AEAJR

Chapters 6, 10 and 11 ( posts 6, 10 and 11 ) are relevent to your questions about batteries, their care and how we use them properly.

ANY battery can cause a fire.

NiCd, NiMh, Lipo, Lipoly, A123, LiFeO, XXX batteries are all safe if used and treated properly. All can be damaged by miss handling and all can start a fire.

The great stories of Lithium batteries causing fires are rooted in events that span back many years when these were new, when people did not know how to use them, how to charge them and how to store them. Today they are incorporated into RTF packages, childrens toys, laptop computers, and all sorts of places. Properly used they are safe and an excellent power source for our airplanes.


I think those chapters should be helpful.

FoamHeadMike

Aeajr

Your E book is an excellent resource and thank you very much for taking the time to write it for us, and free of charge no less
this little book should be published and placed in every hobby shop in America. along with the FAQ and accurate answers by the wattflyer members.

AEAJR

You are so very kind, but it will not be published in paper, it is here for you, with my best wishes.

SARG5

I found the Multiplex [Magister]. while looking at some www. site.

Question
Is the Magister, The early [now MENTOR]???

Sarg5

MustangMan

YumaMike's post and related posts regarding conversion of 12' Telemaster to electric in Sport Planes (Formerly I/C & Gas Conversion) as Converting a Telemaster to Electric power - need some advice.

Turner

I know this info is covered in a number of places on the WattFlyer site but this thread should be made a sticky in this General Electric Discussions forum as well.

AEAJR

It was a sticky. I wonder when they unstuck it.

I restuck it. Let's see if someone unsticks it again.

Turner

Thanks, it's a great resource that shouldn't be allowed to get lost in the back pages.

SARG5

Thanks everyone for the info. on Battery fires. My complete e-equip and plane should be here Monday. Looking forwart to get started flying E-
SEEING AND FLYING THE COUNTRY WE DEFEND

FoamHeadMike

Tru Dat

AEAJR

Keep posting and it will stay near the top.

Izaak

Hi AEJR: "OUTSTANDING" for us flyers who are switching over from Gas,Nitro to Electric !!
I do have one question that I know you will be able to answer with all your knowledge of electric flight. Can I use my gas prop's with electric motors ? If so what will be the conversion to Electric mot. ? Will a APC 18X6W be the same as an 18X6E ? Or will I have to go to a smaller size or pitch due to the weight of Gas Props...
Thank You for your time and looking forward to your next article in the works.
Izaak

AEAJR

Izaak,

Thanks for your kind words. I am glad to hear you found some value in this e-book.


As to props ... I have no idea. I never flew glow, so I have no real experience on the glow side.

But I will venture a guess. Vibration would be the factor:

If we look at planes built to be flown glow, they are typically heavier than planes that are build to be electric. The key difference, as it has been explained to me, is that vibration caused by the glow engine. The structure has to be reinforced to stand up to that vibration.

Electric motors don't produce anywhere near the vibration that glow motors produce, so structures can be lighter. Also electric planes don't need to be fuel proofed.

So, I would bet that glow props are heavier than electric props. I know I have seen notes in product pages that say that a given electric prop should not be used on a glow engine. Has anyone ever seen a note that says a glow prop should not be used on an electric? Probably not.

So, I would guess that you can use a glow prop on an electric motor. You might need some kind of prop adapter but other than that, I would think it would work.

The question might be, would you want to do that? If the props are heavier, and I think they are, then you are spending power turning something heavy rather than spending that power moving air.

This is not fact, it is conjecture on my part. Someone else may have more knowledge on the topic.

Red Scholefield

Electric vs. Gas props.

I just weighed three props I happend to have handy.

Top Flite Power Point 10 X 4 (wood) 11.7 grams
APC Thin Electric E Prop 10 X 5 18.0 grams
APC gas prop 11 X 4 41.8 grams

The APC gas prop is much thicker near the hub.

Long before we had an option of gas or electric props I few my electric with standard gas props, usually wood. See picuture below. I did set up my LeCrate with a gas prop, Master Airscrew Antique simply because it looked good on the LeCrate.

Without the benefit of any head to head testing to check rpm, etc. it seems to me the electric APC Thin E props are more efficient, they just look that way. When the shop thaws out I'll run some compartive tests.

You could use standard gas props on electric with probably some small penalty in performance. I see a number of scale electric models using wood props.

CHELLIE

Hi Red I have found that the Wood Nitro Zinger props work very well on larger electric motors, as good or better than a e prop, hope that helps, Chellie

http://www.zingerpropeller.com/Tractor.htm

mred

Nitro props are built much heavier to take the vibration of the engine. You don't need that for electric motors, but you can use them if you just want to. It's going to cost you in weight unless you use the wood props and they cost more then electric props do. You also have an adapter that comes with an electric prop that you don't get with the glow props, so you have to ream then true to size or you will get vibrations from the prop being off center. On smaller props, I think you would be better off with electric props, but on the bigger motors the gas props may hold up better. The APC type glow props would be very heavy compared to APC electric props. Wood would be the best for weight, unless you need weight in the nose. I think you have a better range of props for electric then glow too. All in all, it just depends on what you want to use. You can use glow props if you want to, but I would rather use the electric props.

Ed

bdel

I hope it's okay to ask a question, but here goes. I'm building an E-flite cessna 182. There are two servos for the ailerones-one on each wing connected to a Y harness, and there is no additional plug-ins on the receiver; I was thinking of taking the servos off the Y and connecting them separately. The problem is that both servos go in the same direction which would make the ailerons act like flaps, and I couldn't turn the plane. How can I get the two servos to go in opposite directions, so that, the plane will turn.
Thank you,
Bdel

AEAJR

This is not really a question that is specific to electric flight, so, no it does not belong here. Butut let's give it a shot anyway.

Since there are no additional slots on the receiver, I presume you are going to change receivers. What Radio and what receiver will you be using?

That servos were mounted with that Y harness in mind, so the servos will move in opposite directions. Or the Y cable has a reverser in it. This causes one servo to move opposite the other. This way one command from the radio will move the servos in opposite directions. By removing the Y cable you defeated the design.

If you go directly to the receiver you now need a radio that can reverse the direction of that servo. Since you have not told us what radio you are using or if it has channel reverse we don't know if it will work.

Your other option here is to remove one servo and flip it over so it naturally moves in the opposite direction from its partner. This will probably require you to remove and remount the control horn and perhaps modify the control rod.

Again, radio would need to have a feature that will allow you to tie or mix two channels together to work together. Most standard radios can't do this, so you would need a computer radio of some kind. Do you have a computer radio? What model?

Of course the ultimate questioin is why you want to do this at all. What are you trying to accomplish?

mred

Some transmitters have a reverse function built in even if they are not computer transmitters. Not all, but some. I have a very simple Futaba 4 channel transmitter that has 4 switches on the bottom to reverse the servo travel, but that's all I can do, no computer. If you are trying to set up a flaporon then you will need a computer radio for that. If you are not doing that, why bother. Unless you are trying to do something fancy, just leave it the way it is and enjoy it. If you don't have a computer radio, then you may want to think about getting one in the future so you can do all the fancy things that they can do. They are great if you need those functions, but if your flying a non-computer radio you are going to be very limited in what you can do.

Ed

itchyvet

As an old gas driver, this issue is not so difficult to resolve, actually, without the technical jargon, it's quiet easy.
Most servos I've ever had anything to do with, have either an output wheel or two sliders opposite each other, To utilise tow servos as ailerons on opposite sides of the wing with a "Y" lead, you simply use the OPPOSITE side of the output wheel on one side of the wing. No Probs.

itchyvet

Crikey, just read the above post and dejavue came over me, felt so bloody OLD !
What did r/c'ers do for flaperon mixing before the advent of electronic marvels ? Read on dear reader.

Firstly, the flyers of the OLD days had to use their IMAGINATIONS and they usually came up with some way or another of defeating the problem that was staring them in the face.
The idea of MECHANICAL flapperons is not mine, in fact I believe it belongs to an American flyer.
He resolved the issue by placing THREE servos on a moveable plate, the first servo was the elevator servo, which was anchored to the body holding the plate, when this was activated the whole plate with all three servos would move. The other two servos were connected to the elevator or flaperons, when activated via the elevator stick, these two servos DID NOT MOVE THEIR OUTPUT ARMS, but the connecting rods activated the elevators.
If you wished to activate the flapperons, you simply moved the flap function , then these two servos moved, whilst the elevator servo stayed locked in neutral. Capisce ?
Whilst I've never seen a 4 channel TX with flap function, we did use the above system for deltas ect mixing the ele with ailerons this way long before elect mixing became the vogue.

Looks like some of us oldies, may still have some use these days, hey.

itchyvet

Easymate, look at the output servos on each side of the wing, pay attention to which side of the output wheel the connecting rod is connected, then disconnect ONE side, and reconnect it on the OPPOSITE side from the original.
Now, looking at your wing, you should see both aileron servos having their connecting rod on OPPOSITE sides to each other.
Thus they will work OPPOSITE each other, ie, when one goes down the other goes up.
How simple is that ?
Hope it helps some. Cheers.

mred

Yea it's a little old, but one thing I just got to throw in there is the fact that flapperons are FLAPS and AILERONSN, no elevator is involved with the flaps. Yes we used to do it this way and I have done it in the past. You put one servo on a moveable tray and connect that one to the ailerons. The second servo is connected to a fixed tray and it moves the aileron servo to put the flaps down while still giving aileron function. The problem using this method is the SLOP in the system and the fact that an aileron can very easily hit a stop in travel because of the extream movement required to move the aileron. In addition to this, the down aileron can possibly stall the wing and cause a snap in that direction and the ailerons are not as effective used this way as both of them are down and only move in the down area of travel. The won't be able to go above the wing if full flaps are used and this makes them very iffy to use. Yea, they work sort of, but doing it this way has been tried by a bunch of people and is not a very good way to do it.

They also have a mechanical mixer that is made by DuBro that will enable flapperons, but it is also a little sloppy in use. Yes it works, but it is still not a great system to use. Flapperons as a whole are not a real good idea, since the ailerons are made to move an extreme amount and therefor need a much wider hinge line on the bottom section of the wing to allow for extra movement in the down position.

With the flap going down to the max down position and the other not even making it to an up position, the extra drag involved is creating a yaw force in the down aileron. This can be counteracted by liberal use of rudder, but it still gets to the point that they are not very efficient and can cause more problems then they are worth. I have used them in the past like this and nothing can replace just plain flaps and ailerons used separately.

The possibility of a stall on one wing is not worth the risk and are very ineffective used in this manor. Now if you really want to use them, they can be made various ways and are very interesting to use, provided you can keep up with what the plane is doing. I have crashed a couple of them because of wing stall and at a very low altitude where they are used, it is rather hard to recover from a stall at 10 feet with a fast descending plane. While there are people that have much faster reactions then I ever did, I don't think that a plane stalled at 10 feet can be recovered by even them, but it is possible. In short, they are not a very good idea, but can be done if you are willing to take the risk. I have seen them used by various people with some success and can be fun to play with, but I would rather have separate flaps and ailerons thank you.

As for using a Y harness and hooking up two servos, itchyvet has it exactly right. Super simple to do. it is done every day by people that either don't have the channels to hook up two servos or by someone that just wants to use one channel for ailerons. No problem at all. Normally we use the outboard side of the servo arm on each servo and make sure that they are moving in opposite directions. Some Y sections had a reverse in one of them and will make both servos move together. You more then likely don't have one of those though, so just hook it up on outboard sides and it should work great.

Ed

AEAJR

One note on this. On most gliders and many small electric aircraft the wing mounted aileron servos are mounted flat and recessed into the wing. Therefore you can not get to the other side of the wheel. Wheels are not typically used. Even it if had a wheel, the other side would be burried in the wing.

I have many dual and quad servo winged aircraft. None of them have the servo exposed in a way that you could move the control arm to the "other side".

For the e-Flite Cessna 182 in question, we have the manual here:
http://www.e-fliterc.com/ProdInfo/Fi...ssnaManual.pdf

As you can see, the servos are on their side embedded in the wing. You can't move the control rod to the other side. You might be able to flip the servo over and mount it facing the other way. that would require a mod of the servo cover and a relocation of the aileron control horn.

Now that I see the manual for the plane I see that these are not full span ailerons. In general I have not found that using outboard ailerons as flapperons is particularly effective or useful. If they were full span, that would be different.

Others may have a different view.

mred

OK, it's very simple. If the servos are laying on the side, then the top of the servo (The side with the output arm on it) needs to point to the wing tip for both servos.. That will be the same as using the opposite side of the arm which in effect is what you are doing.

Ed