Suggestion: poor man's candy bomber

[BeginnerSwede]

Hi! Just got into the hobby. I have two daughters. They are a bit too young to get into the hobby but they love candy and I think they would love to chase after parachuting candy gnomes (foam gnomes aka skumtomtar in swedish). Since I dont have any extra servos lying around (and no room in the stock reciever(?)) My plan Is to attach a box on top of the wing with a closeable lid that will hold the gnome(s) and open when I roll.

I will try it and possibly report on my progress, if you guys wont try it first. Thanks for a great show!

 

[foambasher]

Call!! But won't it be a bit wing heavy? Or have you got a very cunning plan?

 

[BeginnerSwede]

Maximum weight?

I dont know? Do you have any idea how much an apprentice s15 could take on top of the wing? The materials I had in mind was: large empty matchbox (made out of cardboard), foam gnome, toy parachute and possibly a coin to hold the lid down during normal flight. Do you think it would be easier to fly if the box is suspended beneath the fuselage (eg between the rear landing gear)?

Another idea is to hook up a simple trigger to the rudder servo since it is hardly used anyway

 

[foambasher]

Ok. I wasn't sure what box you were talking about. I think it will work. Don't bother equilizing the wait. You should be pretty safe

 

[foambasher]

I think you should put the box on the wing. And maybe something a tad heavier than a coin, cause it will most likely fall of. How fast does it go?

 

[BeginnerSwede]

Its quite slow. But you are probably right, keeping it from opening up might be the buggest challenge.

 

[localfiend]

Servo's are really cheap, and you could unplug the rudder from your plane. Don't need that to drop candy.

 

[BeginnerSwede]

Ok, so regarding using an extra servo: I guess a 13g servo from e-flite will do (the kind or servo that is in the plane by default). I can see that the reciever in the plane allows for an aux2-servo to be plugged in. I can only interpret this as the reciever allows 7-channels (motor, rudder, ailerons, altitude, safe and panic switch and AUX2). Since I have a Spektrum DX6-transmitter, I dont really have a 7th channel to assign to my newly installed AUX2-servo. Maybe I can use som clever mixing on the transmitter but I dont really understand how that works. Does anyone know if I could get the additional servo plugged into AUX2 on the reciever to work with lets say a flip switch on my Spektrum DX6?

If this is not possible, I could of course unplug rudder servo and erplace with candy bombing servo, no problems, but it would be nice to have a more permanent setup on the plane.

 

[nevenelestate]

Looking at the picture of the advertised receiver in the App 15, they built the receiver with only 5 channels available to plug into, the bind plug doesn't take up a channel. Normal Receivers, not simplified trainer, have Bind, Throttle, Aileron, Elevator, Rudder, Gear, Aux. The E-flite/Horizon Safe and AS3X systems use channel 5 for the ability to turn them on or off. You should be able to plug in a servo to the "Aux2" channel and control it via "Aux" channel on your DX6.

The easiest way to verify that is to just plug a servo into the Aux2 channel, then setup any switch on you DX6, I like the push button for these types of things, switch "I". and then power up the aircraft (prop off for safety) and see if the servo moves when you activate the switch you chose.

As far as the dropper, if you look in the FT Mini Guinea thread(s) (http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?14158-FT-Mini-Guinea-Build) for ideas on how to use a servo to open and close a cargo door. Or you can do what Peter designed and just use the servo to hold the door shut, have it move to "unlock" the door and then roll to open/drop, for that I would use a toggle switch, not the push button.

From experience, I would not try to have the dropper require a roll. If you can mount it on the bottom than that's a much better best for success.

Post some pictures of whatever you do end up doing, and good luck!

 

[BeginnerSwede]

Thanks for the tip! Ive looked in the manual and chsnnel 5 is safe mode switch (three modes) and channel 6 (hi/lo) is panic switch. There is no mention of Aux 2 in the manual and this port is free on the plane to plug in a servo. I am pretty sure that I would be able to use Aux2 if I had a DX8 (or more). For now, replace rudder with drop servo seems to be the only way, or possibly hook extra servo up to rudder channel so its "piggybacking" on the same channel, which would mean that both rudder and bomber turns at the same time.

 

[nevenelestate]

Might be worth reading through this post on RCgroups http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1897358 to look for ideas.