Originally Posted by Tom Frank

...To me, the investment in a proper ESC is well worth the expense, not only to make sure I cannot damage my batteries, but also to get as much flight time as I can out of a pack. After all, the flying is what we all want to do.... why cut it short if you don't have to? I spend way more time charging batteries than I like, and way less time than I would like actually flying with them

You're absolutly right. The problem is that in my country we don't have yet ESC Lipo-savvy

I'll get one of those ASAP.

Saludos.

i got a good idea explosive proof lipos ; )

Tom is right. It IS better to use a lipo friendly ESC, but as Ricardo said, timing your flights can also work.

In my case I got into lipo's months before I purchased my first brushless. I planned from the beginning to replace all of my brushed motors after they wear out with brushless motors........but being that all my brushed esc's were non-lipo friendly, I used them, with careful timing and monitoring, while using my lipo's. I figured that when I go brushless, I will need a new ESC at that time, and I was planning on using the CC Phoenix 25, which is lipo friendly. To my knowledge, I think all brushless esc's are lipo friendly. Could be wrong here. I didn't want to go out and purchase "brushed" lipo friendly esc's because I knew that I would be using them for a very short period of time.

Anyway, that was my logic in using non-lipo friendly esc's. All my planes will have brushless lipo-friendly esc's in them when I convert them to brushless. My Formosa was the first.

I have one Jeti 18-3p that is not considered "lipo friendly". This is the older style in the red shrink wrap. The newer Advance and Advance plus in the blue shrink wrap are supposedly able to recognize and auto-program for lipos.

Here is my two penn'orth,
Auto-programming Lipo ESCs come with a warning: they determine the no. of cells in the battery from the initial terminal voltage, so if a part-used battery is used the lower terminal voltage could lead the ESC to think it was connected to a lower cell-count battery and discharge to a correspondingly lower voltage, damaging the Lipo battery.
Hence only connect fully charged Lipos to auto-programming ESCs.
Gerry

Hi Everyone,

Just finished my first Formosa, hav'nt taked any photos yet but she maidened on Easter Monday and flew ok apart from a problem with the C of G.
Hands off she was flying like a wood pigeon :-)

When glassing the Formosa what resin do you use with the glass cloth, i live in the UK so some things from the USA wont be avaiable.

Thanks
Jason

Originally Posted by Electric Gerry

Here is my two penn'orth,
Auto-programming Lipo ESCs come with a warning: they determine the no. of cells in the battery from the initial terminal voltage, so if a part-used battery is used the lower terminal voltage could lead the ESC to think it was connected to a lower cell-count battery and discharge to a correspondingly lower voltage, damaging the Lipo battery.
Hence only connect fully charged Lipos to auto-programming ESCs.
Gerry

Or.............disable the auto-detect and set the LVC manually............Then you don't have to worry about it.

Cal,
My setup is a Micro 06/20 with a Tornado 20A ESC, using an 8x1050 NH battery.
The ESC came with the warning I quoted. It only gives instructions for enabling or disabling the brake, no mention of setting the LVC manually. Is this a facility only available on more sophisticated ESCs?
Regards,
Gerry

Jason,
I did a bit of glassing on my recently-built Formosa. From posts on this site it appears that most people use a water-based polyurethane (WBPU) paint instead of resin, so I followed this route. I found a product which is specially formulated for modelling called Poly-C from RC World (www.rcworld.co.uk). Just use 0.5oz cloth and not too many coats of Poly-C or it gets a bit heavy, mine eventually weighed in at 20oz!
Regards,
Gerry

Hi - here's a 12 oz Formosa. No Landing gear, no paint except for on the canopy. I Painted it with a super thin layer of Weld Bond to seal it and testors blue for color. The Orange color is "Duck" tape - a sort of parody of Duct tape, this stuff comes in neon colors, and it really makes the leading edge tough, plus it shows up great "up there". My set up is himax 2015 - 5400, MPI aluminum gearox, GWS 9X6, Kokam 1500 3 cell packs, and Jeti Advance controller. It is an auto select controler and works great! Plug and play - no probs in 200 flights on this airplane. Easily my favorite airplane of all time.
Dadzilla

Originally Posted by Electric Gerry

Cal,
My setup is a Micro 06/20 with a Tornado 20A ESC, using an 8x1050 NH battery.
The ESC came with the warning I quoted. It only gives instructions for enabling or disabling the brake, no mention of setting the LVC manually. Is this a facility only available on more sophisticated ESCs?
Regards,
Gerry

You've hit the main issue with many new Lipo-friendly ESCs... they will not allow you to set the LVC at a specified voltage. My old CC PHX 25 only had manual LVC. Now the new programming gives a separate option for auto-LVC setting, but I can still set it manually. Since you are using 8-cell NiMH packs as I currently am, there is yet another potential problem with an ESC that only has "lipo-friendly" auto LVC. It can mistake an 8-9 cell NiMH pack for a 3S Lipo pack, and set the LVC at the desired 9v for Lipos when it should be set at 6v for NiMH cells. While this does no harm to your NiMH cells, it does cut your power just when you are starting to enjoy the flight. It sounds like this has not been a problem with your ESC, but if you added another cell, I bet it would unless your ESC has a jumper or toggle to tell the ESC it has NiMH cells attached (some ESC now have this option as well).

Tom,
The ESC claims to be suitable for NC and NH batteries up to 10cells and LP's for 2 or 3 cells. It seems to me that with the voltage overlap here they are being very optimistic.
I have only used 8xNH so far, so no problem, but I shall be getting a 3S LP soon. I think I will continue to keep my stopwatch handy.
Gerry

Originally Posted by Electric Gerry

Cal,
My setup is a Micro 06/20 with a Tornado 20A ESC, using an 8x1050 NH battery.
The ESC came with the warning I quoted. It only gives instructions for enabling or disabling the brake, no mention of setting the LVC manually. Is this a facility only available on more sophisticated ESCs?
Regards,
Gerry

Gerry, it is available on the Phoenix 25's that I have. Not sure if it's available on yours.

I am probably going to get a formosa and I was wondering what the differance between the slope glider and the normal kit was. Does the sg kit just not have a motor?

The sg does not have a motor or landing gear.