Electrics

[Keith Black]

I think this can all be boiled down to one simple point. Battery life.

Those of us that would love to go electric have been eagerly reading the
posts from those that have already taken the plunge. Speaking for myself,
I've been waiting for it to become common-place to get enough cycles out of
the batteries to bring them closer to the cost of glow.  Currently the best
reports I've seen are 60 -70 cycles on battery packs. At $650 per flight
pack that's about $9 per flight. On the other extreme my 2-cycle costs are
around $2.50 per flight (17 minute flights).

Personally I'm not looking for $2.50 per flight electric, but $9 is just too
high for me to swallow. If we could get in the $4.00 per flight range I
would be very interested because I recognize all the other benefits
including less airframe wear and tear.

I think one thing that aggravates the situation is that early adopters,
especially those that are sponsored, have been constantly upgrading to newer
battery technology. Therefore, it becomes difficult for us observers to know
when low cycle numbers are due to failures, decreased performance of packs,
or just testing of new technology. In a strange twist it's possible that the
sponsorship of pilots may be discouraging new electric adopters due to
sponsored pilots never reaching high numbers of cycles.

Here's an idea for the battery companies. Along with sponsoring the top
named pilots also provide cycle testing results on the battery packs so
those of us that have to pay for our batteries can justify the initial $3000
investment in packs.

Continuing to watch with interest,
Keith Black

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jason" <jasonshulman at cox.net>
To: <discussion at nsrca.org>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 3:36 PM
Subject: RE: Electrics


> I don't think anyone is hiding anything, I think "everyone" wants to hear
> how bad electrics are. Chad's admitted to his problems, and the reasons
he's
> had them. I'm not hiding anything. And any "problems" I've had have been
> reported. I don't think others are hiding anything either. Most of the
> problems you read about are from testing the product, sometimes beyond the
> limits, and that's what is reported. When I was at Hacker, any pattern
> related problems were due to the customer doing tests like a glow set-up.
> One can't do that with electrics. If you can experiment, with-in the
bounds
> of the parts, you won't have problems. But if you go beyond that, that's
> when issues arise. I see some that have posted flying 2 flights off of one
> charge on a battery pack. I know if I did that with my Hacker/ThunderPower
> set-up I'd ruin the packs. And when I was at the Worlds, I did re-grease
my
> gearbox once. 20 minutes later it was back in the plane and ready to go.
I'm
> not saying that electrics are perfect, cause they're not. But if you take
> the time to learn about them, and do things right, they are another
> alternative in the pattern world. I'm just glad that people like Chad and
> Tony are around to really do some organized testing, it makes me feel
better
> that my messy testing is better kept quiet. But I'll answer any questions
> about electrics the best I can. And the first answer is, Electrics are NOT
> for everyone!
>
> Jason
>

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