Sunday, July 8, 2007

Intro to Hobby-Grade Electrics

In this article we are going to become familiar with the basics of the electric powered systems that drive R/C vehicles. Now, when we talk about hobby-grade electrics, forget everything you know about Toy-R-Us and Wal-Mart toys. Hobby-grade electric vehicles can be extremely fast and dependable. In fact, many pro R/C drivers/flyers are running electrics. Some of the advantages to electrics are they are quieter than nitro powered vehicles, less messy, and they can run indoors as well. First we’ll start off by looking at how the whole system is connected to provide power to your vehicle. We will then review the different qualities of motors, speed controls, batteries and chargers available. This will help you choose the right system or repair the system you already have in you car, truck, plane, helicopter or boat. Last we’ll look at how varying each individual component will affect the rest of the system.

Look under the hood of any R/C electric powered vehicle and you should see the same basic setup. You have one or more motors that power the drive train. The motor is connected to a speed control (manual or electric). Battery power is connected directly to the speed control as well, which is plugged into your radio receiver. Power from here is provided to the servo or servos that are also plugged into the other channels of the receiver. That’s about it. No big mysteries here.

The most expensive and complicated part of the system is the speed control. In the vast majority of all R/C vehicles today, this is an electronic speed control or ESC....More

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