Integral 2008

Ok, since I am so excited about my new planes here are some very fresh pictures of them.

I thought I would try out a Comp-ARF Integral after seeing quite a few of them fly in 2007. I had flown a ZN Twister which is a really nice airplane since 2006, and this (2008) would have been my third season flying them, so I felt the need for a change.

I picked up a white one simply to try out, I didn't want to go painted since if I didn't like it I would be out more money! I starting flying it in March/April and felt it had a lot of potential. It flew as good as the Twister ever did, and I felt it did some things better. Considering the Twister was out one year prior to the Integral that is no real surprise.

So that left me with one white Integral! I knew I needed more but I didn't want the same thing as everyone else, it had to be a little different. I also did not want to go through the pain of painting up multiple white ones, I simply don't have the time anymore to do that especially in June.

So I talked to Jason Shulman, who was my rep for the white Integral about doing something different. Jason took a lot of time to help out and we came up with a modified set of colors for the stock C-ARF scheme. When I received the pictures of it I was super happy, it was better than I could have hoped!

I have to thank Jason for his help getting this going, and if you need an Integral (or anything else CARF) for that matter he is great to deal with. Although this is not a "stock" scheme, it is available as a custom scheme, just ask Jason for it :)

Trip to Greece

Hello all,

Well here is our first report from Greece. We are currently in Nafplio at the moment which is a small port town in the Peloponnese area of Greece. Somewhere around 150km from Athens toward the southwest and very near to the city of Argos.

Our trip so far has been great. We spent the first two nights in Athens and did the customary touring of the Acropolis which is the location of the famous Parthenon temple and other runis.

From there we rented a car and pounded through the world renowned Athens traffic, which wasn't that bad after driving in Buenos Aires back in November. Although I cheated and have maps for my GPS of Athens and most of Greece :)

From there we drove around 350km from Athens to Meteora. This is the site of numerous monestaries which were created in the cliffs of Meteora back in the 15th century or so. These are amazing structures and are still used by monks today. The scenery here is unlike anything I have seen. The rock formations are stunning as is the hike on the steps to the top of them!

After a day at the monestaries we set out for another 150 km drive to Delphi. Dephi dates back to the 4-5th century BC, and was the location where the two eagles that Zeus released at opposite ends of the world met, thereby making it the center of the universe. There is a ton of history here and wikipedia will do a much better job of explaining it all :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi

How they created these sites some 2500 years ago is beyond belief when you see the sheer volume of rock that was used to create the buildings. It would be a serious challenge today to create such buildings.

The drive into and out of Delphi is awesome with very winding roads. I had as much fun as I could in our small worn out Hyaundi, the guys in their Porsche's and BMW's were probably having much more fun than I was!

From Delphi we set out for another 350km trip to Nafplio which is where I am writing this from. We will spend a few days here and see the Palamidi Fortress tomorrow, apparently there is around 1000 steps to climb to get to the top! From there I am not certain exactly where we will go.

For some reason Greek history is full of people who like to build things up on mountains, I have done more hiking in the past 5 days than I have done in the past 5 years!

For all the pictures (there are well over 1000 so far), here is my Picasa page, check back over the next few days as we have a reliable internet connection at this hotel so I should be able to get most of them uploaded.

http://picasaweb.google.com/can773/

Chad/Agnes

I recently received one of the new Schulze NextGeneration 7.36-12 chargers. These are the new chargers that will replace the existing ISL series of chargers that have been around for quite some time. For charging Lipo batteries these new chargers are a marked improvement over the previous ISL series.

I won’t go into the specifications of the charger, other than to say it is capable of charging and balancing (integrated) Lipo packs up to 14s with a limit of 240W. For the full specs you can visit this page,

http://www.schulze-elektronik-gmbh.de/next-spec-e.htm

I have not done a lot of charging with this unit yet as our weather is not that conducive to flying at the moment, but with its ability to discharge at high rates I was able to put a few cycles on one of my 10s 5000 Extreme V2 Thunder Power batteries.

Here is a shot of the whole unit, its not much larger than a TP 1010C once you consider the size of the balancer. The yellow portion is an add on to allow you to plug your packs into the charger, there are various adapters for all the major brands, this one works with TP and FlightPower and you plug packs into it like you would a TP 210V balancer. I don’t have extensions yet but they are worth getting to give you some room.

The screen is very large and nicely backlit. It provides a lot of data including a graph of voltage vs. time.

As you can see here, I am doing a discharge of my pack. You will notice that the discharge rate is over 6A. One of the great features of the charger is if you are connected to a partially discharged 12V battery you are allowed to discharge at the full 240W limit of the charger. This is great for putting rapid cycles on large packs like this one.

Cycling through the various screens you can see information on the current battery being charged as well as a cycle history (if you are doing multiple charge/discharge cycles), and the Ri of the pack during a discharge.

The next screen over provides information on the charger version, as well as your source voltage and how much current and total capacity is being drawn from your source during a charge, or in this case how much current and capacity I am putting back into the source since I am discharging a pack. You can reduce the power and maximum current that the charger will take during a charge when using car batteries or power supplies that do not have the ability to deliver the full 240W power level of the charger.

The next screen is the balancing screen. This displays all the cell voltages in mV and their imbalance below the highest cell (the highest cell always reads 0mV). You can set the precision of the balancer manually from 4mV to 30mV or you can let the charger pick the best precision as it charges. The balancer is not a current sink type, and works extremely fast compared to the current sink types.

The charge is USB upgradeable much like others on the market. As well it has a serial output that can be used to output ASCII information about the charge. There is also a fan and light output, which can be used to drive an auxiliary fan for cooling batteries, and a light that flashes intermittently when the charge terminates so you can see from a distance that your pack is charged. Also there is a thermal probe and you can set a maximum pack temperature which the charger will terminate. The charger includes all the wiring for the accessories, except the serial output.

Since I like gadgets by far the coolest thing in the box was my very own Schulze USB stick which has manuals, etc. already on it. Sweet!

That’s my brief overview of this new charger, I am very impressed with it so far and hopefully our weather will improve and I can put some more time on it at the field.

These chargers can be purchased in North America from Icare-RC in Montreal, Canada.

http://www.icare-rc.com/

Feel free to shoot me an email with any questions about this unit.

Chad

Where in the world is Chad

Ok, well I am typing this from a little place called Owego, NY! Its an interesting little town, we just got back from a restaurant called the "Jailhouse" and yes its an old jail converted to a restaurant, and some of the tables are even in jail cells. Very interesting to say the least, with good food and most importantly a few beers!

So what am I doing out here....well this company CNYOG (Central NY Oil and Gas) is installing a gas compressor supplied by Dresser-Rand, and we (myself and one other guy) from SKF Magnetic Bearings are here to commission the magnetic bearing system that we designed for the gas compressor. Fun stuff, and yes I am here over Easter long weekend working....my wife is real impressed! Its putting a dent in my spring flying preparations! The HUGE plus is, the extra days in lieu I get will give me a lot more practice time in Ontario for the team trials.....so look out boys! Always gotta look on the bright side of everything.

So, when I get back (who knows when that is) I have some trimming to do on the Twister as well as some new stuff I am trying out and will post here when I get some pics and results. There is more cool stuff coming but we will keep that under a hat for now :)

Have fun over Easter....I sure will be......here in the hotel :)

Chad