Speed controllers

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Damn. I now know why my Francis-Barnett has stopped working…duff ESC !

Ashley

(Adult humour disclaimer)

[Geoff SleathParticipant @geoffsleath41411]

The denigration of Chinese engineering is a dangerous route to follow. It will bite us in the backside if we don't take it very, very seriously. The Chinese are not idiots and are already selling well designed original products. The FrSky RC products are second to few in innovation and second to none in value for money. Lots of us fly the ubiquitous V911 miniature helicopters indoors over winter which cost about £15 each. I know very well what happened to the British motor cycle industry. I could write a book about it. It laughed at Japanese pony (as opposed to horse) power and was still laughing (on the other side of its face) as, sadly, it disappeared into its well-deserved grave driven there by so-called 'Jap crap'.

I'm very new to model boat stuff but I have lots of Chinese esc for model aircraft either bought as part of an ARTF model or from HobbyKing etc and, provided you keep well within the current limit they are reliable and work well. I think I've had one failure of a brushless esc IIRC. Expensive European esc (Hacker, Jeti) probably work better and have a better customer service record but they are a lot more expensive. I have had a few brushed Jeti esc failures in the past when I was still using brushed motors and they weren't all that cheap at about £35 for a 30 amp controller.

My highest current ones are about 60 amps and I run them (briefly) at up to 50. 320 amps is an awful lot of current and, as you imply, needs some pretty beefy MOSFETs or a lot of slightly less beefy ones, so I'm sure are much more likely to suffer failure. £7 seems much too cheap, even for China, for such a device. I'd be suspicious of anything that big retailing at under £50 or even £100. Obviously boat esc have unique requirements, scale boats particularly, which probably don't attract large scale suppliers in China so I'm sure specialist British manufacturers are perhaps the ones to go for. There isn't a huge demand for brushed esc in bigger markets I suspect.

Geoff

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Geoff – A Relevant rant. Bear with me!

I used to design model aircraft kits, starting in about 1972 and only finishing when Balsacraft stopped making Precedent kits at the turn of the century, so I think I have some experience here.

The model boat scene in the UK is about twenty years behind the model aircraft hobby. In the late 80's most model aircraft were built from kits or plans with a very few ARTF models available, albeit at a steep price. Most of the kits built over here were manufactured by small UK businesses, often run from home or small industrial units and employing maybe a handful of people. Gradually we saw the importation of cheaper and cheaper ARTF models by the big wholesalers from the emerging economies of the Far East. The airframes were already built and covered and gradually the engines and radios began to be supplied and installed. The speed that you could get these things into the air, coupled with the ridiculously low prices and skill levels needed, quickly killed off the kits and their manufacturers. The advent of electric flight just accelerated this demise and the vastly more efficient brushless motors put the last nail into the coffin.

What we might think of as "proper" aeromodelling has become very much a minority activity; the Ripmax catalogue these days looks more like the Argos one than that of a model wholesaler. The traditional model shop now resembles little more than a toy shop, save that the boxes are much bigger. You have to dig around in the back for the balsa rack (if there is one) and the bloke behind the counter has zero knowledge of what's inside the boxes – and probably couldn't care less anyway. Granted there are a few exceptions but they are becoming harder to find.

With the demise of Graupner and the further incursion of the Far East into the model/toy world we are seeing the same thing happening to model boats. Every year the Warwick show loses another trader. Every year sees yet more ranges of super wizz-bang plastic ARTF toy boats on the market, adding nothing to the hobby but resulting in less business for the remaining UK manufacturers and specialist retailers. There are some excellent products coming from ROC. For example their brushless motors are astonishingly well-made and inexpensive; I doubt if any UK business could compete. I've not handled the radio you mention but I've no reason to question what you say. There is, however, also some dreadful stuff being churned out.

In these days of use-it-then-throw-it-away there is no reason to make leisure goods which last, and that means that the stuff which is made is usually cheap and nasty and consequently of very questionable reliability. One of my correspondents from the USA recently told me that he’d bought his grandson a “cheapo mall RC helicopter” for his birthday and it lasted just the first flight, needing a new motor after that. He tracked down the company which makes these things and found that it only manufactures toy helicopters for a month in the year. The rest of the time it makes REAL helicopters for the Chinese military! “Imagine flying in one of those” he remarked.

If we continue in a Gadarene stampede towards buying everything cheap direct from ROC then our hobby will be changed forever – and not in a good way. After-sales service, warranties, product knowledge – all of these things will disappear, along with forums like this. We'll simply stand around swapping anecdotes about whose plastic bathtub is the cheapest/fastest/most colourful/easiest to take out of the box. "Model shop"? Extinct – or toy shop by another name. I'm no longer active in the model trade but I am passionately committed to seeing it continue to serve the needs of every kind of modeller. After all, if the time comes when you can't buy a brass prop or a scale figure then you'll either have to make them or resign yourself to sailing high-speed electric plastic bathtubs.

Suit yourselves. Rant ended.

Dave M

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

'then you'll either have to make them'

Now that sounds exactly the way things were when I first started in the hobby….

Seems like the wheel is coming full circle.

Colin

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Posted by Colin Bishop, Website Editor on 25/10/2014 13:49:32:

'then you'll either have to make them'

Now that sounds exactly the way things were when I first started in the hobby….

Seems like the wheel is coming full circle.

Or maybe someone will make one for you……then for other folk in the club…….then he might even start a small business making them………then the b****y Chinese (or Indians or Brazilians….?) will flood the market with plastic ones at 1/10 the price…..then it's off we go again – perhaps?
Don't bank on it, Admiral – entropy is against you!
DM

[Geoff SleathParticipant @geoffsleath41411]

Dave

I agree with most of your 'rant'. In fact what worries me is the attitude that China only makes crap and that is dangerous because it makes us complacent and even more open to the dangers you list. Your reference to the British motor cycle industry is a perfect example of being blind to the threat of an overseas competitor – in that case Japan. I suppose the US and European camera and electronics industries made the same mistake.

In my model aircraft club there are people flying everything from 1/2 scale scratch built models to the ready to fly foamies you mention and they're often the same people. In fact leaning up at the side of my desk as I type is a foamie hot liner glider (which actually took some time to assemble) and a kit built 2 metre glider I built probably 10 years ago and has had 100s of flights. I've put together a few ARTFs and it still takes a lot of time and thought to put some of them together properly. It's not as quick as you might think though weeks rather than months.

I built a few Precedent kits (passed my 'A' with a Fun Fly) and some are still available through SLEC, which I think is part of what made up Balsacraft/Precedent. I think there are some boat kits still available too. Unbuilt kits of the Balscraft scale electric warbirds are much sought after. I think Graupner are still hanging on by their fingertips but, alas, the last model shop (HobbyStores, Beeston) anywhere near me went a few months ago and my really local shop, just an 8 mile bike ride away, last year. There are lots of people still building from kits or plans as well as those designing models from scratch. All is not lost except, alas, the local knowledgeable model shop and that's as much down to the internet as China's rise.

I would suggest that the early demise of the 'cheapo RC mall helicopter' is the common fate of lots of model aircraft in the hands of inexperienced pilots whether 'cheapo' or painstakingly scratch built. I'm not a heli person but aren't most of them assembled from bought-in components or ready built? I've had 100s of flights with my little V911 which has a full cyclic and fixed pitch control with built in gyros all for £35 with a transmitter or £15 alone.

I only took up modeling after a cycle accident stopped me both cycling seriously and sailing at all back in 1990 but I caught the last of 'old fashioned' modelling. I not only built my first glow powered trainer (and a Precedent Electrifly which met an early end!) but my first 35Mhz transmitter and receiver. As you may know I'm currently building a scale sailing barge for a change.

Geoff

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Geoff

Conscious of the fact that we're drifting off topic I'll reply via PM. I'm sure the members of the forum have had enough of my nonsense, at least for today.

Dave M

Edited By Dave Milbourn on 25/10/2014 15:43:32

Edited By Dave Milbourn on 25/10/2014 15:46:24

[CookieOldParticipant @cookieold]

Please don,t label all model shops as toy shops , i have a local model shop ( Scale Hobbies) in Skelmersdale , Steve the owner knows his stuff when it comes to model boats .They need as much support as pos these days , i try to buy all i can from him instead of online

Dave

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

As I said, such folk are becoming rarer.

DM

[Len Morris 2Participant @lenmorris2]

Wow! All that lot was a right good read! It's the brilliant bit about this site! Just so everybody knows, Resurgam now has a British made ESC stuck down with Velcro and it works a treat!

Len

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