Teppo Rules Cycle

[Austrian]

Please - do not just grumble about "Those people in the FAI"!

Get your opinion to the guy who represents you there (in the Free flight subcomitee!). HE is the one to stop a rule, or help making a good one.

I really do not know who started the EL discussion there, but I know that most flyers (active ones?) prefer not to have a rule enforcing the use of EL's. I think it came from RC where they are just finding out the problems of these things ... it sounds simple, but even there they have a lot of problems without the special requirement necessary for Free flight.

[rivers]

Just curious, but has any person or Country submitted a proposal that simply limits the motor weight for F1Q? If so, what weight limit was proposed?

Also, will all of the proposals be viewable somewhere online? I believe November 15th is the deadline.

[Roger Morrell]

Dick


my undertanding is that proposals are submitted via the various NACs to the FAI by Nov 15 for the meeting the first week in Dec. It could well be that someone somewhere is working on a weight proposal or something else but it may not see the light of day until after the 15 Nov. We know about the EL ideas and some others because people working in this space have had some open discussion.

I'm not sure where they are officially published - they do appear in FFn , the AMA gets them as does the USA person on the CIAM FF subcommitee. The AMA usually asks the FAI team selection committee and/or those who have indicated an interest in FAI Free flight for their input. There is about 3 week period for the AMA to collect input so they can vote.

Sometimes I get them as SEN editor and If i do I publish them.

Roger

[Austrian]

Hello all,
Austria has put in a proposal to limit motor weight to 8% of the total flying weight, and to limit LiPo's to 3, Ni.. to 10cells. No other technical change.

We furthermore we proposed to allow RDT only to "terminate the flight, if necessary including motor stop" to prevent using radio motor stop to get high with an unstable climb pattern and still have a valid flight - that would not be free flight!

Other proposal known to me is a motor run limit of 20s. Nothing else.

I AM trying to keep things simple!

[TEPPO S]

Gentlemen!
We are disscussing of FORMULA ONE QUU, the Queen of Electric FF.

Is there still somebody, who thinks that the rules now are OK? Matti and Heikki have done their best and right in showing us that rules need repairing.

When Jim opened this topic and named it after me ( I am still flashing ),he maybe also thought, that we have to talk about rules more generally.
Here we talk only about EL. Why? Maybe it is the best?
But as Dick said, there are more alternatives.
My best is after the EL, look after the weight of the battery and also the after the weight of motor. It is easy to control with watch and scale. Maybe with EL, we have to accept more tolerans?
How it would be?
Max weight of model 600 g.
The weight of battery 8 % of modelweight with connectors.
The weight of motor 8 % of modelweight with connectors and gearbox, but without propeller fixing things.
First 5-7 rounds with 10 sec motor runtime
Fly-offs with 5 sec motortime, First 3 min, second 5 min and so on...
If we take f.ec 500g model. Battery is 40 g and motor is 40g.
Why 8 % batteryweight? When You look my table in topic F1Q Rules P...
C 45/90 batteries, You notice that from 40 g battery now we get average 450 W in 5 sec. It is ectact 2250 J. The same , if model get 450J/100g energy.
Today we have our small batteries with 136 Wh/kg energydensity and C 90-100 stress. Big RC-batteries have today ed 168 Wh/kg, but lower C.
In literature they say, it would be up to over 200Wh/kg. Today I have seen batteries with C120-135 stress.
I belive that from 40 g motor we get out , when we tune the motors, about 500 W for our burst ( Matti confirms ).
What this means?
1. I have to follow the newest and best batteries. With the price of two battery pack I get one UniLogg. With EL I can use my "old" C15 batteries until to end.
2. I have planed, how to build up leighter motors with more power. They maybe are only for one contest? Do You know, how much costs one handmade special electromotor? 500 US$ is small money. With the pricedifferece to my nowadays motors, I will get easily two UniLoggs and I can use my today motors with EL. And they run and run and run...

God save Quu...

[rivers]

Ouch! If enacted, the Austrian proposals of 8% motor weight and 3S max batteries will make obsolete everybody's present models ... my whole fleet for sure.

Why ban 4S batteries? Some here in the USA use 4S packs with small-prop motors turning high RPMs. No more power than 2S or 3S for the same weight.

[Tapio Linkosalo]

Teppo, I think your consideration about the expensive battery packs with high discharge rates is a direct consequence of the requirement for maximum battery weight. My suggestion is simply to discard that, so you can use (slightly) larger and therefore cheaper batteries, and not need to push them to the limit. When the motor size limits the maximum power and motor run is limited, a larger battery is actually disadvantage as it weights more, so there is an optimum of making battery large enough that it can safely deliver the current, but not too large to be dead ballast.

[Aram Schlosberg]

As many have pointed out an 8% motor weight limit will lead to very expensive hand crafted motors. But this requirement has an even larger impact by knocking out all the geared in-runners, as a gears typically weight about 75% of the motor. It’s evident that whoever wrote this proposal only uses the lighter out-runners. Personally, I think rules should not impact technology; that choosing a geared in-runner, which is more efficient but heavier, is a decision left to the fliers.

F1Q, being an electric event, means that motor runs are naturally defined in terms of energy – watts, volts, amps, (seconds and grams), converted to watt*sec/grams or energy/weight. This simple ratio determines the maximum altitude models can each, each with its own motor run. It creates an open event, with many model types - atypical to older F1 events - which, in my opinion, is the beauty of F1Q.

Under an energy/weight formula, the battery weight limits are no longer relevant. Why? Matti and Heikki are pulling an astonishing 7.2 watts/grams (650 watts/90 grams) for 5-6 second climbs. Evidently, they use motor/prop combinations that can pull that draws such a large current without frying the battery. But hyper powered models will have very short motor runs under an energy/weight formula. (Of course this would depend on the ws/g value selected.) However, if such models will be considered as being too dangerous (=fast and heavy), we could impose a wattage ceiling, implementable via the controller or a PEL, but only as a last resort. (Plan D.)

[TEPPO S]

Hallo!
That is true, that battery-size is not important. I only like to present that alternative also and show how small the batteries would be. So it is also the same, if the battery is with 3S or 4S or more. It is better, that capasity of battery is biger than our need, for the safety reasons.
Safety reason is also, that the modell has maximum weight. I think max 600 g is about right, anyhow the future F1Q modellweight should be much lower than in F1C.
Special motors are still there...
The weekest point of EL is controlling. When somebody is speaking of the weight of motor contra modellweight, should also speak, how to controll it. It is not easy. F.ex if You look Matti's and Heikki's modells it is absolutely impossible to check them during the contest.

[Austrian]

This may be true - at the moment!

If there is a rule referring to motor weight they will have to build models which allow this - not during, but after the contest, should it be too complicated.

This is nothing new: checking the displacement of an IC engine also cannot be done "on the field between flights".

As regards max model weight: I prefer the solution discussed in the FFSC: limit the motor weight (i.e. 8% but not more than xx g). Then - if someone builts a big heavy plane it will be underpowered. A model weight upper limit is a problem insofar as models tend to get heavier with time (repairs, dirt, moisture, ...) so you could suddenly have an illegal model.

[TEPPO S]

Hallo All!
In german AUFWIND, Das Modellsportmagazin, nr 6/2010 Mr Dr Martin Hoff writes an article over EL. www.aufwind-magazine.net.
He tells generally of systems in F5 series and speaks about UniLog and Limiters of Steve Neu. He says also that, with the new homesoftware the LoggerESCs can be used as EL ( f.ex Phonix ICE-lite ) and rules allowed also selfmade ELs.
Problem is how to control the values. There is one Swiss man, who has equipments ( rather oldfasson) to check them.
Interesting point in article is the last capitel.
"To start with LiPos and EL was absolutely the right step to right direction. We can see this in riseing numbers of participant in klasses F5. Also it makes the electro-contestflying more inventing and at the same time the motorconsepts more reliable for saveing and developing of aeromodeling."

[Austrian]

Please do not compare EL-use in RC with EL use in freeflight:

RC people are used to plug in all sorts of electronics into their planes, starting of course with their receivers.

For many free flight people, however, attaching a cable to an electric motor is the first thing they ever had to do with electrics. Even if in the top WC classes electronic timers are en vogue this still is a minority.

We need to get people into F1Q. Forcing them to start with a lot of "strange" electronic devices will scare them off.

Once we have a solid number of people flying this may change. But introducing EL's now will get less people into this class as will leave.

[Dan Berry]

Please do not compare EL-use in RC with EL use in freeflight:

RC people are used to plug in all sorts of electronics into their planes, starting of course with their receivers.

For many free flight people, however, attaching a cable to an electric motor is the first thing they ever had to do with electrics. Even if in the top WC classes electronic timers are en vogue this still is a minority.

We need to get people into F1Q. Forcing them to start with a lot of "strange" electronic devices will scare them off.

Once we have a solid number of people flying this may change. But introducing EL's now will get less people into this class as will leave.

Aha!!
I thought that was what a few guys had already been saying here.

[Pete]

Dan,
Like you say, some have been saying it all along.
To paraphrase "If you want to grow the class, make it easy and keep it simple".

Tech weenies don't like simple.
They ain't listen'n.

They are making it all the more important that we support the AMA electric classes as a place to have a little fun.
I do this for the fun of it, that plus the money and the groupies.
Cheers!

[TEPPO S]

Hallo Austrian!

I compere nothing. I am quit sure, that You have also red the article in Aufwind. It is very easy to see, that my text is translation.