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ORIGINAL: tamjets
Barry,
EDF is even more friendly user. No need for turbine waiver and like you said. Some club are not turbine friendly and fire risk season. EDF is a choice to have.....

To the point I'm too lazy to carry all the turbine equipment to the field. I just bring my plane to the field with 4-5 set of batteries and Tx. Plug-n-play babe...

:D:D:D

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ORIGINAL: dbarrym


I hear you...though big E-power has it's own equipment costs and hassles. For a weekend of contest flying I need to bring two, 40 lb each, $100 each (used) Cat D-9 batteries to get through 8 flights (12s5000 x 2 per flight with 2 sets of batts), AND/or bring a small, $800, 1.5KW gas power generator (and fuel jug) to power the two $250 each, 12VDC, 10A capable battery chargers plus two sets of $75 charge balancers, and a $150 E-meter to monitor everything...plus the two, $100 each, 10A, AC-DC converters for charging at home. :)

Barry

PS - Tam, if I am nice to Daddy and bring some green bottle, does that make me a "friendly user"?? (I LOVE tamglish) :D

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ORIGINAL: dbarrym

Great to read - and IMHO, large EDF's DO belong here in the jet forums (But please leave the toys - GWS, Kyosho, E-flite airliners, etc - in the electric forums. ;) )

Just a general comment on the E-jets from a "typical" jet jockey/consumer... I am very happy to see the growth in performance and availability of quality, large-sized EDF's. While I do fly some E-power (up to and including a 33% YAK in Electric IMAC competition), I still prefer turbines for the sound, smell, and uniqueness factor.

But if my experience is typical - turbines are limited to flying in the late fall, winter, and early spring at my home field, and banned at pretty much every other easily accessible field in my area - EDF's are here to stay. So I'll have at least one or two decent sized EDF's to fly the rest of the year. Now if battery technology can just accelerate a bit more to allow us to 'hot pump' so that we can get more than four, 6 minute flights in a whole flying day (with two sets of $750 batteries)... :)

Last, with each 8-10 minute turbine flight now costing about $10 in fuel (kero is $7/gallon, oil at $15/quart, I get 5 flights out of my 5 gallon Jersey Modeler)..plus another $3.00 or so in maintenance reserve ($350 average service cost every 125 flights, if you follow JetCat's recommended interval, with 12 minutes on the clock per flight)...totalling $13 per turbine flight...and in my own experience, large LiPo's managed well but flown aggressively will fade (deteriorate) and need replacement after 100 or so flights.... the cost per large EDF flight is actually cheaper than turbines (ignoring fixed and start-up costs) . Might be interesting to do a full cost of ownership/lifetime analysis. :)

Barry

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ORIGINAL: uncljoe

Bob
Yes returning to the Lightside :D
Building a BVM F4 using the BVM EDF units, hope to have it finished by Fentress Va Jets (end of May)
Semper fi
Joe

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ORIGINAL: seanreit

Barry, didn't know you had it that bad on the Kero, those 5 gallon pails go on sale here in February March at our local Home depots for about 10 bucks a 5 gallon. Couple of years ago the austin gang bought 105 of them or something like that. I ran out of my supply sometime last August. I do have a very local source, but $4.00 and change per gallon. It does get expensive fo sure $$$$$

When I think of all the cracked out ho's I could have been spending that money on [:@] Oh well, I did get to see Doug Arnold's butt one year [sm=what_smile.gif]

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