electric flight uk - British Electric Flight Association - Jan Bassett's
electric flight uk - British Electric Flight Association - Jan Bassett's
electric flight uk - British Electric Flight Association - Jan Bassett's
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and oil that does it. The oil because it makes them easy to repair!<br />
It had been put on the backburner because you don’t get many charges of a 14 cell<br />
pack from a car battery in a day and it had a distressing tendency to bend the<br />
undercarriage if a landing wasn’t absolutely perfect. I tend to average one out of<br />
ten landings perfect, six out of ten acceptable and the rest I don’t want to mention.<br />
There followed a feverish session on ElectriCalc assessing the possibilities. I ended<br />
up with the 3s 3600mAh LiPo pack and an Astro 05 geared swinging an 11” x 7”,<br />
the Astro simply because I had one in stock. This doesn’t seem possible until you<br />
look at one of the useful numbers ElectriCalc works out – W/lb.<br />
The 14 cell version is 89 W/lb., the LiPo version is 103 W/lb. The drop from 410W<br />
to 310W is more than made up for by the massive weight saving. Have a look at<br />
the pictures, the 14 cell powertrain weighs 44½oz. including a receiver battery,<br />
the LiPo 18½oz. (no receiver battery required), a reduction of 26oz.<br />
The whole ‘plane is 35% lighter! Looking at the ‘plane pictures you can see how<br />
eerily empty it appears with the LiPo setup.<br />
Off to the flying field to give it a go. This can’t work, can it? It can! Just as lively<br />
and aerobatic as before and with a lighter feel, more like the Vermont Belle. The<br />
landings were like a butterfly on thistledown.<br />
Well, you know what I mean, it’s always easier to make a landing look good with<br />
a light ‘plane than a heavy one. So it flies just as well for longer and I can get more<br />
<strong>flight</strong>s in a day since charging the LiPo hardly dents the capacity of the car battery.<br />
As the Americans say, ‘a win-win situation’.<br />
Lessons Learned 2<br />
LiPo conversions aren’t necessarily just a simple substitution of one battery for<br />
another, you really need to think about the whole power train before and after.<br />
You may be surprised at how much weight you can save.<br />
Anyone 36 want to buy a pile of NiCds? E.F.-U.K. Velly cheap!