29 September 2008

Out and about 3 - a magic day of control line at Corobrik with the lads from up north



Keith Renecke with the stunning electric powered control line - MVVS hedging their bets with a grunty brushless motor an controller to complement their well known IC motors. The large lipo and controller located in the fuselage.

No flies on glider guider Kobus who bought a second hand model and benefited in an accelerated learning curve from host Dirk Meyer.


Another of Dirk's second hand specials sold to Russ, the Tucker Special, which oozed character and flew flawlessly for a very chuffed Russel.




Henry and Percy Attfield (Mr SAMAA) trying different prop combinations for the thicker coastal air. Henry displayed talent and body English that the slope and slot car lads for would die for!



Hein (I might have his name wrong) simply could not keep his hands off Dirk's dinky little RC Eflight Ultra Mini Stick, which was a show stealer, even in the tricky breezy conditions..... Hein helped the glider folk tirelessly with their control line planes, as well.





Dirk and his up country control line experts, along with the wives made the Springfield soaring folk so welcome, even throwing in lunch to make the day so special for Dennis, Russ, Kobus, Pete Milne and myself.
Our thoughts also lie with local control line stalwart Doug Irvine who missed out by ending up in Westville hospital ICU after a serious accident down at the harbour wharf.
Thoughts also turn to the potential of a small control line under brushless power (nothing like the grunt in Keith's Plane) and I recall way back a little RC electric plane that used to have an auto cut off after five minutes to save a battery (and radio in that case). Maybe some of the electric folk will know where to track such a gizmo....?
The guys flew an amazing advanced pattern and kindly gave us copy of the Novice pattern, shown below:
CONTROL LINE NOVICE PATTERN
START & TAKE-OFF (within 1 minute)
TAKE-OFF and 2 LEVEL LAPS
REVERSE WING OVER
INSIDE LOOPS
INVERTED FLIGHT
OUTSIDE LOOPS
INSIDE SQUARE LOOPS
HORIZONTAL EIGHTS
VERTICAL EIGHTS
OVERHEAD EIGHTS
LANDING (within 6 minutes)

1 comment:

howardhb said...

I have designed a controller to allow the use of electric power for control-line or free-flight models. Brushed or brushless motors can be used.
The circuit can be powered from the ESC’s BEC circuit or a separate 4-cell NiCd battery.
A separate plug is provided for the battery.
The controller has 2 buttons (on a 250mm length of wire) which should be mounted outside the airframe:

For reasons of safety, there is an arming sequence.
AFTER normal power up: (ie: Plugging in the Main Battery into the ESC),
Press BOTH buttons together to ARM the ESC.

**** NB *****
Beware when using the controller for the first time as the ESC might instantly go to full throttle !
( See point 2. below to reverse the throttle direction, not the propeller direction! )

The buttons have the following functions:

1. To mimic a throttle….
* Press button 1 to increase throttle setting (up to MAX RPM)
* Press button 2 to decrease throttle setting (down to 0 RPM)
(The motor will run at the throttle setting until the ESC detects LOW Battery and cuts power to the motor)
* Press BOTH buttons together, to instantly set RPM to 0 (Throttle CUT)

2. If you need to REVERSE the output of the circuit ( some ESC’s work opposite! )
Do the following:
* Remove power from the circuit (Un-plug the Main battery from the ESC.)
* Press and HOLD BOTH buttons while plugging in the Main battery, then release BOTH buttons after 1 second.
* Remove power from the circuit (Un-plug the Main battery from the ESC.)
This setting will be stored in the chip, so you only have to do this once.

A future version could have a timer to run the motor for a pre-set time after motor start.
The timer will be programmable.

I would appreciate any coments on desireable features for this controller.