Flying High With Electric Power! The Ampeer ON-LINE! March 2010 The Club Newsletter of the Electric Flyers Only, Inc AMA Charter 2354 Walled Lake, MI, USA Editor: Ken Myers Fly the Future - Fly Electric!

President:	Vice-President:	Secretary/Treasurer:
Ken Myers	Richard Utkan	Rick Sawicki
1911 Bradshaw Ct.	240 Cabinet	5089 Ledgewood Ct. W.
Commerce Twp., MI 48390	Milford, MI 48381	Commerce Twp., MI 48382
(248) 669-8124	(248) 685-1705	248.685.7056
Board of Directors:	Board of Directors:	Ampeer Editor
David Stacer	Jack Lemon	Ken Myers
16575 Brookland Blvd.	8908 Sandy Ridge Dr.	1911 Bradshaw Ct.
Northville, MI 48167	White Lake, MI 48386	Walled Lake, MI 48390
248.924.2324	248.698.4683	248.669.8124
Mailed Ampeer subscriptions are no longer available
The Next Meeting: Date: March 11 Time: 7:30 p.m. Place: Ken Myers' house (see this issue for details)

What's In This Issue?
From Rich Flinchbaugh	Electrics atthe US Scale Masters Championship	Sparrowhawk and More	The February EFO Meeting	Help When Using Spektrum Radios
Crimping Warning	Problems with Long Battery Lead Wires	Put This One On Your Event Schedule!	How Drive Calculator Can Help In Prop Selection even if the, Motor is Not in the Database	Wing Cube Loading, Once Again
A Couple in Interesting Links	Upcoming E-vents		Send Ken email

From Rich Flinchbaugh From: Ned Watts nedwatts@mac.com      Rich sent a very nice "recovery" card to me and included a couple of good photographs.      The first photo shows a small seaplane making a pass over the small pond at the Peaceful Valley Campground, home of the NEAT Fair. This pond is a nice "plus" for the NEAT meet.      The second photo is of Rich and Ginny. The plane is a 1931 Sikorsky S-39 and the photo was taken at the Greenville Air Show on Moosehead Lake in Maine. There were 20 built, but only 3 remain to fly. Rich thinks it would be a nice model. He noted that he's seen a few S-38s, but not an S-39 model.      It should be noted that Al Muroc, www.classicaero.com, has models of both available. If you are into seaplanes or Sikorsky types, this is the site to go to.      For the S-39, Al has plans available in three sizes; 1/6, 1/8, and 1/12 scale - with Laser Cut Kits and Vacuum Formed Parts available in 1/6 and 1/12 scale.      For the S-38 twin, he has plans available in three sizes; 1/6, 1/8, and 1/12 scale. Laser Cut Wood for is available for the1/6 Scale S-38 along with a parts package!      Al frequently brings these beauties to the Mid-Am. Check them out soon! Return to "What's In This Issue" Electrics at the US Scale Masters Championship Randy Smithhisler Randy.Smithhisler@PACCAR.com Ken,      I just wanted to pass along some great news from the 2009 US Scale Masters Championship event. My electric powered Piper J-3 "Cub" placed third in the Team Scale category. I feel very fortunate. I believe that only a few electric powered models have ever placed at the Championship event. Jeremy Fursman from Snoqualmie, WA did an outstanding job of the flying the J-3 for me.      In addition to the third place award we took home plaques for the "Highest Flight Score-Team" and "Most Realistic Flight-Team". The J-3 was built from a SIG kit and is powered by an AstroFlight geared 90 brushed motor with (36) 2400mAh NiCad batteries.      There were also two other electric powered models there competing. I had my 1/4 scale Piper J-4 (20th place in Expert) and Grant Lord from Vancouver, WA competed with his beautiful Fly Baby Bipe (21st place in Expert).      Grant's big bipe has a brushless motor and Li-Poly batteries for power. It flew great and scored a 90.58 flight score average.      I have enclosed a few photographs. Best regards, Randy Smithhisler (Edgewood, WA) Return to "What's In This Issue" Sparrowhawk and More From Dereck Woodward dereckw@comcast.net Hi Ken,      Just read the new "Future is Electric" - good stuff as always. Great to see Dave Hipperson's Sparrowhawk work-over. That model is fascinating, of a very sleek and interesting prototype. Yes, I've seen the 'real one' but only on the ground way back before we left the UK. The good bit, Dave got rid of that colour scheme! Not as bad as the experiences you later describe in this newsletter concerning that Stearman, but the Sparrowhawk's colour scheme as it comes out of the 'big shiny box' is something I know a little about. That red, silver and registration 'G-AESZ' come off the entirely different size, looks and designer/builder 'Chilton DW1' that I designed a 54" span model of back around 1986 - 87. I built and flew her in England, using documentation from "Aeroplane Monthly", an English magazine that leans to older aircraft.      The only similarity between the two types was they both had the wing on the bottom!      The photos are one of my model and the other of the inspiration. Dave's a 'class act' and did it right. When I pointed this somewhat glaring error out on the E Zone, it was laughed out of court, with some folk suggesting I shouldn't criticize ready-made models, which are all perfect by definition.      Your thoughts on amending the Stearman! Strikes me as basically a lousy design, with a primary aim of getting folk to buy one. As one who knows well what happens to a bad kit review, the online and other comments about it in that area don't surprise me. I'm very selective over what I review these days, like hardly anything. The last two both came from Sig! Aside from the discussion on the decalage, that nose-heaviness suggests that the structure is just badly designed. A lighter tail end framework, a little nose length 'fudge', not like it's every going up before scale judges, some internal equipment re-location and it wouldn't have needed any ballast. A model that size needing four ounces of nose weight is not very good.      There's a bit of sarcasm in there - if you can't resist using this, edit freely!      Actually, you can see I did not edit it Dereck. It is not a totally lousy design. I believe that, maybe, it was brought to market just a little too quickly and more care could have been taken in preparing the manual and a couple of adjustments could have been made to the basic airframe and equipment placement to make it even better. All flight reports, by intermediate and advanced pilots, indicate that it is a good flier and a fun to fly plane. I am very impressed with the overall engineering, as it would have gone together very well as an ARF. It seems quite popular, and pretty much rightly so, for the most part. Time will tell how my highly modified version will turn out. KM      And finally! I have to tell someone - actually, about everyone! Sue, my wife, just accepted a position of Vice President in the development area of a major non-profit in Chicago. After over fifteen years in the DC area, we are now frantically preparing to paint up this place to rent or sell, pack and move to an apartment in the middle of Chicago and the inevitable bunch of stuff that moving demands. The aim is to drop off the world, work our rear ends off to re-establish our lives a long ways north-west to get back to normalcy ASAP and re-appear doing normal stuff real quick! There will be a lot of change - for starters, neither of us has ever lived in an apartment high-rise smack in the middle of a big city before. Suspect one change will involve me making smaller models around A123 batteries - I don't fancy Li-Poly batteries on the 50th floor with no balcony!      Google maps tells me that your neck of the woods is around 4-1/2 hours drive around the bottom of the lake and east a bit from Chicago. So, after all the advice you've given me over the years - still haven't forgotten about you prodding me up to ten cells, whereupon I found that electrics could do more than narrowly miss the nearest planet in flight - I reckon it won't be long before I can come around to Mid-Am and thank you personally. Lunch is on me, even if I have to bring sandwiches in!      All the best to you and your family for the upcoming holiday season, and I hope to meet you soon. Regards Dereck Woodward Return to "What's In This Issue" The February EFO Meeting      The February EFO meeting was held at Jim Young's in Brighton, MI. Thank you Jim for hosting!      It was an excellent meeting with a lot of projects to share. Since this is the building season here in Michigan, several of the projects were shared at various stages of completion.      Tim Young showed his hovercraft and a display model that he made as part of a school project. He loves scooting the hovercraft about the house!      Tim also shared his Blu Baby. It recently was involved in one of the Spektrum receiver glitches that have shown up at the Ultimate Soccer Arenas. Joe Hass has followed up on the glitches and did a presentation for the Skymasters on how to avoid them when flying at the Arenas.      Information on the Blu Baby can be found on RC Groups at www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=681556 Plans are available for various sizes of this foam construction plane from 24" to 52". The plans can be found in the thread.      Richard Utkan scratch built a Fred-e from foam. He looked at the photos and created a TLAR (that looks about right) model. He said that it is a very nice flier.      Dave Stacer shared his flying wing Aggressor with us. jgrc.biz/storefront/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=262      He'd purchased several items for this build from a place on the Internet called Deal Extreme. He followed up our meeting with an email containing the following information about Deal Extreme.      "Here is the website I was talking about last Thursday.      Everything has free shipping - takes about 1-2 weeks for shipment. www.dealextreme.com      The majority of the RC stuff can be found under Helicopters www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.801      I was way off it my price for the motor in my Aggressor airplane. It was $15 www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20082      Tower Pro 9 g servos for small indoor stuff $5 www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12859"      Denny Sumner has been building a prototype Super Sportwin along with the designer, Mark Rittinger. He had the fuselage ready to share at the meeting. It has a knockout covering job and super looking cockpit. More information on this model can be found in the RC Groups thread at www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1075719      Look near the end of the thread to see Denny's almost completed plane. This twin features retracts as well.      Arthur Deane showed his foam scratch-built Eagle. He enjoyed watching a similar model fly at the last Mid-Am and decided that he had to have one. He did make a change to the airfoil. His is a Clark-Y rather than the typical KM-type.      Hank Wildman shared the features that he's building into the rework of his A-6 Intruder. It has beautifully engineered split flaps and an excellent hinging system on all surfaces. He had it hooked up so that he could demonstrate the surface movements.      Jim Young showed the progress on his Gloster Meteor. He'd just finished up the gear doors, made from carbon fiber, on the wings. More information on this build can also be found on RC Groups at www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1161755      Ken Myers showed the progress on his Super Stearman, which he is converting from the E-flite PT-17 Stearman ARF. This has turned into a "full-time job" for him.      After the show and tell portion of the meeting was over, we all retired to Jim's well-stocked workshop where we talked "airplanes" well into the evening. Jim shared even more of his Gloster Meteor project and answered some questions concerning the many designs and kits he is marketing.      It was an EXCELLENT meeting, and again we all wish to thank Jim for his wonderful hospitality. Extremely Important Information Regarding the Upcoming March EFO Meeting EFO Members READ THIS! The next EFO meeting will be on Thursday, March 11, 7:30 p.m. at Ken Myers' house. This is a break from our traditional first Thursday of the month meetings!      As usual, everyone with an interest is welcome. Bring along your latest project in whatever stage of construction and share the fun! See you all on Thursday, March 11! Return to "What's In This Issue" Help When Using Spektrum Radios      As mentioned earlier, there had been a few problems with using Spektrum radio systems during the indoor flying at the Ultimate Soccer Arenas. Joe Hass gathered information and did a presentation at the Skymasters on how to properly setup and use Spectrum radios. He sent along the following information via email. KM Ken,      Here is a wealth of information supplied by Horizon. It can be passed on to whomever you like.      (I looked on the Internet for this information and could not find a link to it. I've posted the .pdf file to homepage.mac.com/kmyersefo/Customer-care-pak2-1.pdf KM)      Did you know that when you bind a Spektrum system the stick positions when you bind become the failsafe? More than once, when I have bound I gyrated the sticks as I was trying to push the button and bind at the same time. If there was a loss of communication the aircraft would revert to the crazy position I pushed the stick to.      But there is an even subtler scenario...      You just finished your WizBang 400, left all the sticks centered and bound the system. On the first test flight you needed some up trim.      Then you lost connectivity between the transmitter and receiver on a subsequent flight.      What is the airplane going to do?      It will go down as it reverts to the settings when it was bound. That results in a dive.      Doesn't that sound a lot like what the original writer was describing?      There are a bunch of things that I learned from about 3 hours worth of discussion with Horizon. Most of them are covered in the attached .pdf file. Joe Hass Also from Joe      Regarding the writer in the latest AMPEER...      I have used DEANS Micro Connectors very successfully in high ampere, but small applications. They are called Micro Connectors 2B Part Number 1221.      They are available in a number of multi pin applications. The neatest thing is that the pins can easily be removed for soldering or reconfiguring male/female pin configurations.      One More Item for Successful Use of Spektrum Radios from Ken; be sure to read and heed the Best Practices information at the Spektrum site. spektrumrc.com/Community/InstallationBestPractices.aspx Return to "What's In This Issue" Crimping Warning From Robert Fishwick Vancouver Canada Hi Ken,      I noted your reference to crimping the connectors on the Li-Poly battery. I too used to crimp the connectors. One day I was doing my Safety test of gently pulling the connector whilst holding the wire, when lo and behold, the connector started to slide off the wire. About 20% of my batteries had solder connections, the remainder were made up at about the same time and I thought that crimping would save me a lot of time since there were so many batteries to make up.      I immediately checked all of the other batteries that had crimped connections. Was I ever glad that I did. About 65-70% of the batteries had loose connections. Be assured that, at the time of construction, all connections were checked before the contact was inserted into the red and black shells. ALL were a good tight crimp. I removed the shells from all of the contacts and soldered the lot. I now no longer have to worry about the wires coming off in flight. All the very best to you, Robert Fishwick      I agree with Robert that it is a good idea to check your battery connections frequently. It is just an excellent safety practice. I've used Anderson Power Poles since entering electric flight. I have the APP crimper and I've never discovered intentionally or inadvertently a loose crimped connection. Robert didn't say how he crimped his connectors, but I've found the APP crimper, and most likely the similar, but less expensive West Mountain crimper, to provide excellent crimps. The really important thing is to check the integrity of your connections whether they be crimped or soldered. It is just a good safety practice. Thanks for the reminder Robert. KM Return to "What's In This Issue" Problems with Long Battery Lead Wires Gary Gullikson, Garden Grove, CA Hi Ken,      I have inherited a twin-ducted fan GWS ME-262 brushless 2028 inrunner powered, ready to fly. It had twin speed controls mounted on each engine nacelle and battery wires from a 2200mah 3S Li-Poly pack in the nose through "Y" connection to the speed controls mounted on each engine nacelle, The total length was about 28 inches. I had a number of nice flights before it crashed due to one motor cutting and asymmetric thrust.      To make a long story shorter, I recently read on the E-Zone that battery wires longer than a total of about 18 inches, cause voltage spikes that eventually kill the electrolytic capacitors in the speed controls, which is followed shortly by the FET's frying and an unexplained crash.      I am now mounting twin CC 36 speed controls in the bottom center of the wing and routing battery wires after a "Y" connection much more directly to the Li-Poly pack in the nose. According to Castle Creations, their speed controls have capacitors that can cope with battery wires around 18" total from speed control to battery pack. Much longer wires require adding one or more special electrolytic capacitors across the battery wires near the speed control.      BTW, I have disconnected both red wires from the speed control and am using a Park BEC to run the Spektrum AR6000 receiver and four HS-55 servos. BTW, it is OK to lengthen the speed control-to-motor wires and speed control-to-receiver wires as needed.      The above applies to twin electric powered prop planes as well. Just warned a buddy who is building a nice Wowplanes B-25.      Although this information has been discussed in the past, it is not generally well known by newbies to multi-engine electric power setups. I thought you might want to mention this in the Ampeer newsletter to save somebody some grief.      Gotta get started on my Velie Monocoupe for the current vintage fun build contest on E-Zone Scale Electric Plane forum. Working from enlarged Flyline plans and laser cut parts from David Plumpe. Hope all is going well with you and your projects, Gary Gullikson      Well, there you go Gary. Thanks for the mention. This same topic has come up with the Gloster Meteor that Jim Young is building. KM Return to "What's In This Issue" Put This One On Your Event Schedule! Keith Shaw Birthday Party Electric Fly-In From Dave Grife grifesd@yahoo.com      The Balsa Butchers will once again be hosting the "Keith Shaw Birthday Party Electric Fly-In" at their field near Coldwater, MI. The event will take place on June 5 and 6, 2010. Contest Director: Dave Grife - E-mail: grifesd@yahoo.com or Phone: 517.279.8445 Please e-mail or call with any questions The Flying Field will be open Friday, June 4 for early arrivals Saturday, June 5, hours are from 9 a.m. 'til 5 p.m. Sunday, June 6, hours are form 9 a.m. 'til 3 p.m. Directions: Quincy is approximately 4.5 miles east of I-69. Clizbe Road is approximately 1.6 miles east of Quincy. The Flying site is approximately 1.5 miles south of US-12 on the west side of Clizbe Road.

To Reach Ken Myers, you can land mail to the address at the top of the page. My E-mail address is: KMyersEFO@mac.com
EFO WEBsite: http://homepage.mac.com/KMyersEFO/