Okay, let me apologize for the rookie question. I'm considering a conversion from electric RC to electric CL. (CL takes a lot less real estate. Years ago, the club I belonged to lost it's field. The club never recovered and disbanded. Now, I'm retired, moved, found a new club, and - guess what? - we're losing our field.  )

Anyway, I was looking through my back issues of Model Aviation and found the article on building a UTronics throttle control system (June 2015). I have a friend who's an electrical engineer and loves to solder stuff up, so that part is easy. I also have a friend who just happens to own a machine shop, so putting that stuff into a custom designed handle shouldn't be too much of a problem.

One thing the article didn't really cover is how to make the actual connections from the handle to the pair of insulated lines, and then from the insulated lines to the unit in the plane (or the ESC - we'll be testing the BEC voltage very carefully.) Does anyone have a link to instructions as to how to accomplish that, or could point me in the correct direction?

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but.......  consider the source. 

Paul

Welcome back. 

You'll have to wait till one of the scale guys answers ya, but I think they allow 2.4 Ghz control so you won't need any insulated lines.  The rules were changed this year I think to allow the 2.4 Ghz.  Control lines still has to control the elevator.

Thank you! Last time I flew CL was somewhere back when, well, I think dinosaurs were an issue at the field.

I was considering adapting / converting a RC car transmitter and using an Rx on the plane, but, the radio can get heavy in your hand (I raced RC cars for awhile as well) and on the examples I've seen online, either the line attachment didn't look very secure, or the whole thing looked uncomfortable to hold. I may pick one up and take it apart just to fiddle around with the PC board to see how to best eliminate the steering, and the throttle reverse/brake function, and then design a proper handle to house it all.

I'll check in with the scale forum and see what I can find. Thanks again.

You can do it the hard way if you want, but I have four planes with 2.4 RC throttles controlled by a stock car controller in my left hand.  No soldering, no EE gizmos.  100% plug in off the shelf. 

Insulated lines are a total deal-breaker.

Do you have any difficulty maintaining a constant part throttle setting? I'm thinking of gutting a radio and replacing the trigger mechanism and electronics with a slide pot. Custom handle, just because my buddy does some amazing work at the machine shop!

Fred Cronenwett, who's pretty active on the scale forum here, uses a 2.4GHz airplane transmitter hanging from his belt.  He just reaches down and runs throttle and whatnot with his left hand while he's using a plain old 2-line handle in his right.

I suggest that you message the moderator of the scale forum and ask him to move this whole thread over there -- you'll probably get way more useful answers.

Nice guy.  Obsolete technology.  The legalization of 2.4 killed his insulated line technology.

the best way go is 2.4 Ghz, I converted in 2013 soon as it was legal for competition

This is a link to my CL scale book that talks about how to use the insulated lines if you use the U-Tronics system. Look on page 7 thru 12 for the line construction

https://lafayetteesquadrillecl.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/control-line-scale-modeling.pdf

Fred

This is a video I shot showing how to hook up an 2.4 Ghz RC system for electric power for throttle control. Every ESC seems to behave differently so depending upon what ESC you have may change the transmitter settings (end point).



Fred

I did that video on the basics of electric power because some of the questions I was getting were very basic but realized that some people already know how all that works. Do you plan on flying the model as a CL model? Twins are great, I have the B-29 that I fly with four E-25's, scary when you get all four motors at full power.

Fred

The basic information is still valuable to many. A lot of 'experienced' guys don't know what can happen when you try feeding a Rx with two BECs. 

As a circuit designer, I can assure you that without dissecting circuits, what happens when you try feeding a receiver with two BECs is pretty much unknowable.

It could range anywhere from a totally benign situation where the BECs more or less share the load, to burnt electronics.  (Something benign is most likely, so if you do it by accident and the ESCs still work, don't sweat too much).

It's probably best to set things up so that you never find out, though.