Originally Posted by BadLemon

I have not been on this thread in a while so this problem I had may have been talked about so if it has I'm sorry about the duplicate post.

Yesterday the Weather was good enough to get a couple of flights in with my F-86 at a local park. I even took off with the F-86 sliding on the snow.

While at work today I was walking between buildings and put my hand in my pocket and found I put a battery in my pocket. I got a phone call on my cell while I was talking the battery started to get hot in my hand. I open my hand and quickly noticed the positive lead was stuck into the back of the negative lead of the balance plug! This created a dead short as you all know it would, I know this happen while I had the battery in my hand because it wasn't hot when I pulled the battery out of my pocket.

I know "I'm Stupid" it wasn't very smart to put the battery in my pocket in the first place so I'm very lucky the battery didn't short in my coat pocket while hung up in the closet. I'll said it again I'm Lucky for being stupid! I could be homeless right now or even worse I could of lost my family. I will never do this again I'm thinking a fix for this could be to make a protection cover for the micro dean connector or even change the connector to a JST female or something else. So I would like to know if others have foreseen this and what changes did you do.

Lastly I want to be clear on this matter I'm not blaming the manufacturer this was clearly my fault.

You're not the first one to post having had this problem. I don't trust these battery leads at all. My stock battery puffed during it's second stint on the charger, at that point I just made a UMX adapter and have been using those batteries ever since, they are much safer IMHO. Glad to hear your situation wasn't worse.

giuseppi

I was thinking the same thing as well. and I thing the easest is to put a cover over the micro dean connector.

thanks

eltreato

That's what I thought I'm sure it had to happen before. Also I like your River Raid avatar that was one of my favorite Atari games I played back when I was a snot nosed jockey!. It was funny that you could fly over water and not over land!

Thanks

look at electrical wire nuts........their is a correct size that fits perfectly over the micro dean and makes a perfect safety cover......thats what we are using

Originally Posted by giuseppi

I'm glad everything turned out ok for you.
One thing that should have been done by LiPo makers is to have the + and - posts on the connectors switched. Have the + lead on the battery be the female instead of the male. In your case had those being switched neg would have been to neg and no problem.
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Had the positive pin try to dead short to a seat bolt in my car a few weeks ago while still hooked up to the charger when I was moving it around in the floor board. Shorted back through the ground system in the car.

I also had the same thing happen as the previous poster but it was from a loose batt floating around in my box. Looks like I got lucky too. It even melted a bit of the JST connector.

Seems the negative pin exposed on the batt would still be the prudent thing to do.

This has worked well for me. It's a perfect fit and pretty cheap really to make.

1. Cut the solder points off the back of a spare deans plug with side cutters and then file flat.

2. Place a drop of your favorite glue on the back side to cover the filed off points.

Picture's worth a 1000 words though....

My stock e-flite batt., that came with GP f86, had a little black piece of heat shrink on the micro deans that is re-usable, out of the box. I still use it.

I had my battery eject during a negative push out at EFest, I drew A BATTERY PLATE that glues around the battery and has a forward tongue that keys into the fuselage in the nose area and then is just long enough to fit in front of the foam lip in front of the RX. I'm having these laser cut. No more depending on the canopy yo hold the battery in place.

I also glue a piece of 1/64th ply into the exhaust to give a little down thrust works great!

Robert,
Please post a picture of the plywood down thrust change. Might help my F86 as well.

Simple effective mod

Originally Posted by Robert Belluomini

Simple effective mod

I don't doubt for a minute that this is a good mod.....but I don't really understand it.

What is the condition that this is intended to correct?

And, why is this better than simply using elevator trim?

Not trying to be snarky or critical here; just my lack of understanding.

Glad you asked! The Sabre tends to nose up under power at slow airspeed.
This trim plate keeps the nose down avoiding the Sabre Dance
It makes the Sabre fly better at low and high airspeed.

Good to know!

My first instinct would have been to dial-in a little down elevator, plus a throttle-to-elevator mix to bring the elevator back closer to neutral as speed increases.

But I'm over my head, and out of my league......especially since I don't even have this Sabre and I know of its Dance only by word-of-mouth!

Originally Posted by pugsam

I don't doubt for a minute that this is a good mod.....but I don't really understand it.

What is the condition that this is intended to correct?

And, why is this better than simply using elevator trim?

Not trying to be snarky or critical here; just my lack of understanding.

Pretty clever mod if you ask me.

AH HA ! Stationary Thrust vectoring.

Originally Posted by pugsam

My first instinct would have been to dial-in a little down elevator, plus a throttle-to-elevator mix to bring the elevator back closer to neutral as speed increases.)

Problem with that is - elevator authority approaches zero at lower airspeeds.