RC Planes

Bigpops said:
It says it in the first line of your quote:

Third party civil liability.

@Alexthecheese: those orangrx receivers you've ordered don't work with that transmitter. They're dsm2 receivers, for use with spektrum transmitters. The good news is that the transmitter comes with its own receiver, so you can use that.
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Ah right. Oops. My plan is going for the full FVP setup at some point, so shall I just cancel the transmitter and get the one arknor suggested for better range?

I nist kinda assumed that they all worked together. I'll cancel the transmitter and get the spectrum one with the increased range.
 
I have been flying RC Planes and Helis for some 10 years now. Been a member of the BMFA and in a BMFA Club all that time as well.

I cannot stress how important it is if you buy a RC plane that you join a club. Last year on here some guy was building a wot 4 I think it was, a few of us gave him advice but he didnt listen and I believe the plane ended up smashed up (i could be wrong, but I think I recall he crashed it)


Also with a flying club you will get someone to check your model over, you may THINK you have built it correctly, balanced it, set your throws correct etc etc, but there are other things to consider.

Also whenever we have new people turn up with there 'trainers' one of us, ie the more experienced pilots, will take it for a test fly to check it is ok.

Then you can learn on what we call the buddy system, whereby you and a instructor have a transmitter each, connected with a wire and the instructor can take control at the flick of a switch if you get into difficulty. Remember, it is easy to know left and right, up and down when it is flying away from you, but when it is coming back to you it is all reversed and it is very easy for it to A) get a long way away quickly and B) loose orientation.

ALSO the idea behind the BMFA and flying at designated sites is that, yes you can choose to go and fly in a field in a park, but what happens if you loose control and it goes out of sight, lands where children are playing.

Also, you could be flying on a similar/same frequency as another flyer who for arguments sake, is flying at a BMFA field with his £2000 RC plane. You could cause him to crash. He would not be happy.

Join a club, it is the sensible approach. Any good model shop will tell you that anyhow.

We went through all this with the other guy last year. Not sure he listened, (like I said, I could be wrong)
 
Also, you could be flying on a similar/same frequency as another flyer who for arguments sake, is flying at a BMFA field with his £2000 RC plane
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not going to happen with 2.4ghz though

i'd imagine most people on here are technical folk who will understand how to follow the youtube guides on setting up aircraft models and the safety precautions you should take before flying anyway.

isnt the BFMA against FPV flying aswell and it invalidates the insurance?
 
arknor said:
not going to happen with 2.4ghz though

i'd imagine most people on here are technical folk who will understand how to follow the youtube guides on setting up aircraft models and the safety precautions you should take before flying anyway.

isnt the BFMA against FPV flying aswell and it invalidates the insurance?
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Yes it will not happen on 2.4ghz. I was referring to if he used the older system which plenty of people still do use 35Mhz.

You can follow 'you tube' guidelines. But as for not seeing them myself, not sure if they tell you everything anyway. Plus, do people listen?


As for FPV, I believe the BMFA states it is allowed to be used, but under certain guidelines, some that i know off.......
2 people present,
buddy box system,
the aircraft remains in the natural, unaided visual range at all times.



For batteries (reading an above post, look at www.overlanders.co.uk) quite often have fairly good prices.
 
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You can follow 'you tube' guidelines. But as for not seeing them myself, not sure if they tell you everything anyway. Plus, do people listen?
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some pretty indepth stuff on their , a lot of them are done by the well known stunt competition flyers
 
I learned to fly on the downs at Why with a foam glider (JP Bullet) after some careful glides down the slope I let it head out over the edge and it was away. Best thing about it was even if you piled in nose first it just bounced and you could go again!

Then I got a twinstar and few in a field at my parents. Then I joined a local club, complete with BMFA insurance, but they were a little derogatory about my electric planes (by then a filip 400 special glider and Ripmax aliance had joined my fleet) So I mostly flew on my own.

They did like the Alliance though. That was a fun plane until I got confused on an inverted pass about 6 foot off the ground. Whoops.
 
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I'm still faffing about trying to work out what batteries to order for the plane that I've ordered, particularly with regard to mAh and the power supply for the charger that I've ordered.

Is the power charger big enough to charge, say a 5000mAh battery? Does it matter what size batteries I buy - apart from the weight/size issues, I feel like I might be being greedy trying to get a 5000mAh battery in the plane, particularly with balance issues - or am I limited because of the 5amp power supply that I've bought?

I'm looking at various batteries trying to work out what's most appropriate but it's all so confusing as there's so much choice!!! Almost thousands of different batteries on offer. :eek:
 
Yes, you can charge up to 6 amps with that accucel charger (i've got that one) so at 1c you could charge a 6000 mah battery.
You may need a better input feed though to go that high.

Stick with what it recommends though 1800 should last you ages in the air, and you don't really want more weight that absolutely necessary. More weight means faster speed and drop rate, harder to turn and faster landings.
Plus if you crash it with an expensive heavy battery it may do more damage to your wallet as well as the plane.

Remember you want 3s lipos, just pick one of the recommended ones from the hobbyking page and go for it. the 2200s will be fine if you want a bit more endurance.
I've got some ZIPPY flightmax in my helicopter and they are just fine.


One thing I would say is that the plane comes with deans connectors, according to one of the reviews, and the ZIPPY batteries are XT60's. What this menas is that they wont fit without resoldering or buying a converter This one if you go that way Male XT60 to female deans (t connector) the yellow one is a XT60
 
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What you said about the 6000mah battery is not entirely true.

While it would charge 6000mah battery at 1c, you're limited by the power of the charger. This charger is a 50W charger, so you'll barely be able to charge a 2s 6Ah pack at 1c (50w/6a=8.3v). A fully charged 2s pack in 8.4v.

I have one of these myself and they're perfectly good for 3 and 4 cell packs, but not really too good for 6s as the 50w limit hurts the speed of the charge.
 
Right, cheers. So, with a 3s I need to get to 12.6v (as I've just seen that each cell needs to get to 4.2v to be fully charged).

So 50w/12.6v = 3960mAh is the biggest I can go? I'll take that 4000mAh battery out of my shopping basket then. :o

I can charge at 50watts with the 5a power supply won't I? 50 watts x 12v = 60 watts. So I'm good for that right?

Does that also mean that every charge takes exactly an hour, assuming it's completely flat?

That adaptor - the Male XT60 <-> Female T-Connector - can you get that at the local hobby stores? Without faffing about and amending an order, or raising a new order just for that (getting batteries from their German warehouse), I can't get it.

Yet another question... what adaptor would I need to run the batteries in parallel? One of these? I'm not sure what connector the batteries I'm buying have. Would I need two of the ones you've recommended, and one of those?
 
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It will charge any capacity battery, up to 6 cells, it will just take longer than the hour a 1C charge would take if it can't provide the power for a 1C charge. For example, charging a 6S 5000mah pack. You'd set the charger to 5A and 6 cells, but when you press start, it will knock the charge rate down to about 1.9A (50W/25.2v) as that's all the charger can give. So while it will charge the pack okay, it will take over 2 hours to do so.

1C is an hour from zero to full capacity. In practice, you never run lipos flat; doing so will ruin them permanently. You usually run them to 20% of capacity which normally reads about 3.7V per cell with no load. Charging from 3.7v per cell @ 1C takes about 40 minutes, then a little longer if you're doing a balanced charge as it slows the charge rate right down as it balances the cells (so all cells have the same voltage).

That adapter is the correct one for running in 2x packs in parallel, but now you've brought it up, I have to ask why you need a parallel adapter?

If you need an XT60/Deans adapter quick, just get on eBay. Plenty of folks re-sell Hobbyking stuff at hugely inflated prices on there, but as it's such a cheap item it shouldn't cost too much.
 
Thanks for the help Bigpops. Your charging explanation makes sense.

I've thought about running them in parallel for added duration. I've been reading about this today and saw people have them running in parallel, so thought for the same of a couple of dollars I could get some added flexibility by having longer running times.

But... as you've probably guessed, whether this is actually needed I haven't a clue. I am getting a bit carried away perhaps. :p

I've gone and ordered some 2200ah batteries as that's about what was recommended, and after looking at the availability and prices of stuff from their international warehouse I went for an order from them. $7.80 each or something ridiculously cheap, so went for 4. Figured that if it did work, I could run them in parallel and have the extra long run time.

I must say I am impressed with the store though, and how cheap it is. 4 batteries with those adaptors and including delivery it was £35. We went to a hobby store yesterday and the prices were phenomenally more expensive.
 
I started with a very basic RTF plane called a hobbyzone Champ, that is until I lost it.

great little kit to start out with if you don't want to spend loads.
 
BeeP said:
I started with a very basic RTF plane called a hobbyzone Champ, that is until I lost it.

great little kit to start out with if you don't want to spend loads.
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The Champ is the ideal little plane to start with if you have never flown before.
It can only be flown in very little wind as it's so light but takes a lot of abuse because of this.

If starting out i would recommend Hobbyzone Champ.

Then get a Spektrum DX6i transmitter which you can bind to many Parkzone planes which are popular.It also binds to Spektrum and Orange recievers.

With the DX6i you can connect it too your computer and use it to run flight sims such as Phoenix v3 which i think is an absolute must for praticing planes/helis.

Next plane i would recommend once you have a bit of experience is the Parkzone T-28.It is very docile and forgiving and is a great low wing trainer to learn with.

I started flying for the first time last April and this was the route i took after lot's of researching on all the flying forums.

Now i have upgraded to the Spektrum DX8 and bought too many planes now as it's quite addictive.Parkzone Habu and Stryker being my favs.

Trying to get to grips with helis with MSR-SR120-MCPX-Trex 450 pro-Trex 550 flybarless.

Just to recap though if you fancy getting into it a Spektrum DX6i and Phoenix sim is a must.
 
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alexthecheese said:
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I've thought about running them in parallel for added duration. I've been reading about this today and saw people have them running in parallel, so thought for the same of a couple of dollars I could get some added flexibility by having longer running times.
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You have to love Hobbyking for batteries. Almost everyone at my club flies their batteries. 2200mah 3 cell are probably the most common pack in RC flight. Lots of planes and helis will fly with them. Don't forget that by running two packs in parallel, you're also carrying extra weight, so there's a trade off there against flight time. It could also make balancing the plane on its centre of gravity difficult.

Pred said:
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Now i have upgraded to the Spektrum DX8 and bought too many planes now as it's quite addictive.Parkzone Habu and Stryker being my favs.
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A Stryker is next on my list. I did even consider it as a first plane for a long time, but I thought I'd get some experience on something easier to fly first. I haven't flown a plane yet (I've just got my first), but after a couple of years flying helis, I'm reasonably confident I'll have no problems. I have Phoenix and often fly the planes on there with little drama.
 
That Stryker is mental!! I thought the thing I am getting is reasonably rapid but that is ridiculous! :eek:

Just seen a guy doing square loop the loops, such is its ability to change direction.

:eek:
 
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