Hi All, As Many of you know, my governor timer system was developed as a simple way for beginners and sport fliers to get into e-stunt at a low cost, and also as a non-technical system and one that will not burn out anything when the prop gets snagged or the model crashes. It soon developed into something that I felt as being good enough to compete with in serious competition, but it was never really tested at international competition level. Percy Attfield and myself decided to enter the 2012 world champs with my system. Percy built his own variation of the Impact using a high-end motor, the MVVS 8.0/680 running on a 5-cell Thunder Power lipo. I'm always looking for simple and low-cost methods of offering competitive stuff to newcomers, so I designed a very simple take-apart model called the Newtron based on Igor Burger's design principles. (I think that maybe Igor is now going to start charging me seeing that he is the world champ!)
I do have some MVVS motors but opted for the simple Arrowind/E-Max 2826 to see how well I could do with such a basic system. The cost of my power package was around $148.00 for the motor, ZTW 50A esc and my timer. I used the APC 12 x 6.5 EW pusher prop from Dennis. The other competitor using the same power package as me, was Loren Nell (ex South African) from New Zealand. He used the 12 x 6 thin blade pusher prop. Loren placed 35th and I placed 38th and this "middle of the pack" placing was in no way due to any poor performance of the systems. It was due to piloting skills and a distinct lack of decent practice. Our systems worked flawlessly for the 2 weeks or so that we were there. We all flew in the world cup competition a few days prior to the world champs as well. On the "cheap" motor story, both Loren and myself had magnets come loose. I believe that it could be due to the heat. We were flying in heat of 37~40 degrees C (98~104 F) and I measured 65 degrees on my motor's can a few times. I also used a Cobra/Pulso 2826/10 motor to test and it also threw a magnet. Even the label came off! I liked the Pulso motor because it only costs a little more and it has 3 bearings. It is also better made than the E-Max. Just by the way, neither Loren or me actually noticed any difference in the flying performance when the magnets came loose. There was no extra noise either, but when we spun the prop after we landed, you could feel that something was a bit rougher and it made a slight noise. We glued the magnets back with some cyano and flew the rest of the flights without any hassles. I reckon a dab of JB Weld between each magnet will cure this evil. I put the E-Max back because it was 20 grams heavier and my Newtron felt a little tail heavy to me.
Last year I felt that I should do one more world champs before quitting serious competition. I would push hard to make the top 15 fly-offs. I knew that this would take plenty of work and practice to polish up my patterns. As they say "life got in the way" and things just didn't work out. I then decided to just go and see how well I could do with my system and simple model. This would be my 8th world champs and every time I've been there was always some or other equipment failure and lack of performance from the model. So my target was to see if I could just go and fly the qualifying rounds with everything working and do the best that I can with minimal practice. I also need to explain that neither Loren, Percy or me had the energy to put in more than one or two practice flights in a day. We could simply not cope in that sort of heat. I take my hat off to those guys that had one flight and then just kept putting their name back on the list and doing this for the whole day. I reckon I could have put in a top 20 flight if the weather would just give me a gap. This would be when it is overcast, and a gentle breeze blows directly from the judges for the whole flight i.e. "stunt heaven"! This was never going to happen. When the wind was not howling at way over the 9 meters per second limit, we would have either no wind or that breeze that keeps changing all the way around the circle. Added to this was the fact that the sun (as we all know) is a wind magnet, so most of the time you had to fly with the sun directly in your face. Anyway, excuses aside, I came off feeling great with my 38th place out of 66. In my last round two of the judges came me a score 1004 and 1006, while Serge Delabarde gave me 893 or something. For the record I believe that Serge was the accurate judge this time. I flew all the rounds in the world cup and world champs without any technical hassles. My system was tested to the limit and I can state categorically that my system performed as well or better than any other power package there, barring the active rpm system from Igor as used by the top 3 pilots. In fact Igor flew my Newtron afterwards and said that although he could not feel any kick from my differential gain system, it felt like the other good governors. We did not have time for me to set it up to demo it properly for him to feel, so I took his comments as a compliment.
Loren Nell did a great unintentional demo of the way it shuts off when the prop gets snagged. The grass circle was lousy with lots of bumps and lumps. I held the model until the rpm was full on with the governor, but after rolling a short way, it went into a dip and snagged the prop. It shut down immediately. The judges offered him a re-flight, and because there was zero damage to the motor, esc or prop, he just reset everything and flew the flight. I saw a few others break props and stuff on that field.
Dive Fitzgerald saw Loren's model of his Thundergazer fly and commented that it sure looked like it had plenty of power and control in the bad conditions. I've added some pics below. I was thinking that maybe we should re-name Loren's model the "Quiet-Gazer"! I also pointed out to Dave that you can get a kit of his excellent design for a good price and Loren's performance shows what can be done with such a simple power package. You don't have to mortgage your house to get this sort of power and control. In the ongoing debate of does electric stunt have an unfair advantage over IC engines, I would state that it certainly does when it comes to the price/performance/reliability issue. You really have to have a pro-stunt engine system to get near the performance of a simple electric low cost package like we used, and then when it comes to ease of use, setting it all and flying in all weather..........then there is no competition at all. Having said all that great stuff about electric power I must admit to getting caught with something really basic. I would fly a round in the evening with a great setting in rpm, thinking that I have now optimized everything, only to find that my next flight in the middle of the day had slower lap times with just that much less line tension to cause me to bounce a few pull-outs. Boo-boo, I just did not consider that fact that the air density changes and should have just added a few hundred revs. I suppose that's called experience! Overall I had a great experience and I'm really happy about the performance of my system.
Keith R