Hey Everyone, I am new to the hobby and would love to say how much I am enjoying it so far! I was a stick plane kind of guy before I decided to venture down this path. The closest club is about 2.5 hours away, so it seems I am building on my own. With that I have a few new guy questions and if you could lend some experience I would greatly appreciate it. I have watched numerous videos and read countless threads, but still have a few questions that I'm sure are going to be fairly easy. I am currently in the early part of my Hood constructions, (see pictures for progress) and I am getting to the point where I am in need of some advice. First, the Hood has four props are most battlers running all four or just two with two dummy props? Next, ESC's will I need and ESC for each or can the motors be jumped together and still ran off the one? Motor's...brushless or brushed? I see on BC that a 550 Brushed seems to do the job but looking for experience of why to go brushed or brushless... Thanks again in advanced!
@rcengr Is part of the Ohio group I do believe, but they mainly run Treaty(?) I believe ruleset. Not traditional IRCWCC Fastgun. In fastgun, Hood isn't the most competitive boat but if that's the one you have your heart set on don't let that stop you. Yes, 550 brushed motors would do fine and in fast gun you would power the center 2 shafts and have dummy/drag props on the outer 2 shafts. Brushed motors you can have multiple motors on 1 ESC, just keep in mind the load of the motors and the max amperage rating of the ESC. If you build to Fastgun rules, you can make your boat treaty compliant by throttling things back I believe. Not necessarily easy to do the opposite. There are fastgun battles regularly in Bradford PA, so not too far for you, but then again this hobby is 90% travel. @Nate G is the site host for the Bradford battles, if you reached out to him he might be willing to host a building session. I'm in NJ, else I'd say swing on by to my shop Edit: For a first build I'd stick to brushed. I've done both over the years and while my current boats are all brushless the brushed boats get just as much battling done. Requires half the electronics, half the failure points.
I could see the props issue either way. Just make sure your speed is right. You can have one ESC for the two motors. Use a brushed motor. Although brushless is used in planes, no one I know has a ship with a brushless motor.
Look at any of my builds, all brushless drive+pump. However, I have been thinking of going back to brushed for simplicity+reliability's sake. It does the job just fine.
Fast Gun ships definitely benefit from the higher power and torque from brushless motors. Big Gun ships don't really need that to reach speed, so they don't bother. If you're using brushed motors, you can use a single ESC for your drive, and wire multiple motors in parallel. If you're using brushless motors, you need a separate ESC for each motor. This does ramp up the cost and complexity.
