Small Scale Military Headquarters

Hello all! Long time, no read...

A while back I got tired of just looking at the 1:18 aircraft I had sitting around and broke out the Dremel. Ran out and picked up some motors at my local Radio Shack and soon I was chasing bad guys around the house with my son. Thinking now about hanging a couple from his room but not a fan of having to grab a chair every time I wanna turn 'em on.

So, quick question - anyone got any suggestions for a remote on/off switch I can use to turn the motors off and on? I've looked around the usual suspects (radio shack, best buy etc as well as youtube) for ideas but didn't know if maybe this subject has already been covered.

Any suggestions/recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks,

John

a couple of weeks back, I was bringing the echo blower back inside downstairs and had to fire up most of the 18th AC on display; I didn't think plastic on plastic could spin that fast

Mike I'm too uncool to unnerstan...?

tpa05 wrote:Mike I'm too uncool to unnerstan...?

I was bit confused too. I'm guessing a leaf blower,, it'll certainly make the propellers spin.

I think a manual switch would be easiest, or maybe an infrared remote. LEGO uses an infrared remote for their trains. The problem will be the mild ongoing current drain.

Question, how do you plan to power the motors? Batteries? If so, are you going to replace them are recharge them in the plane?

Actually have a P-47, Zero, Hellcat and a Corsair all using your off-the-shelf (from inside the drawer) 6-volt motor. Ok, so I'm usin' a 9-volt battery but that's because I used too much (and too thick) wiring...

You'll notice that the aircraft I've chosen so far have radial engines as the cowlings are easier to cut, the propellers easier to work with and more space for the motors. That'll change when the bad-guy in front of the '47 is a ME-109. We'll see how it goes.

Now back to the switch. I found one that was reviewed on youtube however again it's just too big. No way of sticking it inside a bomb or fuel tank and so I'm again looking for a solution.

Gotta say though I'm now so tempted to take the 4-bladed C-sorta130 I got a while back from TRU and test drive Mike's leaf-blower VS Prop-plane model...

Again, any ideas are appreciated.

John

Could you cannibalise a cheap RC toy, and just use it's remote to activate the engine/prop? Not sure of battery life though.

It's not going to solve you're remote switch, just throwing out some ideas. How about putting a rechargeable battery in the drop tank, with metal contacts that complete the circuit? Remove the drop tank to recharge the battery. The drop tank could be the power source and act as the switch.

I was heavy into R / C planes for a bit and they were all manual ons and offs. As said before if there was such a switch it would be a drain on the batteries.

What about running some wires from the plane to a located switch ? That way you could flick it on and off like a light switch.

You could make the leads a quick pop on and off when flying the planes manually.

Chasing bad guys .

May I suggest something like this?...
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product ... 52996.html
At only $12.15 I would think it's worth a try....?

An other idea. If your planes are all hanging from the ceiling, you could use these wires stretched from one wall to the other, that give current to some hanging lights. You would have only one 110V AC / 12V DC transformer for all the planes, each one hanging through 2 thin steel wires (+ and -poles) from the wall to wall wires.
But I love the idea of drop tanks with a rechargeable battery.
I found very small switches in a train modeller store, and used 4 on my customized BBI MH-6:

Not very satisfying (though very discrete switches), because I didn't know anything about LED when I made this custom, and if I set all the light bulbs "on", the rotors strongly slow down, and when the rotors are running, the flashing lights get too low voltage to flash...