jimbosan

I am working on a project with my Son and need some guidance. We are building a scratch built 1:6 scale car that will be more of a show piece than anything. We are going to have all the normal things (Forward/Reverse, Left/Right) as all cars do, except he wants to have a servo at all 4 corners to make the car act like it has hydrolics. He wants each corner to move independently as to make it "dance" front to back, side to side or move one wheel at a time.
My question is: How many channel radio will we need to accomplish this and work how he wants it to work? I've never dealt with multiple channel radios outside of the pre installed systems with small helicoptors or park flyer airplanes.
Any help will be GREATLY appreciated!![sm=drowning.gif]

Campgems

Basicly, for each independent movement, you need a channel. If there are two movements, IE two wheels that would always move together, but needed seperate servos, you can wire them with a Y cable on one channel. In airplanes, you can use mixes for different functions on one servo, but it still needs it's own channel. Something to keep in mind if you are not using 2.4ghz, cars and airplanes have sepereate frequency bands and it is illeagle to use a 72mhz band radio for cars as well as using a 75mhz band for airplanes. With 2.4, there is no restrictions on use.

Don

jimbosan

I figured out the frequency part from having the cars and aircraft. (Don't quite think I can afford a hefty fine!) I'm just not certain what type of radio I will need. If I figured this out correctly, I SHOULD be able to use a 6 channel radio, but I'm not sure it will work like we are wanting it to. I had one person tell me I will need no less than a 9 channel radio, which is price wise, rediculous. I was looking at a Spectrum dx6i. Do you think that will work? Or is it going to be too little?
We want each wheel to work independently from one another, not y'd off with adaptors.

sgillmore

My Feedback: (50)

You only need two channels for basic car functionsForward/Reverse & Left/Right, so it sounds like you could get by with 6 channels. The catch is the number of assignable switches and mixing limitations on a 6-channel radio. Two of your "hydraulic" wheel servos will be on proportional channels, most likely rudder and elevator. The other two would be on switches like aux2 and flap. Assuming you want to control each wheel individually and still be able to raise/lower to whole car together, I'm just not sure how you'd do that with a 6-channel. I'm not even sure how I could pull that off with my 9303, but it could probably be done. Good Luck!

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

With the 9303, the slide levers on the side of the radio can be used as proportional inputs for almost any channel. So as you mentioned, the forward/reverse and left/right can be controlled with one of the gymbals. The other 4 proportional functions (the corners of the car) can be connected to the empty gymbal and the sliders o each side of the radio effectively giving you 6 proportional channels.

It is not the number of total channels that a radio has; it s the number of PROPORTIONAL channels that the radio has available. A 6 channel radio does not have 6 proportional channels. A 9 channel radio does have 6 proportional channels.

Now, If you don't care for proportional control on the cornes of the vehicle, then a 6 channel radio should fit the bill, just make the other 2 corners non-proportional so they don't look slow compared to the non-proportional action.

Hope this help you understand.

Rafael