We had a lot of ESC problems last year, not sure why. I like being able to dial in my speed without a lot of drama and gear switching. I did burn out a 20A ESC though. Now I run one 15A on each motor. I'm not sure what I'll do with my Gneisenau. I'm going to run that this year while I finish scratchbuilding Hyuga's hull. The Gneiss Guy will just get the center prop driven, so I'm not sure one of my 15A ESCs will hack it driving a 550 motor at 24sec. I don't want to blow a load on a new ESC either. Any one seen any reasonably priced ones? Opinions? Oh, yeah, I will be driving Gneiss Guy with a Spektrum. The ones at last Nats were the bomb! No interference, no range issues.
A big problem with teh ESCs was that they were not installed properly and the wiring of the electrical was not correct. Also the motors themselves were not proper for the ESC in other words bad motors make a ESC work that much harder to control hence it will heat up badly. Not to mention the ESCs were hastily installed prior to contest without a lot of field testing. I pulled mine out but I've leared a lot more since then and regret removing it. I since sold it and it is working perfectly and staying cool in another boat. If I had to do it again I put an ESC on each motor instead of one esc on 2 motors. I would use a different set of motors that have more torque and better quality ie M.A.C.K. motors. I had to do a lot of research but I found now that choosing the right ESC with the right motors for specific load and performance is very important and cannot be rushed into.
While I am unsure, I have three different esc's. They will be better tested this year with the Spec. I honestly think the proboat will test the best and it is on of two that are waterproof. Results in the thaw I'm afraid. Curt, the radio has no suppliers locally. Surprise, there are those who have seen it and want one. What can you dig up in NL?
I think in the absence of a reliable ESC for 20A that can handle 12V, I'm going to go for the TeamDelta heavy relay card, wired as a MAG throttle, just without big moving pieces. No fine control, but I'm not shelling out $130 for an ESC.
I currently use a Hitec prism 7x or eclipse (depending on what I end up using in my tirpitz). I have a dx6 that I ran my karlsruhe with but after discovering that one can not modify the toggle switches to be multiposition I have decided to either tear the transmitting guts out per the rcgroups instructions and make a spektrum module for my hitec transmitters or buy one of these guys setups http://www.xtremepowersystems.net/xtremelink.php. As far as speed control, I am the odd duck here, in that I preferr to run brushless outrunner motors. I still have an older hitec esc for brushed that I will use if neccessary that is rated to 200A continuous forwards and 100A reverse (they discontinued that model several years ago ... It only cost ~60$ back then when I bought it for my bayern). Right now I am running a castle creations mamba esc (full programmability is nice, with curves for throttle, delay, startup juice, etc. all tweakable via USB cable). It does not come waterproofed but having machining equipment and making hermetic or almost hermetic devices for a living gives one some good ways to go about things. I like the brushless outrunners because they are high torque, low speed. For example, my motor in my Karlsruhe runs at about 750rpm per applied DC volt. I can direct drive the Karlsruhe off of an 8V pack with one motor running both props. Although I did end up gearing down by about 1.10 to reduce the speed.
I'm torn on radios now. I got permission from the wife to buy a new radio. I've been eyeing the Spektrum 6 channel, but I was cruising the Tower Hobbies website, and for another $200, I can get a 9 channel PPM on a Ham frequency. That's slightly tempting since I'm thinking of building a ship for Big Guns and the extra channels would be nice. Either that, or start hacking up a PS2 controller and a 2.4GHz wireless LAN module. If I set one of those up to only use the ham part of the 2.4GHz spectrum, I can use more power on those big lakes to lure battleships waaaay out till their Spektrum radio loses signal
Interesting that you use brushless. Can you tell us more about why you chose it, what advantages you have seen with it... More power required, less? Are the motors waterproof (I thought they wouldn't be)... Need more Info! 6 spektrum or 9 channel PPM.... that is a good question. What is the 9's manu? How reliable are their controllers? Look at how the 9's controls are situated, are they going to be easy to use in a fight or are you going to fight the controls / heavily modify the controller.
Justin, as far as the brushless motors go, they are more water resilliant than brushed. All my brushed that have ever failed have been due to corrosion on the wipers/contacts. Brushless motors have no brushes, obviously. We would have trouble with standard brushless motors due to their very high speed and sealed case designs. The outrunners (I used an E-flight park 400). You can generally replace the ball bearings in these motors as needed, so the only thing left to corrode away is the armature. I chose this motor because it is on the order of 85% efficient, will have a lower stall current than brushed notors, did not require much gear reduction to get a 23 second cruiser to speed. This motor probably has enough power even if I ran it at 12V rather than 8.4 to run my tirpitz just fine, although I will be putting a larger one in the ole T just to be technically legal per IRCWCC pump rules. One of these days I am going to make up a special pump housing for one of these, as I think that the very high torque and acceptable speeds would allow for a much more efficient pump design (got to go find the ole pump handbooks/talk to our pump guru at work on that one) They do slow down a bit when the flooding reaches the moving outer component of the motor due to the drag. I do like how open the motors are with all the vent holes that are appropriately recessed. They drain well and I think that we could completely prevent corrosion problems on them from ever happening by using a spray on water displacer/blow dryer to blow air through the case. My motor has seen a lot of time on the bottom (I love sinking, especially with a small cruiser, and I have played a bit too close to some of the big ships rather than sniping from afar often enough to be on the bottom). As far as transmitters, the only thing that annoys me greatly about the spektrum is that I can not use the toggle switches as multiposition. The 5th and 6th channels are fully proportional but for some reason they did not enable that at the input end. People have already figured out that the guts of the spektrum are split into two parts, the transmission module, and the Interface. The transmission module takes in as input the exact same signal that the hitec modules do, all you have to do is plug it into the correct 3 pins on a hitec transmitter and your hitec front end controls the 6 channels of the receiver. If you are looking for a good transmitter at a great price, see if you can find an old hitec Prism 7x. Very robust transmitter, I dropped mine in the pond my first day of battling back in 2000 and it continued to work for 4-5 more years before I put it on a shelf due to the hobby being shelved until I finished grad school. It still worked the last time I turned it on but now it is taken apart just to see about switching out some of the components to turn it into a pure combat transmitter. You should be able to find one on rcgroups for ~10-20$ Hitec also makes a 75MHz Spectra module with dials that allow you to select any 75MHz frequency, this came in very handy. If you'd ever like to chat in more detail about my brushless experiences, I can give you my phone number
I don't know, Justing, for ease of use lakeside, I'm almost tempted to hack up a PS2 analog controller. The difference between that one and a regular controller is that all the buttons, and the second stick, are proportional, not just the one stick. It's be cool to use the second stick to control main battery aim and elevate. I have been involved with the HamSDR (software defined radio), and it's given me some ideas to play with. I am seriously considering a homebrew 2.4GHz system... Figure $25 for the PS2 analog, $50 for a small 2.4GHz transmitter (+$50 for on on the "receiver"), and the time and cost of a couple PIC chips and ADCs. It's be really cool to have some data channels coming back from the ship, but not in version 1.0. Anyone else interested in an open-source 2.4GHz radio?
The PS2 and more recent PS3 controllers do not allow for much precision on the sticks. Also, the range of motion is a circle, not a square, so you can't reach the maximum throw for both channels on the stick at the same time. If you don't mind these issues, go ahead, but otherwise be prepared to make some modifications. Also, 4 channels is enough for a simple big gun boat. Throttle, rudder, rotation (fore and aft guns linked), and firing each take one channel. If you have more, you can use them for depression or possibly making forward and after guns rotate independently.
I was more or less planning on doing serious surgery on the controller anyway As for driving the ship, I rarely use partial throttle in either direction, so maybe proportional isn't necessary for v1.0
I've been looking at the ROBBE f-14 navy radio for my boat, its the only system i can find that will be able to control the 13 rotating w/ depression turrets on my yamato. its a costly system, but with all the options it provides there leaves plenty of room for future expansions. the only dealer in the northeast is ships n' things out of NJ. on a side note he also carries some nice brass props, drive shafts and detail parts.
Mark, if you buy that and do what you're saying, you MUST do a demo video of it That would be glorious to see! You're talking about having the secondaries rotate&elevate, too?
GREG, Where did you find the article about hacking a spectrum.. That knowledge could really save my boat lakeside. I currently have it overriden like I need it; but inorder to do what I need, I have a 1/2 second delay on the fire trigger, that article could allow me to cut that to ~zero.
Tugboat, not only the 2nd guns but also the 3rd guns will be equipped with rotation and elevation. I don't know if you are familar with the yamato, but the version I'm building is how she was origionally after leaving Kure in 1941. Unlike the popular version most build (1945 refit) mine will have 3- triple turrets 1/4" (main guns), 4- triple turrets BB (2nd guns) and 6- double turrets BB (3rd guns). Depending on how much room is left I might add 6-10 TT barrles because it was mentioned that she might possibly have had these (Skuluski book, Anatomy of the ship Yamato). by the way just finished all the frame work on the boat this evening and will start sanding it tomorrow to prep it for the planking and water chanel. if any of you can tell me how to post pictures from my computer to this forum I'll show you my progress so far.
Mark, I sure hope you've got a kickass fire control system, or about a half dozen crew to man all those guns.
here are a few interesting threads... http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=458314 http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php/?t=489403
