Hello everyone. I fee like there is a lot of untapped potential in the sbus system from Futaba. Having all your servo’s linked together on a single serial bus is IMHO a very cool idea. There is a ton of flexibility that comes with doing this, and a lot of potential for some very cool things.

The main problem, currently, with sbus is power delivery. Large airplanes use lots of high torque servos and draw a lot of current. All the sbus accessories currently available in the US use light gauge wiring unsuited to these high currents (over in Europe they have some real nice sbus stuff from Robbe Futaba, but it’s not available here yet). One work around is to run several leads off your battery and plug them into several “hubs” in your sbus system. But in my opinion this is not very elegant so I decided to build my own wiring system from scratch.

I also don't consider sbus decoders to be very elegant, so I ponied up the cash for some sbus servos. Lets just say that I made good use of March's Tower Hobbies super saver coupon codes, LOL.

Here’s how I did it:

I used a bunch of mil-spec aircraft wire to build wire harnesses for the wings and tail. I used this wire because I thought it would be cool to use the same stuff used in “real” airplanes, and because it’s cheap. But after working with it I can tell you that it has a couple advantages over the silicon insulated wire we typically use for RC; namely it’s not as heavy, and the insulation is much tougher and is FAR less...Continue Reading