My nephews showed some interest in my RC stuff,but I think CL is a better way to start. Easier to learn, cheap enough for a 14 year old and not as much money wasted if they don't stay with it. I was going to start with a Norvell .049 and a Sig StringRay. I've now decided to go electric since that's what I fly RC.

I got a Yak foamy from Hobby-Lobby for $20 along with an Esskay 400XT brushless outrunner for another $20. I already have speed controls and batteries etc. but ordered a ZTRON timer. The timer lets me set how long I want the motor to run.

The Yak looks pretty good, should be an easy build. Converting to CL means not cutting out ailerons and setting the rudder.

It seems more people are looking into electric as a way of getting into flying C/L. I am not sure of setups as it takes quite a bit of power to drag around a plane and the lines.
I have written some code for a microcontroller to control an ESC but am yet to buy any motor/esc/battery setup. Some of these timers like the ZTRON already seem to be on the market, so it shouldn't be too long before they are more commonly available.

It will be interesting to hear how you go with this.

Dick Saropolis has had had several recent articles on 1/2A size electric foam CL airplanes. One in model Aviation and one in Flying Models that I have seen. I think you are on the right track.

I've seen some of the Saropolis stuff, that's where I got the original idea.

Over 10 years ago I designed a CL timer for a friend of mine who was doing electric CL. He was using NiCd's and an Astro motor. Flew, but not that good. I used a small Philips 8051 variant - pretty easy stuff.

yea, let us know how it comes out, particularly the flying characteristics.

i just finished a conversion from my own designed plane, originally for a 0.15, to a PJS 800E outrunner. I worried about the line drag issue, and wondered greatly about the right 'watts/lb" rule of thumb to use for control line, taking into account the lines.

I simulated the plane in MotoCalc (great program, well worth the $ if you push electrons to fly) and set up the airframe with lots of drag (e.g. said it had floats, lots of strut wires, rought fuse, square profile, and 3 degrees static AOA). That added lots of drag to the plane to try and account for the lines.

Bottom line - must have done pretty well. i only have one flight on it, but the lap times came out slightly faster than predicted speed in motocalc, although the static current draw is just about right on. flew on 52' 0.015" lines.

BTW - my plane is 21 oz RTF (with the electron tank full :} ), and the power system is delivering about 110 Watts/lb. for an rc plane this would be getting up towards 3D (22 oz thrust on a 21 oz plane) but for control line seems to be pretty sedate. about like the glow one.

rmw00, if you have motocalc run the numbers for your foamy? if not contact me off-thread and lets chat about the numbers?

r.

I use electricalc and have not run the numbers for the foamy. There is a guy on the stuka stunt forum who did this already and said it had pretty good performance. I thought I'd start here and see how it goes.

There are some threads about electric control line at the rcgroups site (control line section), including foamies. Might be worth a look.