Soldering ACE

[daveapplemotors]

I am an ACE solderer. My soldering skills (or lack of ) have brought down at least 5 aircraft. Too bad the aircraft were mine.

I would like some suggestions for the kind of graphics for my stickers momentos to put on my soldering station cowling for each helicopter downing.

I already have some "Smoke Awards" for grounding (get the pun?) an aircraft electrically before take-off. Letting smoke out is sabotage! Dang, too bad those were mine, too

Smoke awards look a lot like little fifty dollar bills on fire.

[Bladecpnitro]

I hear hot air pencil's work best because you don't actually have to touch the object being soldered and risk moving it out of position or sucking up what little solder you have in place.

Irons that are too hot or too cold are a problem for me. The 75watt works great on larger bullet connectors or any wires but is too hot for boards and tiny FET's.

My 35 watt works better on circuit boards for installing FET's and tiny signal wires like on the Nano, but the 75 watt works better to wick up the old solder from a bad part on the board. I use some old stripped servo wire with solder paste on it to absorb unwanted solder.

Are you soldering wires or FET's?

[daveapplemotors]

I am just being a facetious whiner. But still I would put a cool sticker on the cowling of my soldering station. Stickers are fun, que no?

A lot of my crashes are from mechanical issues like a power wire coming loose from a board or plug, an ESC trigger wire falling off or a single motor wire from an XP3A. All seven of my little Blades have dbl bl setups. I have soldered each power wire, ESC and rewound tail motor. .

So you just have to figure since these little helis are so simple and have more wires than mechanical parts ,practically, that the wiring joints will fail

And thanks for your concern. I have a decent soldering station with digital temp control and about 10 different sized tips. And 65 year old eyeballs so I use a large magnifier.

Two tips:

If you have good eyes for soldering use a magnifier anyway. It will keep the smoke out of your eyes.

Use a small dab of hot-glue over the solder joint / the motor wires and ESC to help keep those little wires from wiggling.off.

[Bladecpnitro]

Have you tried the MCPX BL? It doesn't need all the soldering mods.

[MariaFan]

Originally Posted by daveapplemotors

I am an ACE solderer. My soldering skills (or lack of ) have brought down at least 5 aircraft. Too bad the aircraft were mine.

I would like some suggestions for the kind of graphics for my stickers momentos to put on my soldering station cowling for each helicopter downing.

I already have some "Smoke Awards" for grounding (get the pun?) an aircraft electrically before take-off. Letting smoke out is sabotage! Dang, too bad those were mine, too

Smoke awards look a lot like little fifty dollar bills on fire.

How about this?