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Take a look our Inventory section- there's some tasty electric gliders all with big savings and totally brand new! This is a one off opportunity for RTF with the highest specification and all built by ourselves. When the're gone the're gone....

D130 Continued....

DS certainly promotes a reaction! Those that have tried it have experienced the sheer additive nature of incredible speed and inherent danger involved which leaves others wondering why you ever need to go so fast.

What is also certain is that expense is high, attrition is high and commitment too. The trend for faster planes is to make them bigger. Of course there are exceptions and talent and opportunity with just the right conditions play their part too. However, bigger DS planes are actually easier to fly because you fly a larger circuit and so less load on pilot reaction times for any given speed. They also, quite understandably, become scarier too as the sheer size and weight get's into territories you just would not think a glider should be! After seeing so many 'hits' over Simon Cocker's 'maidening' of his D130, I asked him to tell us mere mortals what his thought were, so far, with this astonishing but admittedly, intimidating machine...

"With a wing loading of 49 oz/sqft the D130 could be construed as a heavy lead sled. picking up 30 pounds of hewn carbon in the workshop and having that mass comfortably sitting in one hand felt like picking up a steel dumb bell in the gym; all that money invested in the airframe appeared crazy; then there was also the 5 Hitec HT-7990 44Kg torque servos at £100 each..etc. I could at this point understand why there was a great deal of perceived intimidation from fellow flying friends. After all, this machine is designed to break 500mph in the DS zone but by no means break itself in the process.

After five front side flights so far in wind speeds of 25/40 mph on two different days I can tell you that the D-130 is user friendly to fly and land.The model carries energy in a rather unique way and sure covers a whole lot of sky in all axis. The Long Mynd has been used so far but the Great Orme is next for front side sessions.

I have a sport/front side and DS setting but look forward to switching into the latter mode when winds onto Rushup Edge will allow.

The D130 is perfect for this re known DS site being of a size where really large circuits can be carved and still have a very safe visual lock on the beast.

I am not rushing out there, hell bent on busting any speed records,I am addicted to the DS adrenalin rush however. After three years of DSing various types of models including a 5m span all carbon Pilatus B-4 I was ready to go for another quite big "Propppaa" one, & as I have always proported "Bigger is better"...this notion has proved to be very much the case.

Safety is a most prevalent and ever present issue with this style of flying and I noticed the BARCS chatter which has rightly raised this point once more. We will Police this far more strictly and keep everyone out of harms way. I am very mindful of the potential danger and with our DS friends ensure appropriate steps are in place during all DS activity.

Joe Manor by the way makes a fantastically strong model which assembles in very short order,nice job Joe,thankyou."

Dynamic D130

The first Dynamic D130 (yes 130''  and its a light one at just 30lb, unballasted !!!) has been maidened on UK shores. It's a massive DS machine much bigger than it's span suggests and redefines how solidly a plane can be built. Owner, Simon Cocker say's its a big pussy cat but then he's used to big 1/3rd scalies and the like, but I think I did detect more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice! No doubt he is working up to getting the courage to wind her up on the 'backside' for some proper Dynamic Soaring,  in the interim I think his launcher needs to get himself to the gym and start bulking up!!! Surely an attempt on the UK DS record will be made and we wish Simon the very best of luck.

Simon adding some scale to this colossus of a DS machine!

For the less committed we have stocks of the D80's and D60's ( and the odd D40). The D60 in particular is not just for DS'ing and makes an incredible front side, heavy wind model even with 7 ounces of tip ballast in each wing- Just astonishing speed! We can only imagine what the D130 will be like but I guess we'll all be hearing soon enough!

Tiny pushrods- New Product

We've been getting a lot of call for our hardware especially the M2 303 grade stainless steel pushrods but sometimes you just need a tiny pushrod and even 2 clevises butted up against each other are too long!

Teeny pushrods!

A threaded studding is required and strong ones are hard to find. We had these made at 12mm L, which incidentally will take all the threads of stock MPX M2 clevises butted end to end.

RDH adapter to clevis

Clevis to clevis

Like all our pushrods this is made from 303 grade stainless steel and fit all M2 hardware saving you the hassle of cutting up threaded pushrods, M2 bolts or threading your own (yep, been there too!). Handy bag of 4 for £3.

In use on Schwing tail servo install with ball link, RDH adapter and bearing kit, so this one had the works!

Aresti takes first place in TOSS slope aerobatics contest!

Yes it surprised us too since the production Aresti is still in mould stage! Details can be found here in Steve Lange’s wonderful website dedicated to slope aerobatics  http://www.slopeaerobatics.com/2013/01/30/scratchbuilt-aresti-takes-1st-place-in-toss-slope-aerobatics-contest

Video of Aresti flying

Hans Van Kamp of South Africa scratch built the Aresti from James Hammond’s drawings at 2.65m span and with Louis Genade at the sticks won the 5^th Annual Two Oceans Slope Soarers aerobatic contest. Well done guys, you’ve done us proud! This is really encouraging for the new Aresti design with this little international collaboration.

I better get back to the epoxy fumes and get our Aresti prototypes made!   

28mm can inrunners with gearbox for Gliders

We have so many request for information about our motor project for gliders I thought I’d put up the latest information here.

Even if you know your Kv from your C ratings, gliders are a special case for E power. There is a very simple reason for this- they are skinny and the perfect power set up might not fit the beautiful slim fuse you wanted it for despite pouring over Ecalcs to design your perfect set up!

Reisenuaer Gearbox and Leopard Motor 

The realisation that most glider folk venturing into E power want predominantly a get up system but soon discover if that takes 20 to 30s it’s very disappointing especially if you want more than say 5-6 climb outs. Then lower power isn't that light as you need lipos big enough to run a motor for around 3 mins.

That was really the only way at one time but lipos are getting so good now it's even less of a reason to do it this way, especially in a top of the line F3F/B type 3m. Fast climbs above 30m per second with 8 second or less climbs to 250m and less than a minute motor run times in total; a third of the capacity is required compared to the slow climb. This is a better light weight strategy. A third smaller lipos is a significant reduction in the overall weight and space needed for your glider power set up and more than makes up for a bigger more powerful motor.  In any case it’s a lot more fun this way and a great excuse to make your electric glider exciting!   

So a reasonably powerful motor can be the basis of electric glider power set ups but we still come back to the space restrictions with gliders. Small is easy but powerful, light and efficient is harder to find. There are a number of 28mm diameter motors both in runner and out runners using gearboxes for gliders. Efficiency for these is good up to about 700w or so but generally best around the 500w level. So if diameter is restricted then bigger can only mean longer. Long case motors with bigger magnets and stators is rare.

This is 4s motor

Shafts now made with 3.17mm dia.

Cooling holes front and rear plate

We have been working with a motor manufacturer to produce in runners based on 28mm diameter and 64mm can lengths. These are longer than the average and have now been especially made for us with 3.17mm output shafts. This has allowed us to up the gear ratio to 5:1 using top quality Reisenuaer gearboxes allowing larger more efficient props to be used. They are more powerful than most 28mm diameter motors available and high quality 4 pole motors.

The combination is expected to retail at £163 which is with the gearbox installed and tested in our workshops.   

The motors are made by Leopard Hobby, who sell motors in their own brand and OEM high quality brands. They are gaining a great reputation in the electric RC boat and car market and now helping us develope motors for our gliders.

Motors alone weigh 180g and with Micro Edition 5:1 Reisenuaer gearbox fully assembled with adaptor flange, approx 210g.        

Although we will introduce different Kv motors to suit 3s and 6s (and 5s), the 4s set up gives the broadest applications and a good compromise with efficiency and power. In this way upping the power with higher voltage using different Kv motors is not only efficient use of power but also keeps the cost of Esc reasonable as 100a is all you really need. This can support a 2Kw system on 6s. The difference in cost between a 100a esc and 150a or 200a+ doubles and triples! So if you want to run at the top end of these motors in terms of power go 6s and at the bottom range then 3s. The cost of the motor and esc is the same.  

We tested the 4s motor (2730Kv) on our New Air One electric previously motored with a Hacker B50 12s geared with approx 1kw output (not static input, which overstates the real situation!) in the air. The new motor on 17x13 gave the same power (approx 1050w) but weighs 50g less. The lightest we fly this is 2.3kg using the new motor and 4s TP 1300mah 65c. The non electric glider is 2.2kg empty. The difference in weight is getting tiny!

Reisenuaer Micro Edition planetary gearbox,  absolute top quality engineering.

Of course a smaller, lighter plane like the upcoming Schwing electric is going to be pretty outrageous with this motor and you can be certain our prototypes will be using them.

Electric gliders are getting more popular. A powerful lightweight system isn’t wildly expensive not compared to a high power competition F5B electric set up. Anything previously from about 1kw to 2kw+ was heading that way if indeed it would fit in a skinny glider but with these new motors and gearboxes from Sloperacer are great value and will open up the opportunity for more electric gliders which are light and yet still have hotliner performance (some say a hotliner needs a minimum of just 150w per lb which these motors can provide). They will also allow many more glider conversions especially for F3B electric planes when skinny and around 1kw are the main requirements. Of course many manufacturer’s dedicated electric gliders can be powered too especially ones designed around 28mm diameter cans. You might not have thought you would need this much power and even the purists who never thought they would ever have an electric plane seem to be impressed by our test models, especially after they see the climb rate and then pick up the planes and see how light they are!

Electric Schwing Development

Schwing electric is sleek but not made for just E soaring! 

Milling on the Schwing electric is about to start but I just couldn’t help sharing the development that’s gone into this project so far.

The electric fuse will be fully interchangeable with the glider version which meant quite a design challenge to keep within the wing root spacing and still have a decent power set up.

In the end we managed up to 6s capability using 28mm diameter motors. So this will cover 500w with a 28mm outrunner on 3s or up to around 2.5kw on 6s!

Design specification was for up to 6s! Here we configure 3 x 3s packs to check the spacings. 

Following on from power train tests we have been doing for F3B electric we’ve been looking into the motors too using a geared 28mm diameter in runner to give high efficiency up to around 1.3kw and lower. They are 64mm long and a bit bigger than most geared motors you can find. These will run with more power and cooler. It’s just simple physics, the bigger the motor the bigger the magnets and the bigger the stators and more efficiently it will run at the same power level. One of these with the right KV, gearbox and prop will give bursts well over 2kw on 6s, which should be quite an outrageous hotliner with the sleek, clean Schwing airframe!  

Cone design with integral battery tray 

Fuse has air exits moulded in  

Skinny electric gliders can now run efficiently on 800w+ on 3s ,4s, 5s and 6s using 16-17’’ props using 28mm diameter motors. Of course you can get to these power levels with shorter motors but you’ll find the power out is much less and you’ll find they get hot very quickly!      

Bigger makes all the difference- stock Hacker geared B40L, 58mm long motor and our test with a 64mm long can using a Reisenauer gear box

Prototypes to be made at the Sloperacer workshops and just can't wait to fly one of these!