo leads longer will reduce your battery life, however the resistance values are so low that it's not going to make any difference to your flying time. You'd need some majorly sensitive equipment to even measure the difference in resistance. As Brett65 pointed out regular servo extensions have a higher resistance in the plug & socket.

An interesting point re soldering & vibration is that if your joint's got air bubbles in it and you get the vibration is just right it can actually turn the joint into a capacitor which will block DC current. They started finding this in early (full scale) jets when they started getting near the speed of sound and the on board electronics would suddenly start shutting down. It's one of the reasons we're now using wave soldering techniques in industry instead of traditional hand soldering (other than the obvious cost & speed benefits). This isn't something that's likely to bother us though.

“Technically wire's a low value resistor, and no solder joint's a perfect conductor so yes, making your servo leads longer will reduce your battery life,�

Increasing the leads increases the resistance decreasing the load on the battery increasing it’s life but you will have more of a voltage drop but like Sandmann_AU said it is to small to to make a difference.

Check the voltage on the vortex generator.

The only issue with soldering your own extentions is that you if you are not experienced in wire soldering, it is easy to get to much solder, and crokked joints. Prior to soldering, slip a 1/2" piece of heat shrink tubing over the wire. strip the ends about 3/16 long and lap the wires the full 3/16" Make sure you don't have any whiskers sticking out. Use a tiny spot of kestlers past solder and make sure you are using rosin core solder, get some very fine wire solder, about 1/16" diameter. Melt just a small amount on the tip of the iron and touch it to the joint long enough to get a good solder flow. Pull the iron and wait about a minute to make sure the solder has hardened fully befor moving. Wipe the joint with a cloth with some acohol on it and then slide the shrink wrap over the joint, and shrink it with a heat gun.

A tip for extentions to keep them from looking like a snake that swollowed an egg is to stagger the three splices by about 1/2", that leaves you with just one layer of splice and heat shrink vs three jamed in one spot.

Don

Thats better than what we did.

Telling them the relief tube was an intercom...."talk into this while we test"..

Anyhow...

This is one tall tale brother.

Drain the pitch????? I only use plastic propellors.... How am I going to get any pitch out of them....and if I manage to get the pitch out of a wood prop...won't it fall apart when I try to flip it over????

I found out the smoke is what makes the radio work. When the smoke escapes . . . . It's all over. She no workie ever again.

J6161, what you need is a set of wire stretchers. You can get them from McMaster, but you won't find it in their catalog. You will have to call them and ask for wire stretchers. They don't want too many people to know that you can stretch a 12 inch wire for a good 2 inches.

Actually the best way to go is to order the servo wires the length you need, along with a new connector. Unsolder the wires from the servo and solder on a length of new wire where you removed the old wires and install new pins and connector onto the end of the new wires.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SOME DECENT SOLDERING SKILLS BEFORE YOU TOUCH THE SOLDERING IRON TO THE PC BOARD OF THE SERVO. You could end up lifting a track or damaging components with the heat. Use about a 25 watt iron and get some practice first.

If you have an old transistor radio that doesnt work that would be perfect to get some practice on.

Rather than solder on the Servo board, cut the lead about 2" long and crimp on a new end. Make your extention to suit. I'm ordering out an extention kit of ends, wire and crimp tool to do just this on my P-61 I just got. It requires a bunch of extentions and Y harnesses. The kit will be less expensive and give me some HD wires to boot.

In the way back when, I built a Royal Clasic 6 channel radio, including the servos. That was enough soldering on servos for me. Never again.

Don

It came to me from my electronics instructor a long time ago, who was an ex Royal Australian Air Force radar technician, so either the RAAF has been circulating the same tall tale for decades or it has some basis in fact. When you consider that a capacitor is nothing but two conductors placed very close together with an insulating gap (either air gap or something like a mica slice) it's fairly feasible. Strange things happen at ultra high frequencies.

J6161. Good question to ask as a beginner, in the beginner forum. I see you have only 15 previous post, please don't be put off by everybody elses comments or sarcastic responses. We all had to start somewhere Good luck in this wonderful hobby.

I'll bet sandmans instructor also has some sea side property for sale in Las Vagas.

If you are dealing with higher frequencies, any change in cross section of the conductor can have a capacitance value electrically. The higher the frequency, the more critical this becomes. At the direct current level, the effect is negligible.

If you are dealing with higher frequencies you are not dealing with anything that resembles servo wire either.

The question I have is what does the speed of sound have to do with it? The only things I can see changing as you approach the speed of sound are physical vibration which will play havoc with any mechanical connections like plugs and edge connectors, or the skin can become electrically charged which will also play havoc with electronics.

Now a bad solder joint which will look dull because the component was moved as the solder transitioned from liquid through the plastic state can have all kinds of resistance and capacitance problems.

And if you get air bubbles in your joints you need to suck harder.

I'm finding beyond the first few posts here, there is a lot of Bull-Ownie! Are we helping the O.P.; or, just pulling his leg and jokin' around with our Buddies? His question was legitimate.

I take the easiest road, I buy servo extensions and this works absolutly fine. I tie the two together at the connector, so they can't come apart. Soldering is just fine, if you want to go to the trouble.