E-Flite has a 3.2 gram timer for under $10!  Has anyone tried this?  It looks like just the ticket for small e-flying.   http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFLA172

Interesting!  I presume it is a homebuilt design.  Can it be built by anyone?  My electronic skills are on the level that I have never soldered a resistor in backwards.   

Hi Larry,

We are very fortunate in ECL to now have a rich plethora of timers. Just a few years ago we had only one or two, now we have many. We have them from Canada, the USA, South America, Europe, Japan, and I'm sure there are many more that I don't know about.

Igor has been one of our pioneer's in ECL and the timer makers of today are standing on his strong shoulders. I think his timer weight is somewhere between Hydrogen and Helium on the periodic table, they are really light! I think he uses them in his supper light indoor CLPA planes. You two will get along well. 

If it were not for the timer pioneer's like Igor, Kim, and the creators of the JMP and Z timers, we would not have the wonderful ECL power systems we have today. :-)

I am a big Horizon, E-Flite fan and use many of their products in my ERC flying. But in this case I think Will Hubin has made the timer that is going to be hard to beat in the market place.

I think you will like Will's new FM-9 timer for your small and large planes. Will has taken most of the parts off the timer and put them into his programmer. This makes his timer weigh almost nothing, it's very small, and costs only $10 to $12 depending on if you need/want the remote button. It is a FULL feature timer that has everything we could ever ask for. And he can add almost any features you can dream of. It allows you to make very short trim flights if you want, replacing the need for an RC assist. ;-)  You are welcome to use my programmer for your setup.

If you receive your PAMPA SN "on-line" then you can go to the E-Sunt column and see the 3 page write up of Will's new timer now. Or wait till your issue arrives in the mail.

I suggest that you contact Will and get any info. you need. I promise that you won't be disappointed with his timer. :-)

Regards, 

I had the pleasure of building and flying E-flite's PT-19 (reported on in the February 2010 issue of Flying Models). It came with the $10 E-flite timer. It only allows for flight times in even minutes, it starts up almost immediately after you set the number of minutes, and it doesn't provide a useful warning at the end of the flight time--so it wasn't ideal for a model in which I was trying to close the canopy while the motor was running or one for which you're planning to fly the whole pattern. But it did work and might be quite acceptable for (especially) a free-flight model. (I talked with the person who designed this timer, in the early days of eC/L; he sold the design to a Chinese company that is making them now.)

I do provide Igor's timer (with his concurrence), as the FM-0a (on a circuit board) and as the FM-0b (3-pins soldered to the chip, as he pictured it). It is programmable for both flight time and flight power (switch off the power between the first and second seconds after turning it on; that puts it in the programming mode) and it provides a built-in 30 second delay before flight power is given to the ESC. (I'm charging $12 for one and $18 for two, including S&H.)

I do provide Igor's timer (with his concurrence)

  ... Will until we are on opposite sides of ocean, and since shipping is close to price of the device, we not need to worry about it :-)

So we can be both rich from those 15$ (or 15E which I charge for timer) 

I will sale them 1000 and will go swimming to Bahama one day 

I took the following from the tech manual for this product.   Note the line in red.  You have to set the flight time every time you fly.  I find this alone makes the unit not usable for me.
Andy
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1. Pushing the start button and holding it down will cause the motor to run for a split second at minimal throttle.
As you continue to hold the start button down the motor will run and stop, run and stop, run and stop every
few seconds. Each of these run and stop periods dictates one minute of flight time. Three starts and stops
would equal three minutes.
2. When you come to the number of cycles (equaling the number of minutes) you would like to fly, release the
start button and the motor will start within 5 seconds and will achieve full throttle as set by the potentiometer
within 3 seconds. Once at full power the motor will run for the specified period of time.
3. We recommend if this is the first time you have flown control line or at least the first time in a few years, you
might start at either 1 or 2 minutes.
4. You will need to set the timing for every flight once you plug in the battery.
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