Ben74
Senior Heliman
Location: Long Beach, CA
| jeez, there is a lot of misinformation in this thread. for starters, those temperatures mentioned in the video are completely normal. the motor is not going to die at 165F. also, actros (and other outrunners) do have more torque than other motors at a given gear ratio, but the hacker setup in the ion is using a very high gear ratio (about 22:1) which gives the motor some extra mechanical advantage. hackers like to run at high rpms, and when setup correctly, can produce just as much power and torque as an actro.
about the charging: you do not need a $400 schulze charger to charge the ion's packs. the ion uses two separate battery packs connected together to form one big pack. you can buy two astro 109s for $110 each, and charge the packs off a regular deep cycle battery at the field. the packs will take about an hour to charge to 90%, and and hour and a half to charge to 100%. charging to only 90% will save you time at the field and still provide plenty of flight time. if you have two sets of batteries, you can charge one while you're flying the other. that would give you a 10-15 min flight about every half hour. i don't see many glow fliers flying more often than that, even though they could.
the batteries do seem expensive, but if you calculate how much it would cost to fly 300 flights on a fury extreme, the cost per flight is about the same as the ion. you can get about 6.5 flights on an extreme from a gallon of 30% nitro. if you figure $20 per gallon, then you're paying over $900 for those 300 flights. the difference with electrics is that you pay all your "fuel" costs upfront. |
