Radio Control Blog
There’s a place I like to race at in St. Peter, MN called Shamrock RC Raceway. It’s an interesting setup because it’s a turf track set up outdoors in a hockey rink that would otherwise go unused in the summer. Rather than bring an insane extension cord to power my charger from the park restroom, I wanted to come up with a more portable (and green) charging solution.
So I put together this simple solar charging setup:
My good friend Joe has an old E-Maxx – not wanting to miss out on any bashing and crashing fun, I had him dig it out. It’s an oldie but a goodie. A 1st Generation E-Maxx with dual motors, dual batteries and a 2-speed transmission. It’s the one with the chassis that looks like this:
It’s also a bit of a relic. NiMH batteries, brushed motors, and AM radio aren’t exactly state-of-the-art. But I don’t want to upgrade everything, I just wanted to get it back on the road – so where do we start?
I did quite a bit more flying this summer than I did rc car racing. As the weather turns cold flying will be limited to golf dome outings with the local electric club and indoor FPV. In Minnesota the on-road guys drive on carpet indoors, so it’ll soon be time to race. One thing I’ve grown to like that is commonplace on quads and planes is the XT-60 connector. So I decided to upgrade all of my cars and even my rocket launcher to it.
Technically, an XT-60 pair is 2g heavier than a pair of Deans connectors, but with all of the other advantages, I’m still switching.
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If you have one of the ubiquitous “4 button chargers” you can likely upgrade the firmware to Cheali Charger. You’ll have to do some hacking to get there, but if you want to add features like LiHV and NiZN charging, and have 30 battery memories, it’s the way to go.
Example chargers that are eligible:
I’ve tried adding an upgraded battery to my son’s Scout CX in the past, but it’s designed to only accept the tiny 70mAh batteries it comes with. After upgrading my Inductrix to a larger power connecter, I had two donor batteries to experiment with… So I took my old Inductrix battery lead and made a lead extension.
While this isn’t about anything R/C, it’s somewhat related… I recently converted a lead-acid battery powered mower to lithium-ion batteries. Anyone that is in R/C and has a lawn to mow should follow this course.
For the record, I hate mowing the lawn. It’s a useless pursuit. We’ve all got better things to do with both our time and our resources like water and land. This Washington Post article “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them” pretty much sums up my opinion.
The purpose of upgrading to an electric mower is to get the job done faster, and without smelling like a snowblower repairman when I’m done.
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