I do as most people seem to do. I fly the chopper until it doesn't want to any more, because of the battery going low.


It has happened that I've been above obstacles when this occurs, like the house, or the garden shelter. A few times I've been very close to see the chopper dive down on the roof. The garden pond is also an area where it has been suffering from low voltage batteries. So far, I've always been able to save it, but it's been close.


I thought of getting a simple timer to stick on my TX. Then i could set it to beep after some pre-configured amount of time, like 8 minutes or something. At the beep, I seek to get down in a controlled manner.


Anyone using such a timer? Does it exist anything explicitly designed for R/C flying?


Biker-74

You could buy a cheap wrist watch with an alarm.

Check out the baking section at wal-mart. We used to buy cooking timers that were digital and about the size of a 50cent piece. They were cheap and could be easily set to countdown with an audible alarm. You could velcro one to your transmitter.

Biker,

Rustysocket has the deal here, I got a kitchen timer at the 'Dollar Tree' store for a buck. Goes from 1 second to 99 minutes, and has an audible alarm. I bought several, use them for a lot of stuff, charging batteries, flight time, doing the laundry(what's that).
It has a spring loaded clip, I just clip it to my shirt. Works great and cheap.

Dave / Choppersrule
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i used to use a cooker timer before i had timers on my radio. i set 2 alarms, one within a minute of cutoff, and another 3 minutes before that. the first beep tells me no more upside down, stay low, and keep clear of water, cars, rooftops, or other no no's. the second beeper tells me the fun's over, time to land immediately or else.

I've been thinking a lot of getting a more sophisticated radio. (That would include a timer.)

For the time being I feel that I'm too new in the hobby. I already have a CX, that I find very amusing, since it's simple. (My wife let's me "play with it" indoors. ) I also have a CPP that I've tamed down quite a lot. I still struggle to keep control over it in the air. I still feel it's an important leap from CX to CPP. My thumbs don't speak the CPP language yet.

Getting a new radio would probably also mean that I have to go through a learning curve in setting up the radio to the receiver. I already struggle with learning curves as it is.


About Wall-Mart, well I live on the 'old continent', in France. We don't have Wall-Mart here, but I'm constantly looking for an alternative simple and cheap timer solution until I one day (maybe) go for a new radio.

I was just wondering if someone would tell me that "there exists this little external timer, low cost, small, made to be retrofit on the TX, easy to setup, good in all possible ways" and then add something like "didn't you know? we all use this thingy." to it. But apparently not, right?

OK, I'll find something simple to use as a temporary solution. 'Cause I need it. Don't want to put that chopper between the gold-fish in the pond.

Biker-74