Well I have to admit this is my first Motrolfly motor and so far I am very impressed with the quality. I ordered this 4325 450KV a few weeks ago. It is marketed as a good 6S motor for 70" 3D airframes. I have a little different mission in mind...

This moror is going to end up on the front of a 95" Hanger 9 Cessna 182. I am currently recovering and modifying the airframe to accommodate the electric setup. I'll be posting a build log soon. For now here are some pictures of the motor. To put this in prospective it will be replacing a Zenoah G38....Continue Reading

With HHAEFI coming up we have been discussing a few fun events to have during the event. One of the first events that we thought up, and by far one of the most intriguing so far is a Reno style ultra-micro warbird race. I have a UM Mosquito that I absolutely love and plan to race in October. As we played around with the idea and tried out a few mock races I began to think more and more about one of my alltime favorite racers, the # 57 F2G Corsair.

You can read the full history on #57 HERE.

Finally I had to give in. My buddy Shards hooked me up with a Corsair airframe at a good price and the project began. The F2G was structurally different in a few ways most notably the bubble canopy. There was also the addition of a HUGE Pratt & Whitney R-4360 28 cylinder radial engine with an astounding 3000 hp. This engine lengthened the cowl and added an iconic carburetor intake scoop on the top of the cowl. All in all it resulted in a striking and unique aircraft.

The first challenge was converting the turtle deck to a bubble canopy. A friend directed me to Park Flyer Plastics who sells a cockpit kit for the ultra micro Mustang. The kit is a reasonable $4 and includes clear bubble canopy and pilot figure/cockpit detail. The kit fits the mustang perfectly and only required a small amount of modification to work on the Corsair. painting is required. See the pictures below. Other than that it was just a matter of adding the scoop and painting. Take a look at the picture below....Continue Reading

I went down to Perry, GA to see the Collings Foundation Freedom Tour. On display was the only flying B-24 and a B-17, one of only 14 flying. They were accompanied by a P-51. I have included a few pictures. There was also a O-1 Bird Dog flying while we were there....Continue Reading

I finally got a chance to test out the new cooling scoops over the Memorial Day weekend. Ambient temperatures were hovering around 90-95 and motor temp was 125 after aggressive 3D. I'm much happier with this temp Oh... and the plane is great too.

My friend, Manta 1, got some video of one of the flights.

Evil Knievel rollers (0 min 44 sec)

I recently added cooling scoops to my 89" Slick. I am running a Hacker A60 18L with a 24x12 prop. After a fairly aggressive flight (ample 3D and hovering) it was right at 130F. While that is acceptable I would like it to be a bit cooler. The ambient temp that day was about 85F and around here there are plenty of 95-100F days during the summer. I have not flown it yet so I will have to see if it really works.

I recently built an Index 3. This is an indoor F3P pattern plane. I have a few flights on it and it is amazing. I think it is the most precise foamy I have flown. The Index has a wingspan of 800mm and the ready to fly weight is only 130g (4.5oz). The best part is that the entire project came in under $200.

I used the following equipment:

- E-flight Park 250
- Castle Creation Thunderbird 9
- Spektrum AR6300
- 3 x Spektrum servos (6g)
- 450 mAh 2S battery
- GWS 7x3.5 prop

Below are some pictures of the build and completed plane.

I’m not sure if you remember but I had a problem at SEFF with my foamy that I originally thought was due to a Spectrum “lock out”. The incident confused me because until that point I had had no problems (at SEFF or before). I began to look further into the problem and I also kept your problem with the Slick in mind too. After a sizable amount of reading and analyzing I believe I may know what happened to both my foamy and your Slick.

I believe the problem is the speed controllers internal BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit) Most ESC’s have internal BEC’s that use a linear regulator. The linear regulator converts the input voltage (say 3s at 11.1V or 4s at 14.8V) to a usable receiver voltage (say 4.8-6.0V). It does this by converting the excess voltage (5-9V) into heat. The linear regulator uses resistance as a simple and cheap way to step down the voltage. The Airboss 80 has a Linear BEC. The Elite series uses a switch mode BEC which I will talk about later. Also, these BEC’s are rated assuming a 6 volt input source. As the input voltage goes up the BEC cannot convert all of the excess voltage into heat thus the output is reduced. This said it is possible that the internal BEC that is rated for 3A could put out 2A or less on 3s or 4s. The 4 HS-81’s that you were running could easily draw 2A under normal flight conditions (.5A each). All of this being said it is easy to see the problem.

The question still remains: why did the problem not occur earlier? Why was...Continue Reading