Taken from my post in another thread; it belongs here in R&D: Well you guys hit the nail on the head; so there is no point of being secretive anymore. This concept is the point of my Iowa; it will fight big gun & MWC; I found with the iowa there are really only a handfull of things that are different. Mostly simply electrical changes, the only things that are truly incompatible is the armor & the cannons. The Iowa's concept is simple; everything is modular. The cannons are "hot swapable", so is the armor. Both cannons sets are able to rotate & rotate VERY quickly as I'm fully aware of how much a "sitting duck" the Iowa is in fast gun. The hardware required to fire a big gun weapon is more than enough to fire a small gun weapon; so build the air delivery system to BG spec & the only thing that needs to be swapped is the cannons / magazine / loader mechanism. Everything else is (can be) the same. The rotation mechanism is the same... Both weapons simply use the same "interface". The armor is also swappable. You ask, How? Easy. Glue the balsa to a metal "gasket", (just cut sheet metal of the correct shape) use common fasteners to attach the metal gasket to the ship, silkspan over the edges (make sure the edges are part of the "inpenetrable area" as it is defined as "any material" in both big gun & MWC). To change, cut the silkspan, disconnect the fasteners, reconnect the new set (design requires two gaskets, one for each balsa thicknesss) & respan. (I'm hoping using a second gasket, a rubber gasket, will stop the need for all the silkspan, but we will see.) Everything else for the Iowa is within tolerance of each other, or can be superceeded... Rudders are (nearly) the same / props can be the same (although, I've decided to swap this too) / speed can be adjusted with speed controllers / fast gun pump can be slowed down to make big gun capacity / fast gun batteries capacity can be used for big gun (Iowa will just last all weekend long) / fast gun wiring techniques is superior to BG... & I'm almost ready for sea trials. I define sea trials as capable of on-lake operation, without offensive systems. I just need a couple of warm days to do some fiberglassing & a nonfrozen lake. I also need to find/build waterproof boxes for the inner electronics...
Just an idea Justin- You could try to use an ESC on your pump with a big gun setting, and wide open for fast gun work. That should make it easy to switch between the two differnt formats. Mike D
I think ESCs have too much history of burning up at the wrong moment to use for damage control Oh, wait. He's Allied! Use an ESC, Justin
Sorry, tuggy... I think Mike's right. I my current plan is to use a cheap forward only ESC for the bilge pump. The hurtle I have is I don't know if the ESCs will respond to DC voltage or if they require the PWM (pulsewidthmodulation) commands from the reciever. But, one problem at a time.
