Tommyr

I'm having a ball with mine! I'm flying the hell out of it in my living room! Fun little plane IMHO!

Neurotex

It is a fun little plane once you get it trimmed right. I found the more
I charged it up the better it took a charge. Giving it a second booster
charge of 6 volts for 10 seconds had it heading towards the ceiling.
The lipo is what it really needs.

I like that conversion micro! I see now what you meant by the LED mod.
I shelved mine for a bit- my eyes were going buggy soldering the actuator
wires I kept pulling off.

ahaacobbler

I am working on my own AS charger based on the LTC4054L chip - inspired by your posts.

This first charger I am building is for the AS only so I paln to have only one program resistor value.

After I get this one done, I plan to make a variable program charger for my AAs, Mini SL, Havoc, Helix, etc. My electronics understanding is novice at best, so I am having a hard time visualizing the circuitry of the resistors that would enable you to throw a set of switches to either engage or not engage each resistor and with the option of parallel or series. Or, did you make a separate circuit for each resistor program value, so you just switch on the one that you want?

It seems like it would be easier to use a variable resistor than the array of switches. You could use a multimeter to find and mark where the various resistor values are reached as you turn the dial. Would that work? If so, what kind of a variable resistor would you use? I was looking at Radio Shack yesterday and found variable resistors marked 10k and 25k. Does that mean that they go 0-10 or 25k? If I used a 25k variable resistor could I get everthing between 1k and 15k?

Thanks,
Cobbler

micro_builder

My Feedback: (1)

i finally got a flying cube to work with a single motor and rudder. i think i tried 3 or 4 times before to get that combo to work and never could, all my other cubes were AA powered. but, i finally managed to make it work, and not in the usual on-its-edge flying position.

this one sits up right and uses the AS RX for control - the AS gearbox/prop didnt have the push to keep it airborn. i used an AA bipe motor+prop instead with a 50mah lipo, and a freshly made coil and it actually flies pretty well. AUW comes in at a little over 7 grams, but has over 30 square inches of "wing area."

currently its too fast for indoor, and outdoors doesnt work so well with IR. i know if i played with the CG and thrust angle i could slow it down enough for indoor flying, but for now it works well enough (just have to chase it to stay in range when the sun is up!).

oh, and its also a 1975 Fender Champ amplifier

nick

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lK1wjj9VOyI

Racerx208

Hi Cobbler,
Glad you like the charger! I have been using the one depicted for sometime now, still on its first set of batteries. I used rechargables for a time, then just decided to throw stock double A's in (bunny batteries). LOL I don't have a picture of the board handy at the moment, but for the variable charger settings what I did was common up one side of all the resistors and then switch them "in" or "out" of the circuit using the DIP switch. The Radio Shack project board I used made this extremely simple to do, because it has stock traces all set up, so I just dropped in the resistors, socket for the dip switch and that was about it. The "trick" was to decide on the best board layout to minimize soldiering. I will try and take a picture of the board itself and label the component orientation for you.

I found that the web site, electronic goldmine, has many components for this project (like the resistors and DIP switches). They may have the "harder to find" values you need for certain charge rates. I was lucky and happened to have all the ones I needed for the charge rates I was shooting for in my "toolbox" (sorry for the pun). Perhaps someone can jump in on the variable resistor question, but my opinion would be against it. Reason being that it might be hard to set the values or make sure that they do not get "bumped". If that happens you could end up charging a cell at either too low or too high a current rating. Sometimes variable resistors are not "linear", so adjusting to a certain value can be difficult. Hope the info helps
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[link=http://www.aatoolbox.no-ip.org]www.aatoolbox.no-ip.org[/link]

ahaacobbler

Is there any problem charging at a current that is too low? It seems like that would just take longer, but not damage anything.

I would be very interested in seeing a photo of your curcuit.

My charger is not working so well. I messed up the first chip when I broke the legs handling it while soldering. The second attempt looked good, but then I connected the source battery backward and only noticed when the chip started getting hot. I corrected the polarities, but get no result out of the curcuit. The 3rd attemp is also not working - I don't know why. My fourth attemp will be on a breadboard. Anyway the 3 failed attempt have kind of gotten me off this project for the past couple of weeks.

Cobbler

weeweeboi

i bought a AS for $6 at walmart. There was a price tag of 6 so i got it for 6. I was wonderin would a cessna 210 motor work for this? also, if i put a havoc tail prop on it how would it fly. Anyone got a 50mah lipo? i wanna buy one