ELCTRIC /IC DEBATE

OK so here we go. if this doesnt get the blood boiling nowt will.

I fly BOTH electric and IC.

now up until recently The I/C was a clear winner , but now, well I would admitt electrics are taking the lead.

I love this debate. ease at the field cost etc .
Well I reckon to the average guy the electric aircraft can be a pain in the butt.

If hes designing or building from a kit he needs to work out the engine size ,battery size, ecs size and its quite often worked out in the garage with lots of sparks and melting of soldered joints.

Well he builds the plane ,and gets to the field where he discovers the batteries that were charged are now needing a top up . So up comes the bonnet of his car and on go the jumper leads or however he wishes to connect up the flashest battery charger he can find,as we all know its a total waste of time buying a cheap charger that will take 1.5 hours to charge anything other than a penlight battery.
Any how after connecting to the car with more sparks and possible car computer damage he charges the battery.
Into the plane goes this heavy lump of lipo held in with only a velcro strap.only to find that the battery has a deans connector and the plane has a parkzone connector. ,never mind ,he can charge another battery for his flight ,one with the correct terminal this time.
now how does he set that charger to charge, it has more functions than most fighter jets ,ten minutes later away it goes charging.

OK a little exagerated but you get the drift so far.

Battery charged into the plane tranny on , good to go ,plug in and beep beep beep beep beep beep , you know the ecs isnt set correct or somethings wrong . unplug have a fiddle, plug in beep beep beep , sounds about right, ohh what now the recievers not bound .unplug ,replug ,un plug replug ,retracts go up plane sits on ground but the reciever is bound and the ecs is making the correct noises.

Great off he goes beautiful takeoff and climb out with a good little flying session , sets up to land ,grass a little long ,,,in it comes nice greaser style landing to a sudden stop . walk over pick up the plane and the firewall where the battery has slipped through the velcro and blown everthing in front of it out..

Meanwhile I have had two flights with my IC extra300 , one with my IC LA racer, a couple of SAL launch flights with my glider and rebuilt the fuselarge of my 1/4 scale electric spacewalker..

GET MY DRIFT/.

I just wouldn't bother with electric unless it was a powered glider or a 3s park flyer.
No matter how you set the Tx timer you'll never be sure you haven't wrecked a bloody expensive big Lipo.....at least with IC you'll just go deadstick and I can cope with that.
Setting an ESC to low voltage cut out will just mean you cut out long before your battery is low because of voltage drop in the connecting leads.

I hear people going on about pulling 60 Amps !!!!....look at the thickness of cable you need to do that correctly.....it's fatter that the cable to a car starter motor. :woohoo:

Pol.

lipos , hundreds of charges from one battery, thats if its not destroyed in a crash , or puffed up for a number of reasons.
The cry deadstick with I/C is always reasuring with the knowledge that theres enough battery power for the receiver, unlike the first time flight cry of a new untested electric model , batteries cut out ,oh no i thought it had a BEC/or ubec ,or abc ,or dfp ,whatever theryre called at the moment.. :whistle: :whistle: :whistle: :dry:

Theres also the debate that once you have the lipo theres no need to buy fuel, but the cost of a lipo for a larger than 60 size plane buy a hell of alot of glow fuel thats if your not converted to petrol which is even cheaper,

And how about the risk of burning down the house ,garage , clubhouse with lipos and chargers , how safe are they when used by the novice..

The one big advantage over glow/gas is low noise , altho ill debate that too with the new sound systems , and you cant tell me that my stryker is a quiet electric as are my edf planes , im tone deaf but i can here them over any IC/gas plane i have.
I havent worked out how to put a muffler on a electric motor

Biggest advantage of elec over I/C is no drips on the carpet. since returning to the hobby 3 yrs ago, I went straight for elec and have never regreted it. £30 for a 4s 4000 lipo doesnt worry me as I am a pensioner and you know how much we get. Ha Ha.
Dont give a toss as in 25 yrs I will be 100 and wont care anyway.
Garry

If you're into IC, you get to play with this kind of stuff.

I rest my case!

Nice klippy
Ive got a twin fox i would like to get going

When you are an idle sod like me, electric is best
1 up to field with a couple of lipos TX and model nowt else needed
2 put model on ground and take of. No flicking and tuneing for half an hour.
3 finish session model straight in car, no washing up liquid etc and cleaning down
4 get home kiss or kick wife and she doesnt tell you to wash your hands first
5 no ear defenders to put away (health and saftey)
Electric....... Pure heaven. (tONGUE IN CHEEK)
Garry (Sparks for short)

To quote garry that no tuning is necesary , how often do you see guys pluggin and un pluggin trying to workout what theyve done wrong as the ecs isnt makeing the correct noises.

Re tuning I/C motors, once tuned shouldnt really need any more other than atweak because of a different batch of fuel
The biggest problem with guys at the field and I/C motors is that when they wont go they tweak the needle valve changing settings.
I bet that if they check the plug and flicked that motor ,it will fire then if they just quite simply let it run till
1 it warmed up
2 it blew the old fuel out and was into fresh fuel there would be no issues.

I go to the field and my planes start first go and if let to run for a second or two never need a tune,

Dont get me wrong guys I like electrics too , i have a few . GWS skyhawk, FMSme109,
Parkzone stryker, het F20 ,greatplanes f20, fms steath, flyfly mirage , 90mm edf f18,parkzone mustang ,alfa mig15, eflite f86, 72inch yak hyperion, and a few others , but i still find it just as easy to grab a gas sa to sort that lot out.

Glad you are one of the rare breed Kiwi that doesnt fiddle with the needle valve all the time, but you are in the minority if my club is anything to go by. I have never come across so many fiddlers in my life. They finally get the engine right, take off and then they are yelling " Its out of trim ". If they didnt fiddle so much they would get more than 2 flights per session
Fortunatly never had a ESC misbehave, just watch next time I go
Dont get me wrong, flew ic for 15 yrs, but am now an idle sod and find elec so easy
Garry

I havent worked out how to put a muffler on a electric motor

Most of the noise is from the PROP. If you silence that, you get no thrust! Listen to a 6s ducted fan scream! It's louder than a Dyson vacuum cleaner!
(joke - Copper to leccy model flyer - what kind of engine has that got, son? reply - It hasn't got an engine.)
Drips on the carpet - if you fly your models outside, you don't get linear scars on the wallpaper, or headless potted plants, either!

While you are wiping the oil off your infernal combustion models, the car boot, the car seat, the car doors, etc, I'm having my hot meal!

For info I used to use glow and diesel engines, too (not on the same aircraft!) But the club I was in got tired of getting noise complaints from a nearby housing estate (half a mile away at nearest) so one day we all turned up, assembled our models, and sat around, gassing with the local copper who was official witness. Nobody started an engine all day, and we got noise complaints!

I always thought of model planes as representing full size planes , in modelling we try to copy as much as possible, its called detail.
Model train enthusiasts lust after steam from the boiler etc ,all aspects copy the full size whatever is being modelled.
But i havent until today seen a full size electric plane, i just saw a vid of a electric cricri. mind you its more of a full size model of a model if you know what i mean.:dry: :whistle: :whistle:

In the 60s' the local council gave us a place to fly our Control liners on, and yes they were noisy.:ohmy: Then came the move to fit silencers to the engines. I had discovered girls by then, so was out of it. But, chain saws, gas weed whackers, racing cars, rally cars, truck exhaust brakes, scrambler bikes and a few others, are all noisier that a silenced model plane. So what caused this perception of noise in the public mind? Did model aircraft become the whipping boy? I can only think that the whole thing was incredibly badly managed by the model flying authorities of the time. Members of the public registered complaints even when nothing was flown from the patch, with a copper as a witness!

gee kiwi wrote: I always thought of model planes as representing full size planes , in modelling we try to copy as much as possible, its called detail.
Model train enthusiasts lust after steam from the boiler etc ,all aspects copy the full size whatever is being modelled.
But i havent until today seen a full size electric plane, i just saw a vid of a electric cricri. mind you its more of a full size model of a model if you know what i mean.:dry: :whistle: :whistle:

I've argued for IC up to now but I love to pick a fight with Kiwi so here goes.

I put it to you that it's easier to represent a full size aircraft by using electric.
No protruding unsightly exhausts & air cooled cylinder heads.....you can use dummy ones for scale.
If you get a quiet motor & prop you can add a sound system to copy the noise of the real thing.
I could carry on but it's more fun to watch the debate get heated.....let me know when the boxing gloves come off. :woohoo: :ohmy: :evil: ....I didn't start it. :whistle:

Pol.

Sorry, there's something about things that go vrooom, or in my case bang! Electric is great if you want to grab a quick flight without the missus noticing, but there's nothing like the ritual of IC flying. To put it another way, one of my favorite fire arms is a 50 calibre Hawken Kentucky rifle. Go to the range, put up a target, walk back to the firing point, pick up the rifle, put a cap on the nipple (NO comments please Phil!) Point down range, squeeze the trigger. Put butt on boot, pour 100 grains of no 2 black powder down the barrel. Peel off a greased patch and place it over the end of the barrel, take a lead ball, (cast by myself) place it in the centre of the patch. Push in the ball with the short starter, take the ramrod and push the ball all the way down. Pull out ramrod and stow it under the barrel, pick up rifle and pull hammer back to half cock, place cap on nipple, point at target, pull hammer to full cock, acquire target, sqeeze rear triger to set hair trigger, stroke front trigger, there's a deep 'BOOM' and a gentle shove in the shoulder. Put rifle down and check target, repeat for second shot.
With my 270 Winchester you just jack a cartridge into the chamber and just blast away.
There's just no comparison is there.

To a person starting out in 2021. IC or electric?