More good news on contests this year!

Will Moore wins the prestigious "MASS CUP" with E power!

I just got off the phone with ECL pioneer Will Moore. I called to congratulate my good friend and ask him to post some photos and details for us to see here on SH.

This is an annual New England contest in beautiful Wrentham Mass. Will has been looking forward to this contest all year, so I am glad he did so well. They don't use AP so that makes his 540 winning score very good indeed. :-)  

Will used his beautiful Electric Powered Thunder Cloud to win the top trophy. It has a Plentenberg 30-14 with a 5S 3800 Thunder Power battery. He says this set up is very powerful and everything runs cool as it just loafs along at 5.2 sec lap speeds, with sharp corners and unlimited power throughout the pattern. This is the same setup used by Paul Walker on his 1st ECL CLPA plane and was recommended by another ECL pioneer Kim Doherty. The P-25-14 is plenty strong enough, but Will is like me and feels that you can never have too much power and likes to have everything unstressed!  

Congratulations Will!  

Regards,  

Indeed, CONGRATS Will!

I THINK Will flew either this (or an earlier version? Thundercloud with a Saito 56???  Just offering that up for comparison's sake

Dennis;

Yes it is the same John Ashford airplane I flew at Brodak last year.   It was designed around the Saito 62 and flew real well
with that package.   I decided to use the airframe as a test- bed for experimenting with an electric power package that
will be used in a Yatsenko designed Shark.  The Yatsenko brothers and I are working out  the details as we speak.

The Thunder Cloud flies equally well with the electric package.  I never had a problem with the Saito.  Always ran perfectly,
every flight.  4-stroke is relatively quiet compared to 2-stroke, and I honestly like the sound .  The electric variant is whisper
quiet,   deceivingly powerful,  you can hear bugs hitting the leading edge, and comments from the audience.  And you know about all
of the other  advantages like no over or under motor runs, instant controlled starts, no wind-ups in the wind during manuevers,
and plenty of power, and constant flight repeatable flight speeds.  Key to good flights. I felt guilty that I had such an unfair advantage.

This is a big airplane based on Randy Smith's SV-22 wing, huge fuselage and tail moments.  To convert I simply removed the Saito
and tank components, epoxied a firewall at the nose, to mount the Orbit 24 or 30 with a radial mount, and used the existing gas
tank hatch on the side of the fuselage to access the battery.  Did not have to re-balance the bird.  Actually I took out some tail weight.

Flies rock-solid  with a 3900 Thunder Power 5 cell, Shultze ESC and Hubin fm-9 timer.  Use various props. At the contest I used
an APC 13/6.5 pusher.  Interestingly, when I had the Saito in it, it had some minor trim issues that never got resolved.
When I went to electric and used a pusher prop, they all got resolved.

One of the reasons I decided to use this bird as a test bed for electric was that the Saito was destroying the airframe.  John Ashford
designed the frame as light as he dared to , but the constant banging of the powerful 4-stroke developed stress cracks in the fuselage
at the leading edge of the wing and along the back of the canopy. The airplane flies too well to loose so the electric version will keep the stress
cracks at bay.  Another advantage !  Airframes last forever ( relatively speaking).  John Ashford did a incredible job in the design of this
airplane.  It is one of the best airplanes I have ever flown.   Now I am working on the Ukrainian Shark, which Jose Modesto and I and others feel
may perhaps be the "gold standard" in airplanes ( arguably of course) .  In electric, it would be stunning.  That's my next bird.

Here are pictures of the Thunder Cloud and the some of the great guys I flew with this past Sunday at Wrentham.

Will Moore


 

Will:
THANKS for the insights.  I never flew CL-4 strokes so never experienced what you described.  You are right, the e-conversion will definitely help sustain the structure. Oh yeah, that gorgeous finsih should last longer too!  E-shark seems easy enough too.

Big e-power systems are here to stay...