Soda Ant

I had all but decided on a glow powered LT40 as a trainer for myself and my son, but looking on Sig's web site I see that they have an electric version of the LT40. It's the same plane as the standard LT40 except for the power system.

Does anyone have experience with this plane? Does it made a reasonable trainer for a couple of beginners?

The Sig site says it gets 9+ minute flights on a 8-cell 3300 mAh NiMH battery pack. Is this enough flight time for training purposes?

Black Arrow

I fly mostly electric planes and would still classify myself as a beginner (meaning I still crash more often than I should) so you can take this with a grain of salt. I do have an LT 40 but it's the glow powered version. I think just about everybody will tell you that it is a great trainer. It's plenty big enough to be easily seen and will handle some wind. It will do some basic aerobatics. A geat flying plane. 9 minutes is plenty of time in the beginning. As a beginner your stress load is so high that you will feel like it was one very, very long 9 minutes. Later on you will probably want more duration and in respect to that I say the following: The electrics are really nice for of all the oft repeated reasons: intstant start, no grime, quiet, low vibration, etc. However, as you get into larger aircraft there is one disadvantage to electric and that is they become a good bit more expensive. The larger motors and batteries are sharply more expensive than the small to medium sized electric stuff. Especially if you want Lipo/outrunner set ups. As for myself, right now I see myself spending the extra $ and staying with electric for my larger planes. Batteries and motors will probably continue to evolve and prices vs. performance should continue to improve. Check out this thread: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5198156/tm.htm

One last thing. You didn't mention whether you will be learning with the help of an instructor or winging it on your own. If you are going to have a for real instructor ( heartily recommended) the LT 40 is a great way to go but if you're going to try and do it the hard way a foamie is IMHO the ONLY way to go. The Multiplex Easy Star is THE BEST electric trainer out there for a guy who is going to try and do it the hard way. Ask me how I know! PM me if you want more personal tales of the agonies of defeat and glories of victory. LOL!

cwharper

So if I build the Sig LT40 kit and want to power it with a brushless motor and lipo setup that will give a very long flight (greater than 15 minutes) of just floating around at less than full throttle but with some reserve thrust to get myself out of trouble what should I put in it? i.e. prop size, number of cells, mah, motor size, esc amperage

Money is not really an issue if going with a larger part or combination of parts will lengthen the flight time.

I want to do this because the time I have to fly will mostly be late afternoon when I come home from work when the wind is still and need to make the most of my time. I can charge batteries at low amperage all night long but I'm not going to wait for batteries to charge in between consecutive flights which is why I am after a very long flight time.