ACC-HE

ya, just need a paint job!!

cremedelacreme

Wow...I am impressed!  Good job

saotome

Thanks guys. It was a great relief to have it finally in the air.
Does any of you know where to get cheap and good spray gun?

saotome

星期日 flight gathering 既相，有個有靚相機既朋友真係冇得頂！

fibbi

Wow...nice pic ! Nice flight!

saotome

Ducted Fan would definitely make it more scale, but it has the following shortcomings:

1. I would need to install 4x Ducts in order to have enough thrust to fly
2. 4x ducts, assuming each duct takes 25A, that's 100A of current and it would require a much bigger battery
3. The extra weight of speed controllers (4x), ducts (4x) and heavy battery would make the load per wing area (sq inch) a lot higher. That means the plane will need to fly a lot faster to maintain level flight
4. The extra speed in flight and landing makes it a lot riskier to fly in park and windy situations

EDF (Electric Ducted Fan) works best in light models; or in very large scale models where modelers can use the extra wing area and large ducts (90mm+) to compensate. Alway remember EDFs' efficiency is a lot worst than props; where EDFs excel in nothing but pure speed and scale look. Props has been serving me well for my uses (so far). I may consider EDFs in the future but not in this plane.

saotome

Sounds like you've never dealt with modern brushless motors that drive EDFs nowadays

A typical 64mm EDF can max out at 45A easily if you go full throttle, which is often required during launches and bad situations. 25A is pretty conservative even for the smaller 55mm EDF units.

As a responsible modeler I must track all the numbers to ensure smooth and safe operation of my equipment. I use a watt meter to measure the amp drawn on all my gears and I use a thrust stand to make sure my motors are adequate for the sizes of the planes I fly.

Many EDF planes fly at 2/3 or even at full throttle most of the time and yes it is normal because of the nature of EDFs - they are inefficient at lower RPM. Motors should perform well with carefully selected duct sizes, ESC and batteries regardless of the throttle level. Of course flight time will suffer if full throttle is needed all the time.

FYI my current proped A380 uses two 30A ESCs and the static amp drawn of the two motors at full throttle is 34A in total. That's 17A per motor and I know it will not touch the ceiling of my 30A ESC.