I'm not Clancy, so if he contradicts anything I say believe him and not me.

But:

Don't do anything really stupid like running one signal wire next to one motor wire, and the other signal wire next to the other motor wire, with everything all seperate.  As long as like is twisted with like (motor with motor, battery with battery, teeny with teeny), and they're not all twisted up together, then you're probably going to be fine.  I would try to maintain some separation, and I would try to keep wires running at right angles -- but if you've got a couple of inches where the wires all lay together you're probably fine, particularly if they're twisted.

I'm assuming that Clancy's system works the same as RC, in that it needs an on-board battery for power.  If that's the case then you want to cut the power wire coming from one of the ESCs, but you want signal going out to both of them. You don't want to cut the signal wire on either of the assemblies under any circumstances -- that'll just make that ESC/motor/battery combo into a giant, expensive paperweight.

First, I want to say that I am probably going way, way overboard here.  My instincts for wiring harnesses were developed working on systems that carried video over shielded twisted pairs, in 100 feet of cable that was also carrying raw vehicle power in wires laying right next to the video.  Video is way way more noise sensitive than the digital signals that tell the ESC what to do, and your motors draw way way less current than the stuff that was making that video.

So you can probably wire your plane any old which way, and it'll probably work just fine.

Thanks Tim. I am a newbie to the total electrics, that is why the silly questions.

I have not heard of the "twisting" of a run of wires. Do we know why that would reduce the effect of high voltage on very low voltage?

First, your voltage differences here aren't all that significant.  What is significant is the current in the wires.  Current induces magnetic fields around the wires that carry the current (like the battery wires).  Varying current induces varying magnetic fields.  Those varying fields will, in turn, induce voltage on nearby wires -- like your signal wires.  The more current that's induced, the more voltage will be induced (hence the concern).  The less overall coupling there is between the sets of wires, the less voltage will be induced.

If you arrange sets of wires so that all the wires in the set are laying close together then they'll tend to cancel out their own magnetic fields, and they'll tend to be less sensitive to impinging magnetic fields.  So you want you want the wires dressed so that related wires (like the + and - battery wire) are tight together.  Twisting the wires a bit helps to keep them laying together.

Twisting the wires also helps because if you have the + battery lead laying against the signal lead, then a little while later the - battery lead doing the same thing, then the effects of the current in that battery lead will tend to cancel out.  So if you twist the two sets of wires with a different pitch then you'll reduce the coupling still further.  This is easy enough with battery wires and signal wires -- just twist them naturally, enough so they hold together, and because they're such different sizes they'll naturally tend to have different twist pitches.

So twist reduces coupling because it reduces the distance between the wires, and because it breaks up the tendency for wires to "talk" to each other.

I won't really have any right angle relations of wiring that I can envision. Batteries in the body; ESC and motors in the nacelles. Therefore the power wires run parallel to the wingspan. Clancy's decoder (similar to the receiver in R/C) will be in the body also with control wires running out to the nacelles parallel to the power wires. I probably can separate those two runs by as much as 6 inches.

Use right angle relations if you can.  If you were to run the battery wires and the signal wires (both ground and signal to the ESC) randomly in a tray, then you may 'un-luck' out and cause ESC problems.  Chances are low that this will happen.  You've got a bigger chance that a loose connection in a battery ground wire will mess you up.

Twist the wires enough so that they're neat and tidy, run the signal wires an inch or more away from the battery leads if it's convenient (and run them right together if its not), and make sure you have good battery connections, and you should be fine.

Are you running one battery per motor, or one battery for the whole plane?  How many cells?

Clancy's system can run with a BEC or a separate battery to power it and any servos. I think I am going to use a separate battery source instead of the BEC. Would that eliminate the need to cut the power wire?

No!

The BEC is going to try to power your receiver if you connect it up.  With two BECs and a battery in there, you'd have three different power sources and just one power sink, all connected to the same piece of metal.  Chances are high that what would actually happen would be that the BECs would just float and not deliver any current -- but one or the other of them may also try to charge your battery for you, in a totally uncontrolled fashion.  Unless Clancy's system leaves the power leads unconnected for you, clip those leads!

I'm in Oregon City, Oregon (actually I'm about eight miles east).  If you click on someone's name in a post you'll bring up their profile, and if they put their location in there then you can see it.

Jim
You mentioned using two controls for the separate throttles.  I did that on my P-38 and to make a long story short, I pushed up the right throttle only and ground looped the model.  I then added a switch to "lock together" the throttles.  I will enclose a drawing with the batteries.
Clancy

Jim
I would recommend that you power the U/Tronics Control Decoder from the BEC circuits in one of the ESC's.  Least items to work with.  One set of batteries less to charge.  If you follow the instructions at the bottom of the Dual ESC drawing you should do fine.

The thing I would recommend is adding the Throttle lock switch so that "while flying" you have the throttles working together.

I will add a drawing to the special use thread to show how to wire up the Throttle lock switch.
Clancy

Tim:

That is sort of how I intended to set them up (next to each other). I wasn't thinking so much about an "engine out" as I will have plenty of other options available. I was thinking more in terms of a "start one" and "start two" to further verify the throttle control to the judges. I understand Clancy's concern, but I guess I am sort of stubborn.

Thanks for the clue about clicking on the author's name in a post. I am still learning. What I can't seem to master yet is the inclusion of a previous quote. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't

JHF