Richard Irwin with his electric powered 85-inch wingspan Stratostreak (at left). You have to look closely because the electric motor is buried in an old Fox 35 crankcase and cylinder. Richard said “an Angel made him do it”. Dave Saso of SAM 21 (above) holds his Speed 400 Cleveland Cloudster. That golden grass at his feet lets you know why California was named “The Golden State”.
flyers. The field has a nice asphalt runway, and at this time of year the grass is indeed golden.
Dave Saso and Dave Lewis were some of the nice guys at the field. Having been there and done that myself, I could appreciate the plight of one fellow who showed up for the contest having left his transmitter at home. But there were folks there who could and did help him out and he got his models in the air after all.
Most of you who read this column have been flying for at least a few years or so, and at many different fields. If you search your recollection, you’ll remember the lone tree that snagged every model in sight, or drop- ping your model in an alligator infested swamp (think Florida), or in dense woods, or across a border (say into Tijuana, Mexico) or a boundary you can’t cross (the fenced-in missile site at RAF Barkston Heath). Flying old timer models is an outdoor sport, and if you do it long enough, you’ll have plenty of retrieval stories to tell your friends. Of course, as is well known, we all flew a lot better way back in the way back, and it won’t hurt to embellish a story or two. There seems to be more and more electric old timer models in the air and at the major contests. I have to tell a story about Richard Irwin’s Stratostreak. Richard’s big Strato - streak (about a 160% scale-up of the original 51-inch wingspan model) has an electric mo- tor buried inside an old Fox 35 engine. Not all SAM modelers are fans of this “electrick- ery” stuff, and noted SAM Guru Bob Angel had complained to Richard that, “folks just aren’t using the good old engines like they should”. So Richard did the faux Fox combo in the Stratostreak. Richard claims that, “an Angel made him do it” and he’s sticking to his story.
As long as we’re talking electric old time models and model classes, there’s news on the Speed 400, Electric Wakefield and Spirit of SAM (SOS) event fronts. Germany’s Graupner Models has suffered a financial hiccup or difficulties of some kind. The con- tinued availability of the Graupner 6321 6V Speed 400 motor, and the Graupner Speed 300 motors was in doubt.
The SAM Electric Rules Committee has FLYING MODELS
taken emergency measures and you can now use the Maxx Products Speed 400 and Speed 300 motors in lieu of the Graupner motors. Before you buy however, please check the SAM website for details about which Maxx Products motors are allowed. There are a number of different models of each size motor.
On the SOS front, some people are having difficulty getting “good” brands of AAA Ni- Cds to make up the requisite 4-cell battery pack. And by “good” I mean a pack where you could reliably draw 300 plus mAh “juice” out of the pack. Since the SOS event is es- sentially a duration event for R/C electric versions of Class C OT Rubber models (150 square inches of wing area), you don’t need much of a powerplant to get one in the air. When the event started most people were using geared brushed motors from GWS. These days any of the 10- to 20-gram brush- less outrunners are more than enough pow- er. Add in the tiny R/C systems that can be salvaged from the wreckage of all those ARF R/C microfoamies out there and you’ve got some serious lightness.
Many of those salvaged systems run on one 3.7V Li-Po cell. There are 5- to 7-amp speed controls and servos out there now that can run on one Li-Po cell. Several SOS flyers have begun to experiment with models us- ing this new setup. SAM electric event rules tend to follow and be driven by available battery technology. If you’re an “experi- menting” type of modeler, here’s an area to play in. I don’t know where the event rules will wind up, but I’m certain that a change will be coming.
A word here about Loren Kramer, pic- tured with his Speed 400 Playboy. There are lots of different ways to mount a Speed 400 motor in an old timer model. I’ve seen them rubber banded to black plastic glow engine mounts. I saw one fellow who’d taken a reed valve Cox .049 backplate and somehow clamped it to the back of the Speed 400 mo- tor. He then mounted the backplate on the firewall using the standard screw holes. I’ve seen HiMaxx cooling fin clamps used to hold a Speed 400 motor on beam mounts. Loren has designed and sells a more ele- gant Speed 400 motor mount. The motor is
mounted inside a machined tube by screws that pass through the front of the mount into the front of the motor. The back of the Kramer mount has the same mounting bolt pattern as the Cox reed valve backplate. Most Speed 400 airplanes use one of the many available ½A Texaco designs with wing areas of 288 square inches or so. Alter- nately almost any one of the Ohlsson .19 powered Class A designs from the 1930s will make a good Speed 400 ship. The brushed 6V Speed 400 direct drive motor doesn’t re- ally want to swing anything bigger than a 7–4 prop—and most of the Speed 400 guys like to use a 5.5- or 6-inch diameter prop. However, the Kramer mount will also take a brushless 400 sized outrunner motor which can spin an 8- or even a 9-inch prop. If you want more performance (which you could get either through a gearbox or an out- runner motor) for your Speed 400 ship for sport flying, you simply swap out the brushed 400 for the brushless outrunner.
These are the critical parts for the Altitude Limited Special Event. The device on the left programs the onboard unit. After the flight, the device will show you the actual altitude reached.
57
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68