Servo Question

[PaulH]

I am just about to finish building my second Intrepid Gasser. Woohoo! :)

I used Futaba servos in the first bird as follows:

Cyclic: 9252
Collective: 9151
Throttle: 9001
Rudder: 9254 (w/ GY401)

Just for the heck of it, I'm thinking about running a 6 volt battery in the new Intrepid. If I do that, I will need cyclic and collective servos that can accept the greater voltage without letting out any magic smoke. I can use a power diode to drop the rudder servo voltage to a manageable level.

The Futaba S9451 has metal gears and is rated for 97/0.13 @ 4.8 volts and 121/0.10 @ 6 volts. They only cost $80 which appears to be a pretty good bang for the buck. Has anyone used these? Do the metal gears cause any trouble?

As an alternative, Hitec has servos with some pretty amazing specifications. The 6965 has Karbonite gears and is rated for 92/0.10 @ 4.8 volts and 111/0.08 @ 6 volts. These are $85. The 6975 is the same price and is rated for 119/0.13 @ 4.8 volts, 144/0.10 @ 6 volts. Would Karbonite be better than metal in a gasser?

Tower shows a lot of the Hitec servos as being discontinued. Is this something that I should be concerned with in the future?

[lperagallo]

I am running 9250s in my eb gasser on cyclic controls with no problem. Even though Futaba says they are metal gears, I believe the middle gear is not metal. In a crash I had both 9252's strip the gears while the 9250s survived a heavier crash with no problem. I have used a Hitec on collective on my Raptor after a Futaba s3151 stripped out and I have never had an issue with the Karbonite gears.

I think either the Hitec or Futabas will work fine. I use Futaba because you can get them at a good price from Heliproz and I don't have to deal with Tower. Tower is a one day shipping point from my address and it always takes a week after they tell me it's shipped.