Yes, but you did make a sweeping generalization. | > With an electric, the only way you get | > an dead stick is if your prop flies off or breaks, your engine burns | > out or something else fails. | | Happens more often than you think...
I've had one prop fly off and one (cheap-ass 180 GWS) motor burn up in flight in the last two years. In the same time, I've probably had 100 IC engines die in flight.
| > Instead, you find yourself with less and | > less power. Your BEC may turn off your motor, but throttling back and | > then forward again will usually give you a few more seconds of thrust. | | I fly electric too. When my batteries dump, there's little usable | power left. In fact it actually hinders the plane more often than it | helps. IMHO, if you run the plane to the BEC cutoff, you're | essentially deadstick. There's no going around for a second try at | landing.
In my experience, it usually cuts out the first time if I go to full throttle for a bit, so then I go to half throttle and have another minute or two of very gentle flight. Of course, the plane that I fly the most has a brushless motor that sucks a lot of current, so that's why the BEC engages so early. But even my slow park flier (a Tubby Cubby, all stock except for a beefed up wing) give me plenty of warning before not being able to maintain altitude.
| > As for tuning, you'll try different battery packs, different props and | > maybe different gear ratios, but there's not fidding with things at | > the field trying to get the $^#$& thing to run. | | All that stuff costs a lot more money than a little needle tweaking, | though. You can't just add a cell to a pack; the pack must be | discharged, then partially disassembled so you can add the cell, then | slow charged to bring the cells back into balance. It's a 2-day | project.
I should have also mentioned that all that stuff is optional. If you buy a plane with a suggested motor, battery and prop you can just use that and be fine.
| > | Both are the reality of the hobby. | > | > I find I've spend more time fiddling with my engines on my glow planes | > than I've spend flying them lately. Perhaps that's why I fly the | > electrics (and gliders) so much lately ... | | Maybe I'm just impatient, but I never spend a whole lot of time | tweaking an engine on a plane, and the few deadsticks I do have are | always my fault (i.e. throttle too low). If an engine won't tune, I | know something else is wrong. This year, it seems to be holes in the | fuel tubing. You can't blame that on the engine, or glow power in | general. It's my fault for flaring the ends of the brass tubing on the | fuel tanks. | | I think I'm going somewhere with this, but I'm not sure where... Ah | yes, most of the problems people have with glow power are | self-inflicted.
Absolutely. I don't tune my engines for top performance -- I just find the peak, then back off a little and leave it at that. I still haven't gotten down adjusting the low end quite right, and I think that's a lot of my problem. But even so, I'm always running into and fixing problems with fuel line pin holes, leaking fuel tanks, crud getting into the engine (even when I use filters), bad glow plugs, etc. And then there's the problems I never find out what they were, but they sometimes go away after replacing the entire fuel system or taking the engine apart and cleaning it. Sometimes.
Self inflicted? I can't argue with that. Unfortunately, I can't take myself out of the equation. :)