Sorta' Surprized.

If the Vintage R/C Society reunion this past weekend in Spring Hill FL is any indication, many old timers are going electric. The Electric powered VRCS qualified models made up a significant portion of the entry field. I heard from one modeler at the VRCS meet that the venerable DCRC club had lost their field due to noise only to be rescued by electric flyers that demonstrated the quiet nature of this phase of the hobby to the land owners and were able to regain use of the field for electric and sailplanes only.

One can argue till dooms day which is better, electric or fuel powered modeling, but when push comes to shove electrics are going to save the hobby as fields dissapear due to noise.

We had better learn to live with it or take up laying tiny rails,making cute little landscapes and learning the difference between N, HO, O, S, TT etc. gauges

I belong to two different clubs here in Omaha, NE and most everybody I know flies both glow and electric. We're fortunate enough to have several large flying fields located locally where sound issues have yet to become a concern, and glow powered aircraft are still popular.

Winter is often long and cold so most of us fly foamies or electric helicopters indoors during the winter. I'm just happy to have some of the extra choices available to me that electric flight offers. I suspect most of the posters here in this newsgroup fly both types of power systems at least occassionally and feel the same way, choice is a good thing.

I guess that is great for the quiet fliers but what a bummer for the IC guys!

I know at one time, the e-fliers had a tough time just trying to convince IC fliers to consider e-flight as just another facet of the hobby. They thought we were saying throw away the ICs and go 100% e-flight. From what you are saying, will it come to pass that the options may be, fly e-flight or don't fly? I really hope not, but the IC fields may be few and far between some day. All the logic in the world won't make any difference. Landowners will ride up on trail bikes so loud they make your fillings fall out of your teeth and they tell you the 4-cycle engines are too loud. One of the biggest things to hurt in these situations that any where near-loud fields (read noticeable) is that the absent is always wrong. By the time the fliers have the opportunity to set forth their case, the deal will be done and the invitation to speak is both a formality and convenience...having the guys come to a meeting is convenient for the land owner to tell the guys to move on to some other field.

I have a friend (ex e-flier) in the UK who has made this switch. It was getting hard to find places to fly even e-flight. Remember, Britain is small...you can't get further than 75 miles from a coast and there are ten times more people there than in just Mississippi. His trains are made from sheet brass, soldered together, then painted. Batteries in the tender power the motor and bevel gears. The speed and direction and the like are controlled by r/c. Still, I want my locomotives to fly.

See!

Ken

I was flying both but slowly flying e-power more and more. Then one day, I realized that I had loaded the car with both models for over a month of weekends straight and brought the glow engines back home each weekend unflown. I would get ready to fly one and think of the clean-up and noise but by then the next battery pack was charged and I never got around to flying my glow models. I finally converted my favorite glow model (published in Model Aviation) to electric power and now I am going to get rid of the glow things one of these days soon...but first I want to make sure I cannot convert some to diesel, steam, or make a little air-compressor from some.

Ken

In my LHS they say they are selling 5 electric to one IC plane these days. They also remarked that 'people who buy electric don't often bring the model back saying they can't get the engine started'

No. They come back with a cut hand and say, "It was just laying on the bench...honest! Then all of a sudden it started wide open and just jumped at me and..."

Ken

The problem for me is that I like to build 1/3 scale so by the time you electrify one of those babys the cost is too prohibitive, especially if you have more than one. The cost in batteries alone is cosmic when you compare it to what it costs to fuel a Zenoah G62. So I carefully custom build my mufflers just to keep the noise at a minimum. I do believe that 40 size and below engines will eventually just about vanish pretty soon because electrics can economically compete in that size range considering the cost of glo fuel.

Phil AMA609

Ken Cashi> >

You are right on, there! I have a friend with a nearly completed 52% Sopwith Tabloid and the batteries for that thing is costing him a fortune. I am trying to talk him into selling it. It is ready for gear and covering. (And someone might convert it to IC.) Going that large, a fellow is still pretty much forced into an IC engine. Good observations, Phil.

Ken

It is just a matter of time until the large models will become affordable to electrify.

One of the Aussie Fox affiliates had a science spot on the other day showing a full size automobile being powered by boxes full of small batteries similar to what we use in electrics. It's capacity was amazing. If that trend catches on and auto manufacturers begin buying those batteries in bulk...

Ed Cregger

I think this is extremely fair comment, BUT the price of batteries is going down, and the price of fuel is going up...

I am contemplating models in the 40-60 class for electrification. Now I can land without breaking things..a year ago even 200W seemed very expensive.

I think 60-90 is really the tops for sensible electrification NOW, but later on I can see it getting larger. There are likely to be production scooters/motorbikes with LIPO packs and electric motors one day soon...and if those production levels are high enough, a couple of kilowatts of electric power should end up not much different from a couple of kilowatts of IC power.

In scale, the benefits of electric power are immense..its reliable, its very throttle-able, it doesn't spray gunk on the airframe...and when multi-engines come into play, boy are they easier to start..AND we seem to be finding that although the motors and packs weigh more than an IC power train, the lack of vibration means that overall the model is no heavier - we can build lighter.

Lower flight and landing speeds look more realistic and often make for softer landings.

I would NOT be surprised to see quite modest costs for a large - say

250cc - IC engine replacement in the next 5 years.

| It is just a matter of time until the large models will become | affordable to electrify.

It may be a long period of time. The cost (for a large model) is currently mostly batteries, and while the prices have dropped recently, you can still put $1000 into a *single* battery pack for a plane (and the motor and ESC are relatively cheap at $400 or so.)

It would have to drop a LOT to compare to a $300 engine that uses a few cents worth of gas each time you fly.

| One of the Aussie Fox affiliates had a science spot on the other day | showing a full size automobile being powered by boxes full of small | batteries similar to what we use in electrics. It's capacity was | amazing. If that trend catches on and auto manufacturers begin | buying those batteries in bulk...

Odd. The 100% electric cars I've seen have only had ranges of around

100 miles. Most of them had banks of lead-acid batteries, and you could go higher with LiPo cells, but the price would quadruple at least -- and the price was already pretty high, several times higher than that of a comparable gas powered car.

The current hybrid cars still use NiMH cells mostly, probably because they're a lot cheaper and last longer than LiPos.

Unless there's a huge jump in the capabilities of batteries in the near future (which I don't expect -- I just expect further incremental improvements), I'd say that the future of electric cars won't come from batteries at all, but instead fuel cells.

Ultimately, it's hard to beat the energy density of gasoline or alcohol. And being able to fill up your car in a few minutes with liquid is very nice as well, as opposed to charging overnight.

My point was that if such cars became popular, the unit price for formerly expensive batteries would plummet, due to the shear volume of manufacturing.

My wife and I have two minivans. Both of us have activities in our lives that require something more than a car, or the now extinct station wagon. One could be electric or hybrid without causing us hardship. She drives 20 miles to work and back. Most electrics have that kind of range with ease these days.

As a family, we do not need to Interstate capable automobiles. We need one with reasonable range, say 60-80 miles or so and the other should be Interstate capable. For all of the trips we make on the Interstate, we could probably both drive electrics or hybrids and then rent an Interstate capable vehicle when needed. We would probably save money too.

What was true a year or two ago in electric technology is not as true today. Don't underestimate the progress that will be made as gasoline continues to climb disproportionately in price.

Ed Cregger