Bravedan

P.S. - Why do Chargers have such ungainly awkward STUPID names??

P.P.S. - If you had a decent charger, why would you sell it?? Answer in most cases, because its NOT a good one!! From someone you know, maybe, otherwise, no way.

OK, Joke over.....................

I have over 20 chargers (plus ten more that do NIMH only!), from £100 plus (AC/DC Graupner Ultramat 16) to less than £25 (12v X Charger B606). I'm often using five at once on LiPo.

NONE are multi-chargers and frankly as an engineer I would never buy one, as a basic engineering premise is "never put all your eggs in one basket".

While Lofty has advised AC/DC, a large slice of mine are small DC only ones. These are powered from small JPerkins PSUs which provide 12v @ 10A, so several chargers can hook onto one PSU (I have three of these PSUs, same thing, redundancy!). This also gives flexibility and is a cheap way of doing it. The chargers can be removed and taken anywhere off mains to be fed from a car battery or a high capacity LiPo. I also have a Sakura Car Starter, a tiny hand held unit that can start a near frozen not run for months 7.5 litre engine (as I have done just that with it!!). This is an emergency power supply both for charger feed and for engine starting!

In principle though I do not charge LiPo at the field, I carry sufficient packs to not need to.

Which Charger is "best"? Well absolutely not the expensive "name" Graupner, which despite its computer interface and supposed sophistication has an awkward menu system, difficult to read display, and worse, fails to do the job reliably, often ending LiPo charge crying wolf on high voltage with no measurable reason why! (and others with one have similar!).

Before I answer my own question, there are two basic types of chip/circuit/firmware used in LiPo chargers. One has Cell Capacity in mAh as one of its inputs, the other only charge current and cell pack voltage only. The former is in theory safer but is more awkward to handle when charging packs in parallel (which I do with small 1S, as returning from a school club session I might have 30 plus to charge!!). I use balance extension leads from the cheaper chargers so the battery can be more remote from the charger.

I actually like the simple and cheap AC/DC charger sold with a wide number of seller names on its front, the most common being "Intelligent Battery Manager" with a green label. On turn on, it and all the other "branded" ones are actually all the same, being a "G.T. POWER A606-D".

Second (though capacity measuring) comes the Fusion Elysium L60B Pro of which I have two. They are quiet in use and harder to "miss set".

Dave (having just completed charging nearly 100 NIMH!)

And this charges things better HOW??

It's an application desperately looking for a use!

Better that the design and money invested by the builder is spent making it safe and secure and robust.

Oh, and I don't like it...........................

Go to a car battery shop and plead poverty, they should if you tell a good enough story go to their recycle pile with their load tester and find you one that can take the very low by comparison discharge a LiPo charger needs. Remember, a car starter motor on a cold morning might needs 100 amps discharge, you need FAR less and so a relative "dud" is OK!! I have just replaced (with another throwout off my own car!) a battery I was given six years ago.

I bought a tiny electronic charger that stays on 24/7 and even conditions it at night when it senses the need, More recently though I have been using a high capacity LiPo to start my engines and this would charge the plane LiPos for most of my fleet, more than enough for a session. ( I don't as I have enough cell packs)

Pilot Ben said:

there is a powered tek sumo wing in Scotland that I built when I was last up there Do you mean that I should take the prop off and soar that for practice?

Yes.

Pilot Ben said:

Talk how?

It's conventional to make noises with your mouth, and like flying a model plane, you do need to be in range...............................

I know you tree'd one plane but do you still have a power wing?

AND, we need to talk, beyond what's practical to write!!

Not a Poll I can vote, in, as I like IC and electric equally, tending to electric when the weather is poor, IC when its good.

Anyway, to the cougar: I was building it and one of the captive nuts in the firewall came loose. It's now tight as I held nut with some pliers, but wondered if it was a problem?

One push and back they go, quite normal, they are only located by the taper tangs and they only work once clamped together. As long as the nut is secure in the firewall when tightened and can't pull through, its OK.

they don't take a crash well or a hard landing!

or really ANY landing....................

Having claimed to have put over £1M into the rights to televise, you might think they'd bother to DO IT properly.

The first transmission was a mess, esp. bearing in mind they were not showing it live. It was shown out of slot an hour later than any of the three (yes, THREE) times stated during the day.

So, was it worth it? I'll hold comment, did anyone manage to see it?

Look at that list. How on earth do they expect one engine to cope with a 10x6 AND alternatively a 12x7??

There are all the other factors, noise, swinging space (undercart clearance), etc. so bIggest practical diameter, lowest practical pitch.

I would say for most of the events where speed is not required the lowest practical pitch in order to be able to twitch the throttle and blast a pulse of air across the surfaces without accelerating the plane unduly.

Have you not been buying aircraft parts?

I bought two weeks ago three things from China at £8.53 each, because I knew they would rise with the dollar to pound issue - today they are £12.80.

A plane I bought at £85 two months back is now more than £160. A week ago it was £126.

It's not just started, its been happening for some time. It won't get better either, as when they realise that we will still buy (the only choice being not to since there is no other source), if the rate improves, THEY will revalue the products.

I'm tracking a few key items that are likely to have a long sale time. Its NOT good news.

Wait till you need to buy something big value, (car, etc) that has to come from a foreign manufacturing source!

Today Monday 24/10/16 Episode 1.

407 - 9pm - Sky Sports Mix, Miami Lights (Also 507 on Virgin Media)

Then 28th, 31st, 5th, 7th, 11th, 14th, 21st.

http://imaginate.redbull.com/videos/riding_film

To be fair pink is a good colour for visual sighting.............. unless that is you are flying photo reconn. missions at dusk.

Pink, Eh? That'll go down well with the tens of thousands of female modellers.

For electric, never mind cooling scoops (cut plastic spoons are OK), it's the battery hatch that's needed as no way would I keep removing the wing.

Pilot Ben said:

It's also the new cougar, so it has a new colour scheme, which should make it stand out.

Pricks ears up......................new scheme?? Picture anywhere you know of please??

The website is still showing the transparant purple/yellow that has been around for ages, but my Cougar does not have long to live being quite soft round the wing root and oil soaked tail now and I don't like the current scheme, so would be interested if different.............

Strange accents, must come from north of Watford......................... couldn't possibly be from a completely different country with completely different standards and rules, could they? After all, that would mislead, wouldn't it.................

1. For UK legality, one band of eight has to be completely discounted.

2. For UK legality, HALF the "Race Band" has to be discounted.

3. Then there are cross band frequencies that are far too closely spaced for simultaneous use with available and affordable equipment, certainly not what any UK hobbyist is likely to own. Example? 5733, 5740 and 5745, for a start. 5 MHz separation on analogue transmission from small lightweight low power equipment?

I also seriously question their claims with regard LHCP and RHCP separation being the Holy Grail to 5.8Ghz heaven, but have not specifically tested two Tx's operating in that orientation. What I HAVE done is deliberately mismatched a RHCP Tx to a LHCP Rx, and while visible signal loss was evident, it critically was relatively small, not enough to prevent a picture that was intelligible. If signal loss is demonstrably that small, as I found on more than one Tx/Rx make, crosstalk is a problem and it remained evident on adjacent channels even at 20MHz spacing, so must be an issue must it not?

The bottom line is that many people entering FPV are buying what sellers are selling, and even a lot of major UK based sellers are selling low quality and illegal (in both frequency and power) equipment.

I tested one UK FPV specialist supplier, pretending to be new and so not to know, and requested they select for me a UK suitable VTX/VRX pair. The VTX they selected had NO UK legal frequencies, and was 200mW fixed when the UK max is 25mW. When challenged they said, and I do quote "I suppose you do want to see further than your elbow, don't you".

It's a jungle out there...................difficult to see clearly............

I have a large skein of it somewhere (which shows what care I put into it!)

I really must fettle and try out the selection of FF I was bequeathed. It includes timed electric, diesel, CO2 (which I have no idea how to set up or charge!) and rubber. The main problem is that Dave K bless 'im used the same colours on all his planes, and its not obvious to out of comfort zone me which yellow wings and in some cases tailplanes go with which red Fus as several seem to fit each Fus!!

The only one I have tried, a timed electric high wing cabin, I checked and rechecked the timer on to be what I thought would be a very very short trial run, around five seconds max. This was tested as such. Launched on a footling breeze near still evening towards the right of Airsoft's "village", it climbed out far more strongly than expected as the thrust had seemed very light, got to only about four times head height by nearly halfway across to the trees, cut, (which seemed perfect really!) but it then turned 90 left, stabilised straight, and the glide with no perceived height loss to the falling ground took it out of sight down the slope left of the conifer towards the road.

I found it sitting on its wheels right by the gate........................GULP! Have been meaning to fit micro rudder only RC as that experience was a bit much! Another Round Tuit job.

Something else for the legislators to worry about................

And then.........silence.................

Did Ben 's model survive its carbonisation?

Did carbon make him fly better than Ali M?

Did he get a flyaway from the signal suppression?

Is he still chasing the model across the fields?

We may NEVER know..............................

Steve covered most of the reasons why not, but the fact that carbon gets brittle in the winter can be a killer to undercarriage!

Anybody else wince at where the guy was standing watching?

amazing to but into perspective what we as humans have achieved in the past 70 years!

Yea, never ever underestimate the ability of humans in producing a more efficient way of killing other humans.

They do look much better in "matching" paint.

How about other "pairings" with UK build (at least in part).

DC3 and Airbus A320?

Tiger Moth and Sherwood Ranger ST?

Lancaster and (well, what?)