e-Pantera - when the day comes...

[forvols]

When JB finally resleases the e-conversion kit and I decided to get rid of even more of that yucky, nasty green stuff with George Washington's picture on it, what excatly do I need to be looking for?


Motor? Size, Kv, in/out runner?

ESC? All I know about these is I want one with a governor mode... 85A? 100A? ??? I read as many threads about ESC's burning up as I do Nitro engines needing new bearings. I can't stand equipment that is not reliable - I just won't fool with it. How do I determine what ESC's are good and which are junk? What will I need to do to make sure my ESC is easily up to the task, and how can I prolong it's life? What is the avg life span of an ESC?

BEC? Is this typically part of the ESC job or will I need a seperate BEC? IF so... how do I determine the correct BEC?

Batteries? 6s, 8s, 10s, 12s? Will a 12s pack have to "work less" than a 8s pack, therefore allowing the 12s pack to potentially last longer, thus justifying it's higher price? FIRE!!!!!! I read horror stories all the time. I'm getting very leary about the though of having 3-4 lipo packs charging at night while we're asleep. I certainly am not interested in offering my wife's safety or our house so that I can play with toy helicopters! What is a must have to insure that I'm not dealing with a house fire when something goes wrong during a charge?

Charger? I'm assuming that my choice of charger will be highly dependent upon the size of the battery packs I'm running? It takes a better charger to handle 12s packs than 8s packs?

Power supply for the charger? I think I'd prefer an AC/DC charger to begin with, but if I use a DC charger what size 12v battery would I realistically need to be able to charge 2-3 packs at the field?

I see the serious electric guys showing up with $1500 generators. I can buy a LOT of nitro before I could justify the price of $600 worth of chargers and a $1500 generator !!

Is electric really cheaper in the long run? Can my batteries last 3-4 years? Will my ESC and chargers last for years?

Man... they seem so convenient when I see others flying electric, but when I look at getting into it... man, everything is expensive and I'm not sure how long it will last before it has to be replaced. I typically can keep a nitro engine for 10 or more years.

Now... what questions have I failed to ask that I should have asked?

[cadkins]

Those are all good points! I am also waiting to see the setup of the electric conversion. I will then decide if I am going to jump from glow on my Pantera. I know if it can't use 2 6S packs then i'm not doing it. I have several packs for my T-rex 500 and I have been looking at the Compass 6HV which will use those packs in series.

I did a long spreadsheet on the glow vs electric comparsion. I think in the larger helis glow is cheaper and easier. You get longer flight times and don't have to lug around all the equipment for electric. There is also the wait time for the battery, motor, and esc to cool down.

I'm putting my header tank back on so I can get even longer flight time. I'm working on inverted flying and hate the short flight times! Flight times with electric is always a trade-off for the performance of it.

I have had good luck with Hobbycity chargers so you may want to look there. For power to charge 4 6S 2650MAH at once I use a Cost-CO Deep-Cycle battery. It has a capacity of 105 amps and I can charge 15 of my 6S packs before it gets below 50% charge.

DO NOT charge your packs at night! If you have a good charger it should take less than 1 hour to charge a pack anyway so it should not be an issue.

[helipainter]

with 8.7 gearing, your looking to hit 17-18k rpm at the motor. you got lots of ways to get there with different cell count/kv. to use a governor, you gotta get pretty narrow window to hit. I think my 800kv on 6s w/ 7.8 ratio runs 13-14k rpm and the gov is set to 1850, 1950 & 2050

The 500kv motor on 10s with a castle ice 160hv is what i'm going after. I've run the 4035-800 on 6s 7.8 ratio and it is lots of power but i want more with less draw. Mine carries 2x 6s 5000mah and a rx 3s pack

been using the castle ccbec pro with no problems

8-10min flights are doable

i too prefer to charge while i'm awake, 250 watts 10 amps charges a 6s 5000 in an hour. My charger was $60 at hobby king. 6s 40c 5000 were less than a hundred ea.

scorions esc has a 2 year warranty. Castle has something similar, if setup properly it should last a while. Heat is what kills esc's so it depends if it runs 130 degrees or 180

They are lots of fun. Super light and gobs of power. Te pantera handles it well.

This thing has to be close now.

[F6Hawk]

when I finally decided to break the piggy bank and get into R/C helis, I looked around for a while. Electrics, nitros, gassers, I thought about them all. And Nitro seemed the best way to go, both for now as well as future growth. And then I chose the Pantera, with all it's growth options. I think I made a good choice.

But as for electric, the costs are higher than it at first appears. A good battery pack will set you back several dollars, and in order to enjoy, you really need about 4-6 packs. After you add up the costs, electric is VERY expensive. And when you crash an E-bird, the chances of ruining a battery pack is pretty good, I think.

Now if you had no choice but to go for quiet, then e-Bird is THE WAY to go. But for me, nitro was a cheaper solution in the long run.

[Raptor30_V1]

Hello,

Even though e-helis became more and more popular (power/ torque/ less noise) - the largest e-size that makes (practical) sense for me is a 550-size e-heli.

You need at least 4 battery-pacs to fly 6 to 8 minutes each - total flight time of half an hour. Anything larger than 550-e-heli will cost you a fortune in battery-pacs. Even though this larger e-helis (600 size and larger) are attractive to fly, the main-killer won't even be the battery-cost only, then the fact, that most of us charge their packs first at home and as you won't like to spend in 8 or more packs (10s/ 12s) pretty sure you think about re-charging on the flying-field? Unfortunatelly your car-battery will not be capable of charging e.g. a LiPo 12s hi-mAh many times.

So to overcome this bottle-neck (charging on car-battery) you need lots of LiPos and even if a 12s pack will cost (some day) 100 USD, you would still pay 800 USD.- for 8 packs?

IMO the appearance of the 550 size is exactly the reason for the above arguments. Larger than the smaller 500' e-heli size but definetly not that large to need 10s or 12s to have good flight performance. In principles the e-motor overcomes one major flaw of the 30' nitro heli size, delivering way more power than our 30' nitro engines did

BTW: IMO the late arrival of the Align's 550-e-heli is the first bigger wrong move (late) Align did on the market. It was other manufacturers to create that size first and to enter the market, meanwhile Align focused on the introduction of the T-Rex700-e. Anyway, as Outrage and others where not capabaeble to offer very attractive 550e-combos, pretty sure Align will recover from being late? The T-Rex700-e is to much effort for nothing and people now struggling with their gears and asking how to charge their battery packs on their car-battery

Best Regards,
Oliver

[ShineyObject]

Is electric really cheaper in the long run? Can my batteries last 3-4 years? Will my ESC and chargers last for years?

Electric is only cheaper if you are flying a 550 or 450 class helicopter or if you have electric stuff already and are embarrassed to tell your friends how big a mistake you made.
Yes, and no. Depends of how much you gave for the battery to begin with, that you charge and store it properly, and if that slave labor Chinaman wasn't dwelling on suicide that day. Same story with the ESC stuff.
I know you. You will not like sorting and figuring out batteries ENDLESSLY. Trust me. I am your friend.

Sincerely,
ShineyObject, Fuel Salesman

[F6Hawk]

And for anyone who thinks you can charge a LiPo (or similar technology) in one or two hours.... yes, you can. For a little while. Most manufacturers still recommend 0.5~1.0 C charge rates, unless thing have changed drastically in the past 6 months.

Charging faster will only make your battery hotter, and reduce its useful life.

But if you need batteries, the prices ARE coming down...
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...idCategory=378

[grwarlock]

"When compared to the lithium-ion battery, Li-poly has a greater life cycle degradation rate. However, in recent years, manufacturers have been declaring upwards of 500 charge-discharge cycles before the capacity drops to 80% (see Sanyo). Another variant of Li-poly cells, the "thin film rechargeable lithium battery", has been shown to provide more than 10,000 cycles."

More about the batterys were using can be found here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium...olymer_battery

Its a good read.

[forvols]

Originally Posted by ShineyObject

You will not like sorting and figuring out batteries ENDLESSLY. Trust me. I am your friend.

Sincerely,
ShineyObject, Fuel Salesman

Mike bringin da funnies!!!!

Not to worry Mike, I don't plan on going pure electric, but I do plan on having an electric Pantera primarily for some sort of scale project. My intention is to be able to not only attend, but to participate in the 2011 version of Darrell's scale fly-in. The Pantera flies so nicely that it seems a perfect candidate for my 1st scale attempt.

Now... i've pretty much decided on running 2 6s 5000 Mah packs in series, but still at a loss regarding motor size/specs. If Darrell can run his jet ranger on a Castle Creation 80A ESC, then I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to do the same with my Pantera .

[maxadventure]

I've been running 8S with 780KV and a CC HV85. On 8S just flying around scale on 620mm I run around 30-40A. I can get 9min flying on 5Ah packs. A set runs me around $90, and this is shared as 4S with other airframes. I can run 2 sets in my 8' tow plane or 3 in my Pantera. I also have a set of 6Ah I can get 10-11 min flight times out of. I picked up a CellPro10 charger and it serves me great. You have four charge options: Home, fields with A/C, fields with solar, or a gen set.

8S is a very nice compromise on price and performance unless you are a power hungry show off, then you'll want more.

[helipainter]

Max, mind sharing the link to them 4s? i just picked up some 35c 4s 5800 but there $70 a piece, and them were the cheap ones.

if your talking hobbypartz, they've been out since beginning of the year and apparently aren't restocking

[redgiki]

A few thoughts:

1. A hybrid using Honda's IMA drive train is capable of sustaining 60+ amps @ 12v indefinitely. With the engine idling, the hybrid uses the electric motor as a big-ass alternator to charge the batteries, and from the batteries to the DC to DC converter. It's that bit -- the DC to DC converter -- that's the biggest question for reliability, but IIRC it's rated at 100 amps sustained, so we should be good. A number of modelers have set up their own DC to DC converter off the voltage straight from the pack (144v on my Insight) and relied on the massive recharge-ability of the electric motor to treat their hybrid as a quiet generator at the field.

2. You can, of course, always bring a little generator with you to the field. That's what pretty much all the "big electric" guys do, or else bring some really big lead-acid cells to the field. We usually share a single generator to keep noise down, and chip in a few bucks to pay for fuel for the generator at the end of the day. A weekend typically requires 3-4 refills of the fuel. This way you get a high-performance electric to fly, with the fuel cost of gasoline. If you factor out the LiPo cost, of course.

3. A growing number of AMA clubs -- including mine -- are taking advantage of weekend-flying habits to provide power at the field (or if they are clubs in heavily-populated areas, they often have power to the field). A few solar cells, a voltage monitor, and four 220Ah deep-cycle lead-acid batteries in parallel, and you can keep the whole club flying big electrics. We have occasionally run into issues at the end of a long contest/event weekend that the batteries have run down too much. But if you think about it, that means we exhausted over ten kilowatt-hours of fun...

(Despite our nifty solar setup, I still would like to start the project to see exactly how much it would cost to get electricity to our field from the buildings 300 yards away...)

4. Strategy #4 for big electrics: Fly a wide variety. If I have a total of five batteries across my airplanes -- twice that for helis, because they get half the runtime -- I can keep flying basically non-stop all day if I want to. Mix up a few big batteries for your big birds, and a half-dozen small ones for your smaller birds. It requires a little planning for your charging setup. Or just meter out your batteries, as suggested.

There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. We didn't get into this hobby to see how much money we could save, after all! But it's nice to be able to afford more toys.

I'm at the point where the number of non-flying aircraft in my hangar exceed those flying, so I'm re-evaluating my project list to figure out which ones to sell or adorn the ceiling of my barn with. Anybody want an old Kyosho Concept 30 to play with? Other than a broken tail pitch assembly, it's in perfect "working" order, circa 1993 gyro and all...

[maxadventure]

Originally Posted by helipainter

Max, mind sharing the link to them 4s? i just picked up some 35c 4s 5800 but there $70 a piece, and them were the cheap ones.

if your talking hobbypartz, they've been out since beginning of the year and apparently aren't restocking

This is what I have several sets of for my Pantera:
http://hobbycity.com/hobbyking/store...idproduct=8580

20C is plenty on a 5AH 8S set up. There are some new inspections going on for LiPo out of China, causes a delay in larger LiPo packs. My last order with some of these for my tow plane came in fine, just added a week ship time.

[supercoolheli]

[jbeech]

Parts are finally about done - here's a photo of a couple of them to whet the apetite. FWIW, I had oral surgery today (the IV started, he said count backwards and I vaguely remember the drive home thinking "I" didn't need anybody there to drive me home). Yes, I actually had the gall to tell myself, "I have driven when I was in worse shape!", which I did . . . once, and 'never' again (my advice is 'never' drink and drive - I was lucky 25 years ago I didn't kill someone when I was young and stupid, but I digress)! Anyway, Lynn subsequently poured me into the bed and I woke several hours later. Meanwhile, my face is swollen and I have a very hard time speaking . . . all this by way of explaining what I am doing wide awake at 1 AM local!

It's worth the wait . . . you're going to like this, believe me!

[WessCo]

Originally Posted by forvols

Now... i've pretty much decided on running 2 6s 5000 Mah packs in series, but still at a loss regarding motor size/specs. If Darrell can run his jet ranger on a Castle Creation 80A ESC, then I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to do the same with my Pantera .

One thing to remember with doing series connections is that it doubles the voltage. The C.C. Phoenix 80 is only rated to 6s. If you were to go with a parallel connection, you'd be OK. What you're going to need to run 12s, is some sort of HV esc. Castle Creations makes a Phoenix ICE HV 80 that would probably fit your bill, barring you chose a motor in that won't pull over that many amps. Here's a suggestion. Contact Lucien Miller at Innov8tivedesigns.com and ask him what his suggestion would be for a .50 size helicopter running a 12s 5000mah pack configuration with a Phoenix ICE HV80 esc.

[grwarlock]

Originally Posted by jbeech

Parts are finally about done - here's a photo of a couple of them to whet the apetite. FWIW, I had oral surgery today (the IV started, he said count backwards and I vaguely remember the drive home thinking "I" didn't need anybody there to drive me home). Yes, I actually had the gall to tell myself, "I have driven when I was in worse shape!", which I did . . . once, and 'never' again (my advice is 'never' drink and drive - I was lucky 25 years ago I didn't kill someone when I was young and stupid, but I digress)! Anyway, Lynn subsequently poured me into the bed and I woke several hours later. Meanwhile, my face is swollen and I have a very hard time speaking . . . all this by way of explaining what I am doing wide awake at 1 AM local!

It's worth the wait . . . you're going to like this, believe me!

Sorry to hear your still having mouth issue's JB. You know Lynn would not hit you in the mouth so often if you would stop getting out of line

Glad to hear that the electric is VERY close now. I am looking forward to it !!

Ken

[helipainter]

Look what came today





This thing is about the size of a 4s 5000mah pack. unreal.



It runs a 4035-800. Upgraded from the 85hv, much better, and got the logger off the nose cause it's built in.

[jbeech]

Electric conversions finally available. Both Stage 1 and Stage II in 5 mm and 6 mm shaft sizes. Website info over the course of the weekend but at last, parts in hand!

[rharms]

Ouch. I just looked up the prices. I will either have to not do electric, or go with the cheap Chinese stuff. I know, you usually pay at least twice for the cheap stuff. Or, maybe use a gasser in my planned scale heli. We shall see.