15s Ion-x anyone?

[TomC]

G'day mates,

I've been having a discussion with a guy on RCG forum regarding electrifying his 90 Preditor using 3x5s1p 3700 Evo20 packs, which he has lots of;

www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=692946

This got me thinking about my fairly large collection (12x5s1p 3700 Evo20 packs) and the cost I was going to have going to 12s later this year when the Ion belt mods come out.

Looks like an Actro 32-5 (330kv) on 15s geared to ~9-9.5:1 and governed with a 15s rated PowerJazz esc (I think that CC will also be coming out with a 15s esc later this year) should be perfect.

I'm not looking for unlimited 3D power, more for duration and more consistant power over the total flight time. Any thoughts or fatal flaws in this logic?

Cheers,
Tom C

[JBajkor]

I think it's a great idea. I am very interested in your results because I have a PowerJazz for the same reason. It works so well, I have another on order to replace CCHV110 in another heli.
I am only using 10S now and want to change to 15S in the future. I will be looking forward to your report.
Joe

[TomC]

Mongo, you're probably right mate! Mr Mel, on the current SS Ion thread, reckons I can govern the new 15s PowerJazz esc to ~2000 with a 15s setup so that might be worth looking at for now. Like you say, there is probably a 20s PowerJazz or CC in the develoment pipeline as we speak!

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey , another one to look at , like my 14s Ion , 32-4 100t main gear , and I been wanting to try a secret wepon motor though , instead of the motor upside down , but need a few things before I try this ,


Tony

[TomC]

OK Tony, I'll bite. What's the 'secret weapon motor'?

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey , just checking to see if someones listen, ok, plan A when I first got my Ion 3 years ago . Actro only had a airplane version motor , the Ion had the conversion kit for that motor , well to me that setup was one that could hang with what the 12s TP 5000s are pumping out , the MA 100t main gear and a 12t pinion , that should handle at least 5000 watts , yes a single stage setup , nothing to break like the 4mm screw on the back side of the heli version motor , so heres my plan , 32-4 for 12s 5000s , or 32-5 for 15s , also with this mount , how about the actro 40 series motors . YEH!!!

[TomC]

Sounds like a great plan, go for it Tony! Might have to look at doubling up those main gears though?

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey , naw ! the gear should hold up , I never had a problem with 14s , I think why its stripping them is most fellows are running to shallow of gov , torque is to great below 88% gov .

[TomC]

Tony,

Good to hear, that double main Ion-x2 looks like MA overkill to me. I guess if you need 5000 watts (like Bobby Watts!), it's a good idea, but for my wimpy style of flying, I cannot see needing more than 3000 watts. I really just want more duration and more consistant power over the total flight time.

I also think that some of this main gear stripping might be due to the very strong throttle response (even at low throttle reponse and low timing advance settings) of the CC HV escs. I've noticed a lot less secondary gear wear on my 10s 2-stage Ion since switching back to my good old Hacker 77-heli esc (w/100% throttle) from a HV110 on gov mode.

What do you think that the lowest workable %gov is on a PowerJazz? Mel is using the SS 100/10t, Actro 32-3 with 12s 5000 Evo25's and is just governing it down to 10s hs's (~58%). Says it works well. He reckons I could govern down 15s the same way. Any thoughts about this mate?

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey , with this much power and voltage, you need to run above 88% or above of actual 100% headspeed , and yes I do think the CC is alittle ruff on the gears , I wouldnt do it that way , its not in the efficiency ( sweet spot)

[TomC]

Tony, I think you are spot on mate. I cannot believe that it is a good idea to govern down any esc that much, even if it can handle it. I would think that you would lose too much overall efficiency. Maybe a very low inductance motor like the Tango's with high (32khz) PWM freq's might work ok but there are not any large ones out there right now and the Tango's are only good for 22-2400 watts. It might be unlikely that even the powerjazz could handle this anyway.l

For your high target watts the 32-4 (12s) and 32-5 (15s) look like better alternatives. For me, I'm not too sure. All I really want is more duration and more consistant power over the course of a flight. Also, I'd be pretty happy with ~3000 watts peak. Right now I'm only pulling ~2500 watts with my 10s 3700 Evo20 setups, just to keep the batteries happy. Heh, I'm pretty happy with this but I would like a bit more power.

I'm trying to do a cost/benefit analysis on all this right now and it's pretty interesting.

The cost to go 15s, since I have a lot of 5s 3700 eco20 packs is ~ $350 for an Ion-x2 belt drive upgrade kit plus $400 for a PowerJazz esc = $750. This assumes that I can get ~ a 15:1 overall ratio within the price of the upgrade and that I can still use my current Actro 32-3 heli motor (w/5mm shaft).

If I go your way and get a 32-5 motor ($350) plus powerjazz ($400) this would be the same ~ $750 and I would still need a new motor pinion and shaft adapter, probably another $100-150.

12s is looking less attractive to me since I still need to upgrade my Hacker esc ($230-400) plus start buying 6s cells that do not fit the current Ion-x canopy so I'm also up for a the $350 Ion-x2 upgrade cost . This would then cost $580-750, plus new battery costs (4x6s 5000 evo25 ~ $1600).

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I should just stick with my current 10s setups and buy larger capacity cells that will fit my current Ion canopy. The 2 main contenders seem to be the fp 20/30c 3300 5s packs x 4 @ 890g = $720 or the TP 15/20/c prolites 5s3p 6000 x 2 = $660 @ 610g. Both these options should give me ~8 min runtime. The FP packs weigh a bit more but probably pack enough punch to make up the difference. Also, the FP packs would be usable on my 10s Trex600 while the TP packs would require me to go to another trex frame set.

I guess the problem is two-fold since both of these packs may not be offered in the near future anyway. I already see that FP is no longer offering a 3300 pack in their new 25c range.

All this E-stuff is getting a little too hard to handle. Seems to be me that gassers with simple pull-starts and cheap running costs may be a lot more attractive!

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey1 , now thats a good idea , gasser, if only they could make it lighter.
3300s are good packs , would work good on a lite logo 600 on down. they work ok on my 12s Razor , but the tail twist out and blow out dureing some hard stunts , they sag down but you cant hear it, the torque is enough to throw the tail . Im ganna up the % a tad , just to help this out ,
also , dont rule out TP 10s 5000 . compared to the 3850, 3700, 4600, 10s 5000s is like a 5% incress in power

[MrMel]

I still run my at PJ at 58% without any issue, actually, I tried "regear" it so I used 75% instead, but got terrible bogging compared to running it 58%.

Sure, Peaks went down, but overall flight-time didnt increase that much so it was worth it.

I know people that runs PJ's in commercial applications and runs it very good at any RPM.

Now, that said, its important to understand how the PJ's governor works.
Lets say your max RPM is 10000 RPM, at 1% throttle you will probably end up with 5000 RPM.
Then you have something like 5000-9300 RPM for 2-100%.
Last 700 is kept for its own headroom.

So, when I say 58% on the PJ, its actually 58% of the range 5000-9300, NOT 0-10000

The PowerJazz (and every other Jazz) uses voltage to determine what the RPM range will be, thats why if you take a 80% charged 12s pack, you will get much lower headspeed, simply it thinks its a 11s, good to remember this.

So, never ever compare % on governor between PJ and others like CC, they are probably not working the same math.

[misskimo]

yeh! PJ is one nice esc , another good one to have is the schulze , when you have one of theses , the radio % is exact what the % is on the head, and it doest have the 7% headroom like kontronics , but there sofeware is about the same on there throttle responce and gov gain, I wish I knew how they do it , maybe its self regulated in there gov , adjust for any motor, but both are plug and play , on my schulze , I open wide open throttle , plug batteries in. here 2 tones , put canopy on , step back and bring throttle back to low stick , arms , and ready to fly , you can bypass this feature and let the esc figure it out , ex: you have it set at 85% , plug the batteries in at low stick. arms right away. when you flip the switch , it goes to 100% wide open throttle and then backs off to 85% .
also a good rule of thumb to go with on the kontronics , let the motor open up before lift off ,

[MrMel]

Yeah, schulze works great.

Here is a graph of when I played around with the PowerJazz, brushless RPM sensor and a servo tester.

Each "step" is about 10 pulses on the servo tester.
(disregard the initial hack in the spoolup, that was me..)

http://www.dacsa.net/heli/optrontest.jpg

[misskimo]

cool ! I like what the servos are running , there a few years ago , JK said he was pushing 5 amps through his servos , well with a sorry nicd pack that cant deliever high power , yes you can hit 5 amps , but the new packs like the faup 1950s , man way different ,

[nicco]

I'm the 15s Predator guy!

I have sold my Gasser to buy e-stuff. There is two problem with the gasser. One is noice, it is laud compare to an e-bird. And the power to wieght ratio is not so good.

I had an 5 hp Zenoah (and it was running on a dyno so I know it was 5 hp), it still don't have that power that a well-setup e-bird has!

So an 15s setup lookes fine to me!

/N

[TomC]

G'day Nicco,

Ya, E's have much better power/weight. I just get a little tired of lugging all this E stuff around, and trying to afford keeping up to date with motors, escs, and batteries sometime.

No doubt about it, gassers are noisy beasts. Also, they stink up your house unless you use camper fuel and all the ones I've seen vibrate a lot as well.

Maybe one day they will come out with a light weight twin cylinder or wankle turbo-charged gasser motor. That would be sweet!

Please keep us posted on how you make out with your 15s heli. Thanks.

Cheers,
Tom C