Neal Blackie is a serious modeller who likes gliders – slope soaring , thermalling or from an aerotow . He has a novel way of trialling the electronics before you install them into your large model .
It started as an exercise to see if he wanted to use S . bus in a new 6 metre glider he is building . The idea was that he would try to run only one wire from the aileron servo to the flap servo , then one wire from there to the Rx in the fuselage . He also wanted to run just one wire from the tailplane to the Rx , even though he had two servos in the tailplane acting independently , again cutting down on extra wiring . That would be a saving of about 3.5 m of wire in the sailplane he is building .
It turns out that it works perfectly . He looked at adding a fully redundant switch and two lipo batteries . Neal settled on the PowerBox Sensor Electronic Switch Backer from Hobby King with 3000mAh batteries .
He set up the test model as a 2-D foam outline so that he could easily see that everything would work and fit . He added the auto pilot as well as GPS guidance . The last thing to do was to try was redundant servos . He used a pair of FrSky receivers ( TFR8 SB 8ch 2.4 Ghz S . BUS , FASST compatible ) as these worked with his Futaba 14MZ . The receivers just work with anything plugged in anywhere , he says . One power supply goes to each , one aileron on each Rx , one elevator servo on each and the rest plugged in to where is convenient . Simple , but effective .
Top : The FrSky TFR8 SB 8ch 2.4Ghz S . BUS Receiver FASST Compatible . No receiver channel limits ( except by those on your transmitter ) and prevents mismatched servo channel connections .
Above : PowerBox Sensor Electronic Switch Backer for operating / control board with three push-buttons and three power indicator LEDs .