Ep 83: ISDT Air8 charger, BattAir Plugins, and other stuff

[00:00:12] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron.

[00:00:16] And I'm Tom. You surprised me there with that intro. You jumped. Yeah, that was interesting. So we're going to talk about something really cool that you just acquired. I think so. The battery management system.

[00:00:28] Battery management system.

[00:00:30] Well, that's what it is, right?

[00:00:31] I guess so.

[00:00:32] I mean, it's a system that helps you manage your batteries.

[00:00:35] The ISDT Bat Air connectors along with a new charger I got.

[00:00:40] This coming from a nitro guy. That's actually really interesting. But I'll tell you what. Let's hold off on that. There's a few other things we need to get to. We've got some voicemails we'll talk about and some other really important things we need to mention. Important.

[00:00:54] Okay.

[00:00:54] Yeah, there's a new addition to the whole family.

[00:00:57] What is that?

[00:00:58] Well, you got a new mower.

[00:00:59] Oh, that's not. When you say new addition, I'm thinking like, well, okay, because Crystal and Piper are begging to get a cat. Once Crystal's out of school and stuff, I think we're going to be doing that begrudgingly. I don't want any more animals and stuff around here. But anyway, I thought that's where you were going.

[00:01:16] No.

[00:01:17] But not to get sidetracked. But no, it's funny. Our zero turn broke. We had to go buy a new one. Yes. The only reason I bring this up that it's related to the hobby is because I actually chose the mower we chose for cutting a runway in our field.

[00:01:36] Yeah.

[00:01:36] Like all the other mowers I saw, the lowest they would go was an inch and a half. And this one I specifically bought because it went down to an inch for the cutting height on grass.

[00:01:45] Right.

[00:01:46] And how all-encompassing of a hobby is this when you are making your decision on what mower you buy based on how it will help you in the hobby?

[00:01:56] It infiltrated every facet of your life.

[00:02:00] Pretty much.

[00:02:01] Which is okay.

[00:02:02] I'm not complaining.

[00:02:04] I think that's fine. But it is a nice mower. I've seen it. I've seen what it can do. And it is pretty slick. Yes, it mows. Well, but I mean, it does a really good job. Like, I mean, I don't know if it has a mulch, whatever, too.

[00:02:15] No, it doesn't. It's just a mower. I mean, it's nothing special. But I just chose it because of how low I could go. Well, it does a fine job.

[00:02:23] So, yeah.

[00:02:23] Compared to the crap we had before.

[00:02:24] Yeah, that was, well, it was like, and it created more work almost than you actually got out of it.

[00:02:31] Well, it was breaking down more than, I mean, I was working on it just about as much as I was actually mowing with it. So, it's nice to have something new I can just hop on and mow and have more time to, play with airplanes. Exactly. Once again, everything encompasses.

[00:02:44] Yeah, speaking of playing with airplanes, we got a couple of new airplanes to play with. We did. We went to the swap meet down there in Columbia and.

[00:02:54] Again. So, this is the same swap meet I went to. Yeah, you've been to it before.

[00:02:58] I've never been to this one.

[00:02:59] Oh, you haven't? Huh. Okay. So, this is the one I went to in the fall where I picked up a couple airplanes. This is where I got the shoestring and the pacer. Yes. It was the same swap meet as that. I was very disappointed in how many people were not there this time. Like, I would say about a third. Yeah, about a third as many people as last time. So, when I got there when it opened last time. I got there when the doors opened right at eight. There was actually a line outside.

[00:03:24] Okay. We were waiting to go in.

[00:03:26] Yeah.

[00:03:26] And they had, by the time I walked in, I would say there was probably three or four tables that were not spoken for. Oh, really? Out of the, what do you think, maybe 60 that were there? Yeah. Let's just roughly say.

[00:03:39] I'm sorry. Wow. Yeah, you caught me mid-yawn. Yeah, I would say there was probably 60 to, I think that might be pushing it. It was probably somewhere between 50 and 60 tables.

[00:03:48] Okay, so let's say just 50 for funsies. There was probably, like I said, not many open tables. Whereas this time, I think when I walked in, there was probably 10 tables taken.

[00:04:02] Yeah.

[00:04:02] The rest were completely open.

[00:04:03] I would say that when we left, which, by the way, we didn't stay very long.

[00:04:09] No.

[00:04:10] When we left. Well, hour and a half. There were probably more empty tables than there were taken tables, I would say.

[00:04:17] Well, there was definitely more empty than taken when I got there.

[00:04:20] Well, yeah, but I mean, even when we left, that whole other side, where a lot of the, like, ready-built planes were up against them all there, that whole side was nearly empty.

[00:04:32] Yeah.

[00:04:32] And there was probably 20, 25 tables there just on that side.

[00:04:36] I mean, I guess maybe if you think about it, in the spring, there's not a lot of people that want to sell their airplanes. They want to fly them.

[00:04:43] Well, that's a good sign.

[00:04:44] I mean, yeah.

[00:04:45] Hopefully that's what, hopefully that's what happened.

[00:04:47] Because there was definitely a lot more. And I was talking to one of the guys that was there, and he said every year that's how it is. He said the spring one is really nothing compared to the fall one. So if you want to go to a good one, go in the fall. So we'll go back again.

[00:05:01] Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll try to make a trip down there in the fall.

[00:05:04] It's a couple-hour drive. Yeah, it's not. It's easy.

[00:05:06] It's an easy drive.

[00:05:07] Yeah.

[00:05:07] Right down the highway. So anyway, even though it wasn't a great swap meet, we still managed to find some deals.

[00:05:15] It was still a good swap meet.

[00:05:16] Yeah.

[00:05:16] Because we came home with airplanes.

[00:05:18] We did.

[00:05:18] Not as many.

[00:05:19] No, I came home with one.

[00:05:21] I came home with two and a half.

[00:05:23] Two and a half-ish or three quarters. I'll give you three quarters.

[00:05:28] Well, okay.

[00:05:29] Two and three quarters.

[00:05:29] So let's talk about what I came home with first, and we'll try and figure out what percentage of one I got. So the one I found with is a SZD, and I'm not going to say what that actually means because it is a name that I cannot pronounce. SZD-45 Ogre. And it was made by the Wingsmaker. It was modeled after like an actual full-size glider. So this is another glider, a powered glider that was, I think they first flew it back in the 70s, early 70s.

[00:05:59] And this is one that they made 66 of in real life.

[00:06:03] Oh.

[00:06:03] So this, the model, it's a, well, it's a, like a T-tailed pusher.

[00:06:08] Yeah, it's cool looking.

[00:06:09] And it's a two-seater in real life. So front to back, two-seater. Tandem. Oh, is that, honey?

[00:06:16] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:16] Kind of like a tandem bike. Okay. I understand now. And it's got a 98 and a half inch wingspan.

[00:06:23] That is not a small wing.

[00:06:25] No, it's not. So the wing is pretty big compared to the fuselage. Obviously, it's a glider. It doesn't look like it would be that big when you just look at the fuselage. But, so it's kind of neat because the, when it came from the factory, it came with the four servos installed and it came with the motor installed, but it didn't come with an ESC or anything else in it. I still have to do that, which is no big deal. I have ESCs and stuff.

[00:06:52] Yeah.

[00:06:53] So it should be an easy completion to do because everything is pretty much there that I need. The only thing, so it's all foam, which, okay, maybe foamies aren't all that bad. It's, it'll be fun to try. The thing I don't like though is it did not come with the decals.

[00:07:12] Oh, well, I mean, you have a vinyl cutter.

[00:07:14] But if you saw what the actual airplane looked like, it's a bunch of small like circles that are different colors and stuff. So it would be very difficult to actually make decals in that, in that way. But we'll, I don't know, we'll figure it out. Maybe we'll do something different, like completely different and paint it and kind of make it our own design. When I bought it, the guy had no clue what it was. It was.

[00:07:36] So it's hard when you, when you go up to somebody and ask them, what is this? It's hard to know what you're looking at if they have no idea.

[00:07:43] Right.

[00:07:43] Because to me, I mean, like I've never, I guess I have, I think I've heard of the wings maker, but it's not anything I'm familiar with. I've heard of them, but yeah. So this is one that there was no markings or anything that really told you what it was. And he said, he Googled, he said, he tried to figure out what it was just by image search and, trying to describe what it looked like and stuff.

[00:08:08] But it's kind of fun sometimes to try and figure out what an airplane is, as long as you figure it out.

[00:08:14] Right.

[00:08:15] If you don't, it's frustrating.

[00:08:16] It's not so much fun if you don't end up with, finding what it is.

[00:08:20] But on this one, when you're looking all over it in the very front of the nose, there's a little molding mark that I don't remember. There was like four letters and numbers on it. I have no clue. I don't remember what it was. I don't have it in front of me. But anyway, if you Google that, along with foam glider, T-tail, I think is what I Googled, on like the second page of images, it brought up the actual one. And then you were able to kind of go through and find it that way.

[00:08:49] So it takes time sometimes, but you can come across what it actually is. And the nice thing about that is so now I have the instruction manual. I have reviews where it was reviewed by a couple different magazines and stuff. So I know what I have and what needs to be done with it.

[00:09:03] Cool. So what I found interesting is, so it's a pusher, like it's an electric pusher, but it has a folding, a three-bladed folding prop that folds to the rear, like folding.

[00:09:14] But not all the way.

[00:09:15] But not, it's, yeah, it's an odd setup.

[00:09:17] That was one of the reviews said that it works well, but not as good as a normal tractor type that folds the propellers back,. All the way, yeah.

[00:09:26] Up against the fuselage.

[00:09:27] Yeah, but they said in the review that you can tell it makes a difference, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. So we will see one of these days.

[00:09:35] It's a neat looking airplane. I can't wait to see it fly.

[00:09:37] It's got a wheel on it too. It's got a wheel under the fuselage and then a tail wheel. Apparently when it was new, it had a little foam block that had small wheels on it, which really they said was only for, am I keeping you awake?

[00:09:54] I don't know what my problem is.

[00:09:55] You're finally in a place where it's cold and you're happy, so you're just kind of getting. Maybe that's it. You're relaxed.

[00:10:00] That's it.

[00:10:00] Yeah, that's what I'm going to go with.

[00:10:02] So a foam block with wheels.

[00:10:03] With small wheels, as they said, was really for nothing, like you couldn't do it on grass. It had to be pavement because the wheels were so small. But it pretty much worked as landing gear. The foam just, or the block just fell off when it took off. We won't be able to do that, obviously, because of our setup. So hand launching apparently works just as well with it.

[00:10:24] Sure.

[00:10:24] So we'll see. I mean, we'll get around to it. I think it's cool looking.

[00:10:28] I can't wait to see it like together.

[00:10:30] Yeah. We should have done that actually before we sat down. But anyway, they said it runs on like a three cell 2200.

[00:10:36] Oh, perfect.

[00:10:37] I've got plenty of those too.

[00:10:39] A bazillion of those.

[00:10:40] Well, four, but that's close enough.

[00:10:45] So what else did you get?

[00:10:46] I ended up with another UMX airplane. Nice. The Thunderbolt.

[00:10:51] Oh, P-47.

[00:10:52] Yeah. I think that's kind of interesting for what it is. So I don't know. I mean, it was funny because you and I, well, the other airplane I ended up getting because the guy heard me buying it. It was somebody walking by. He's like, hey, I've got another one of the UMX Cubs. He said it's crashed. He said, but all the electronics and everything are on it. Do you want it for five bucks? I was like, five bucks.

[00:11:14] I mean, five dollars with all the electronics.

[00:11:17] Speed controller, motor, all the servos and stuff are still good. So everything on it is fine, except he crashed it. And really, it could probably maybe be glued back together and still be flown. But you've got to figure if it's worth it or not. I don't know.

[00:11:35] It's a Cub, though.

[00:11:37] It is.

[00:11:38] You do like Cubs. Cubs and well, I like you say you don't have any.

[00:11:41] Oh, fours. Well, I'm not going to forget that anymore. But anyway, so I picked up that, too. And that's the half or three quarter or whatever number.

[00:11:51] I would say if it can be if it can be repaired. Maybe.

[00:11:56] Like, maybe.

[00:11:58] And it has all the electronics.

[00:12:00] Yes.

[00:12:01] I would say that's three quarters of an airplane.

[00:12:03] OK.

[00:12:03] At least.

[00:12:04] So two and three quarters was my number for this one. They didn't have a lot of good deals there.

[00:12:10] Well, there weren't a lot of people there. So.

[00:12:13] But I feel the deals I got were pretty good. Yeah. Like, I was happy with what I ended up getting. Yeah. So what did you buy?

[00:12:19] Me, too. Like, so the same guy that you bought your P47 from, he also had it.

[00:12:24] Bundled. We did.

[00:12:25] We got a bundle package price. He also had another UMX, the SBOC, the brushless version. And so I got that. And yeah, that's what I bought. I got to buy it. So I waffled on it. I went back and forth. We both did. Because it's electronic or it's electric in foam. two strikes, right there against,. But it's.

[00:12:48] Let's see.

[00:12:49] I'm a huge fan of the SBOC. I like, or I think that's how you pronounce it. I'm not 100% sure. But that's how I've always pronounced it.

[00:12:56] What else would you call it?

[00:12:56] I'm not sure.

[00:12:58] SBOC?

[00:12:59] Maybe. I don't know. Anyway. And I have a 50cc version of this airplane. So I thought it'd be kind of neat to have the little UMX foamy to fly,. I could fly it in my backyard probably, or at least at the school because it's so small.

[00:13:14] Or out here.

[00:13:15] But the problem is it, it takes a little two-cell 180 to 200 milliamp battery, which I have zero of.

[00:13:23] That makes two of us.

[00:13:24] And then it's going to require either an adapter or something so that I can charge it with my charger. So, I paid $40 for the airplane, which is, I felt, pretty reasonable.

[00:13:36] Yeah.

[00:13:38] The guy was asking 50, and, we approached him, and he made us a deal, $90 or whatever it was for both.

[00:13:45] What would have been $80?

[00:13:46] $80, excuse me.

[00:13:48] $90 was the first price we got. That's right. And then after we waited like 45 minutes and nobody else bought them from, we're like, all right, we're walking out the door.

[00:13:55] Yeah.

[00:13:55] Would you do $80 for both? Okay, sure.

[00:13:57] Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to get some batteries, and I'll figure out how to charge them. And I think it'll be a fun airplane to fly.

[00:14:04] Yeah, so we'll have $40 in the plane and then $40 in batteries and a charger adapter. That go in nothing else other than that one airplane. Right, right. That was the thing that got both of us. I mean, like, we weren't, we really weren't sure if it was something we wanted to do or not. But I guess that does open up the possibility of more airplanes coming up in that size. Yeah, right. Yeah, sure.

[00:14:26] So that will no longer be a limiting factor if we see something like that for sailing.

[00:14:30] Exactly.

[00:14:31] That's how I look at it.

[00:14:32] At the swap meet, I did eyeball a couple of items. there was a couple of ARFs there, but go ahead.

[00:14:42] No, so, okay, I think it was last episode. We talked about the ARF that you bought in Toledo that Lori was going to put together.

[00:14:51] Yes.

[00:14:51] Things have fallen apart on that aspect. Well. Or on, not from her, but.

[00:14:59] Yeah, that situation went south pretty quick.

[00:15:01] That's the word I was trying to go for. So something happened where you bought the ARF, you were going to have her put it together. We got it home. You realized there was no manual.

[00:15:12] Right.

[00:15:12] And we could not find a manual anywhere.

[00:15:14] Nope.

[00:15:15] So that kind of took that off of the build table for her.

[00:15:20] Yes. So, yeah, I mean, the idea is to, I want her to build an ARF with no input from me, like as if you were starting out, and this was your first experience, not having a manual. Sure. I mean, I could have, I could have helped her and told her, well, this is what you need to do for it. But that's not really not, wasn't the experience I wanted her to have and not what I wanted her to experience with us on the podcast. So, so yeah.

[00:15:51] So that ARF is not going to work for, for that purpose. So I went to the swap meet in Columbia here that, that we were talking about in the hopes that I would find maybe something a little better suited, at least something with a manual. And sure enough, the first, the first one I looked at, it was a Falcon 120. It was a natural plane. Yeah. Beautiful. It's a beautiful airplane.

[00:16:18] I think it looked like it was well done to fiberglass fuselage and maybe not the most ideal first ARF for someone to put together, but certainly in the realm of possibility. Right. Well, guess what? No manual.

[00:16:35] Same problem.

[00:16:36] Yeah. At least I looked this time first before I pulled the trigger. And to be honest, the guy that eventually bought it got a really good deal. I think.

[00:16:46] The price was beyond fair. Yeah. In my opinion.

[00:16:48] Oh yeah, for sure. And it was a nitro. So it was right up my alley. It was a plane that I would have had a lot of fun with after Lori was done building it, but no manual. So I didn't pull the trigger on that one. And you subsequently emailed the company to see if you could get a manual in their response.

[00:17:06] No. If this continued, we don't have it. I mean, like, yeah, as we were standing there.

[00:17:12] How is that possible?

[00:17:13] As we were standing there, I got on the website because most of the time, like if it's a top flight model or something, I don't want to say reputable, but something more main. Well, I don't even know if I want to say that. Something from like Horizon or something along those lines, you can get right on the website and they will list on their instruction manual, whatever you need.

[00:17:31] And you can even search discontinued items. And usually you get support for those items as well.

[00:17:36] Right. Which is how it should be, especially for all these airplanes that are still around years after they are made.

[00:17:42] I mean, for crying out loud, it's a PDF. Like, how do you not keep a PDF around so that you can just rip one off whenever you need one? Anyway.

[00:17:51] And why would it not be on your website?

[00:17:52] Yeah.

[00:17:52] You still have the webpage up, by the way. For the airplane. For the airplane. And it just says out of stock. Yeah. It doesn't say discontinued. It just says out of stock.

[00:18:00] Yeah. There's no product support page or anything like that. No. I mean, I'm not knocking the company maybe a little bit. Anyway, no manual for the Falcon 120. So, I skipped and passed on that one. And then a little bit later, you actually noticed, hey, there's an ARF over there. It looks like a Mustang or something. So, I walk over there and it was a Black Horse. Black Horse? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:18:22] Black Horse model, P51, their 60 size, 61-inch wing, I think it is, ARF, which really actually looked like a nicely done, I pulled the box off to make sure there was a manual, which there was. There was. But couldn't really get him down to a price that I was comfortable spending, knowing that Lori is going to be putting this together, which I'm sure she would do a fine job, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it because the intent is, this is a learning experience.

[00:18:52] There's a limit to what I think her experience is worth.

[00:18:56] Well, now I have.

[00:18:57] What I mean?

[00:18:58] You want it to be semi-simple, too. You don't want one where you have to set up the retracts. Right. You don't want to have to deal with all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:03] And this one has mechanical retracts, which are included, so they're probably not hard to install, but mechanical retracts, as we've discussed before, are not something that are really easy, and they require a special servo and all this other kind of stuff, so I was like, eh, I couldn't get him down to a price that I was comfortable spending, so I walked away from that one, too. Yeah.

[00:19:26] And I really think you are smart to do that.

[00:19:29] Yeah, I think so. I have no regret or remorse, so that tells me it was the right decision.

[00:19:33] I think with both of those, you are smart walking away from, especially with the first one, because am I right, remembering that it said it takes 11 servos?

[00:19:41] Yeah.

[00:19:42] Like, I still can't figure out where 11 servos would go on that airplane.

[00:19:45] Well, I mean, I guess maybe, yeah, I don't know. I really don't, because, well, there was two rudders, so let's just say two for the rudders, and let's say two for the ailerons, okay, and you got one for the elevator and one for

[00:19:57] The throttle, and then, and then I can figure three more for the gear, maybe, if there's one per gear, but that still leaves two more.

[00:20:05] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:20:06] Unless there was two rudders, so maybe each rudder took one.

[00:20:08] Well, I counted those.

[00:20:09] Two rudders. Was the elevator one?

[00:20:11] Yeah.

[00:20:12] Was there flaps?

[00:20:15] Oh, well, maybe there was flaps, so.

[00:20:17] So there's two more, so maybe that takes us up to the 11, though. Wow. That's a lot of servos, though, for an airplane.

[00:20:22] I mean, that would take my entire purchase at the Toledo swap meet of servos.

[00:20:29] Of servos, yeah.

[00:20:30] Just in that one. So anyway, yeah, I have no, I have no remorse for, for walking away from those two. But they did sell. Both airplanes sold, which is good for the guy that was selling them, but they were just not going to work for what we wanted. I was, I had such high hopes for the stick. I really did. That's.

[00:20:52] So what exactly happened to the stick? Oh, yeah. Because I love slash hate this story.

[00:20:59] Yeah. So, so once I decided that the, the, the, the, the ARF stick that we got at Toledo wasn't going to work for what we wanted, I thought, well, I mean, Bob, our friend, Bob, he loves sticks and he wants us, I know he, he really wants a 60 size stick, but this is a 40 size. I thought, well, maybe I'll offer it up to Bob. Maybe he'll want to, put it together or whatever.

[00:21:22] So I, I called him up and I said, Hey, I bought this, this 40 size stick ARF at the, at the swap meet, would you be interested? I'll sell it to you for exactly what I paid for it. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'll buy it. I was like, cool. He's like, well, we put it together for me. I was like, okay. I mean, it's an ARF. It shouldn't be, shouldn't be too bad. Now, let me, let me start by saying that this ARF is the first ARF stick that Great Plains made, right?

[00:21:51] They've made a lot of stick ARFs over the years, but this is the first one, the original, the original ARF, right? So they basically took a stick kit, hired out Vietnamese kids to put it together, and then they covered it with this like self-adhesive, it reminds me of shelf paper, like the-

[00:22:10] Like contact paper? Yeah.

[00:22:12] Sort of, and it's printed, right? It's not like, it's red and white, it's classic stick colors, but it's printed. It's not, it's one sheet, right, over the whole wing and, yeah. So it's-

[00:22:23] Well, was that called an ARF, by the way, or did they, I thought they had a different name?

[00:22:27] It was called a pre-built kit.

[00:22:29] Okay.

[00:22:29] That's a stick 40 pre-built kit, but it's an ARF. So anyway, I told Bob, I was like, yeah, sure, I'll put it together. And we did some other horse trading, and I ended up with a couple of batteries for the jet he gave us.

[00:22:43] So, so I put it together, got it all finished, he gave me the servos and all the stuff and all the radio gear to put in it, and I, of course, I have plenty of nitro engines, so I sourced a good running, it's a, what did I end up, oh, a Magnum 46, which is a really, it runs really good. I ran it on the stand before I put it on the airplane.

[00:23:06] So anyway, got it all done, printed it up and ran over the, the contact paper or whatever this stuff is that it's covered with, kind of with an iron to try to tighten it up. And it kind of worked, but it, kind of sagged a little bit. It wasn't like beautiful, right? But it was good enough. So I was like, hey, Bob, I've got this thing done, are you home? I can bring it over. He's like, yeah, sure, bring it on over.

[00:23:30] So I go to Bob's house and, Bob has a lot of airplanes, right?

[00:23:35] Yeah.

[00:23:36] I mean, we've had him on the show and you remember his number.

[00:23:39] Yes.

[00:23:39] So.

[00:23:40] A hundred and some.

[00:23:41] Yeah. Which is now higher, which is now plus one more. So I, I deliver the airplane and I'm, I'm helping him, in the house with it. And, and I've got, I set the fuselage or no, I'm sorry. I hand him. Well, first of all, he has to move stuff around in his airplane room to make room for this one. Okay. I get it. Understandable. He's got a lot of airplanes.

[00:24:06] So, he moves some stuff around and he hands me, the fuselage for his tob that he bought years ago at the Columbia swap meet that we've, we've found out later about eight years ago on that one that we just, that we just got home from. Yeah. This weekend. anyway, he hands me the fuselage to his tob. So now I'm holding the wing to the stick and the fuselage to his tob while he takes the fuselage to the stick to go sort it out and, and store it.

[00:24:35] So I'm standing in kind of this hallway with the wing in one hand and this tob fuselage. I don't know if you're familiar with the tob's, horizontal stabilizer, but it, it, it starts like it, it gets progressively wider as it goes to the rear.

[00:24:52] Yeah. This is the same one I have the kit for.

[00:24:54] So, yeah. Right. And it's very sharp and pointed on the ends on either end of the elevator. Right. So, yeah, I've, I've got the fuselage in one hand and I've got the wing to the stick and the other, and you can imagine, where the story's going. I move around to hand him one or the other and sure enough, the, the tip of that elevator goes right through one of the bottom. no, I'm sorry, at the top, bays on the stick wing, I mean, just shatters the covering.

[00:25:28] Like, I mean, I, I didn't hit it that hard, honestly. So it's probably a good thing this happened because I'm sure the first time he would have flown it and, kicked a stick or something in the wing, he would have been in the same situation. But anyway, brand new airplane has never even hadn't even been bound to his radio yet. And now I've got this big hole in the top of the wing in between the rib base.

[00:25:53] So naturally me being who I am, I don't want to hand him an airplane that's already going to need repair. I told him I'd fix it. So I took the wing home and had to completely, completely recover it like completely.

[00:26:06] Yeah. Not like partially.

[00:26:08] Like I had to completely recover it, which meant I had to pull the ailerons off, cut, had to cut the hinges. They were easy, or they were easy type hinges, which easy enough to cut off, and re-hinge everything.

[00:26:22] But what, what happened to one of the ailerons? I thought you said you broke one and you had to make a new one.

[00:26:29] Oh, yeah. So I forgot about that.

[00:26:32] You blocked that out.

[00:26:33] I did. So as I'm cutting the hinges off, I actually, I take that back. No, I had already cut the ailerons off and I'm peeling this, whatever this contact paper is. And it's still sticky, by the way, on the, on the backside. Like it's still sticky. Like I can peel it off and, on an area that it wasn't stuck to, it would stick really, really well to the wood. Right. Which, that, that's a factor here in a minute. so I'm peeling the covering off of the ailerons.

[00:27:05] I'm trying to peel this stuff off and I'm trying to make it easy on myself. I'm using heat and, I'm trimming around the edges. So I'm not trying to peel off around a corner. what I'm saying? And as I'm, as I'm peeling it off, crack, one of these ailerons breaks right in half. I mean, super, super soft balsa. Like wherever they got this balsa was primo stuff. It was super light and, but yeah, I broke it in half.

[00:27:28] So I had to make, make, two new ailerons. Yeah. So, oh, and the reason, yeah, sticky when I broke it. So this is kind of funny. I broke it and then like the act of breaking it, the aileron slammed down on my table because I had so much force on it when it broke and it actually stuck to a piece of that, whatever that covering was that I had laying like upside down, that was the iron cross that I was going to use as a template. Right.

[00:28:00] So, okay.

[00:28:00] So I whipped down and stuck to that and I'm like, oh, okay, I'll just, it should just peel right off. And as I did that, that piece of covering shattered and that's why I needed a template from, from you.

[00:28:10] Okay. I wonder why you need the templates for the iron cross. Cause I was really careful.

[00:28:14] I cut that piece off of the top of the wing.

[00:28:16] Yeah.

[00:28:16] The one that wasn't. Yeah. And I had laid it right side up or upside down. So I didn't stick it to my table. Right. Yeah. And as soon as I broke the aileron, it flipped down, hit that piece of covering stuck to it. And then when I tried to peel the covering off of that, that's when that, it was just a, yeah, it was something.

[00:28:35] It was a comedy of errors on that point. Right.

[00:28:37] So I found ultra coat to be the closest match to that red. And I don't know, I think I forget which red it is, but it's not their bright red. It's like the one kind of in between. I think they made three different reds. Ultra coat did. And it's a really, really, really, really close match. So I just recovered the whole wing with the red ultra coat and white and black and send

[00:28:58] It on its way.

[00:28:59] So that, that project's done. And yeah, hopefully Bob will get many, many years of satisfactory service out of that airplane.

[00:29:07] I hope so. I mean, I hope he flies it.

[00:29:09] Yeah, me too. He will. He likes sticks. He's like me. He's like, he'll fly a stick before he'll go through the effort of dragging one of those big airplanes out.

[00:29:18] Yeah. Well, we'll just have to get on him to start going through that effort. He's got a few big ones that we need to fly.

[00:29:24] But ARFs are hard to find.

[00:29:25] Yeah. Like, it's unfortunate.

[00:29:28] Like I've been on, on my RC groups and other places, and there's just not a lot of them out there. Or if there are, nobody wants to ship them right now because they're so expensive to ship.

[00:29:39] Shipping is ridiculous. I totally get it. But we're going to make a trip, I think, to Brian's this weekend.

[00:29:44] Yes.

[00:29:45] So we will hopefully knock on wood, find something that's useful.

[00:29:50] Yep.

[00:29:50] I mean, that's a place you don't know what you're going to come across, so it's hit or miss.

[00:29:54] Yeah. That's absolutely true.

[00:29:56] Hopefully it's hit.

[00:29:56] Anyway, yeah. I made a long story out of our trip to Columbia and then, yeah, had to recover and ARF. At least the wing, anyway.

[00:30:04] No good deed goes unpunished. Exactly. I mean, that's what happens. So also, we've done some guest interviews.

[00:30:12] Man, those have been fun, actually.

[00:30:14] I've enjoyed them. Yeah. So we've got a few recorded ahead. We're going to be doing some editing and getting them ready to come out.

[00:30:19] You mean you're going to be doing some editing?

[00:30:21] Well, the proverbial we, the we of whatever.

[00:30:27] But you do a really good job.

[00:30:29] Well, it's, yeah.

[00:30:31] I think you do.

[00:30:32] I mean.

[00:30:32] Which, by the way, Bob says to tell you, apparently he listened to one of the interviews.

[00:30:40] His episode just came out.

[00:30:41] Probably, yeah.

[00:30:41] Just last week was his.

[00:30:43] And he wanted to compliment you that you did a really good job with the editing. So he really enjoyed that show.

[00:30:48] I don't think we had to edit much of anything on that one. It was pretty much straight through.

[00:30:51] Yeah.

[00:30:52] He did a good job. I mean, he was easy to interview. So if anybody wants to be a guest on the RC Plane Lab podcast, please reach out.

[00:31:01] Yeah. Yeah. We enjoy doing them. They're actually a lot of fun.

[00:31:05] I enjoy the conversations. Yeah. I'm learning a lot. Unfortunately, it's going to be quite expensive for me, though, because it seems like everybody I talk to gives me a new idea of something else that's cool to try. Right. So I buy new airplanes. So good.

[00:31:24] Or airplane support items.

[00:31:27] What?

[00:31:27] Well, like this battery thing we're going to talk about. That came out of one of the.

[00:31:31] Well, no, that didn't come out of interview. That came from a guy on Discord. Oh, that's right.

[00:31:36] But still, a way to communicate with us via Discord.

[00:31:40] Yeah. So anyway, if you want to be a guest, rcplanelab.com slash whatever. Just go there and click on the Be a Guest, sign up, and we will get you scheduled. Like I said, it's a lot of fun. If you have anything you want to talk about or promote, we can discuss that, too.

[00:31:53] Yep.

[00:31:54] And we shall move on.

[00:31:55] Yeah. So before we get into the battery thing, I just want to hit up a voicemail that we got from Terry Dunn, who is part of the RC Roundtable podcast. We were talking about the shiny and how I thought it's awesome, the flight work shiny.

[00:32:13] Yeah. We actually have two voicemails, that one and then somebody else. Oh, okay. Right.

[00:32:18] But anyway, I expressed how I would love to find one for myself because I'm jealous that you have one and I don't because it is a really neat airplane. But anyway, Terry called and left a voicemail and said that.

[00:32:30] Oh, hold on. Before you say what he said, why don't we just play it?

[00:32:32] Oh, yeah. Okay.

[00:32:33] Hold on.

[00:32:34] I think that's a great idea.

[00:32:35] Hi, guys. This is Terry Dunn from RC Roundtable podcast. And I'm on a road trip right now. Usually I would send an email about this kind of stuff. But I'm driving. I was just listening to your Toledo episode, and you were talking about the flight work shiny. And I had one of those for several years. And I think I just sold it last year. Of course. But I agree with you that it was a fun airplane that was not terribly fast, but also not that slow. It was just kind of interesting.

[00:33:04] I was never really a fan of the tribal designs on the covering. But it got a lot of attention when I took it to the field, especially when I would fly it at dusk or at night. I recall that I ended up replacing the original folding propeller with an APC electric prop. And it did get much better performance with that. I don't remember the size of the other prop right now, but I could look that up when I get home if you're interested.

[00:33:30] And another thing that I thought was really interesting about this airplane is that the airframe itself is pretty much an exact knockoff of the Great Plains Electrostreak, which was one of the very early port designs for electric. Great Plains first offered it as a kit, and then they had an art version later on that had either a blow molded or a fiberglass fuselage with a built-up plane. So you mentioned that Tom's looking for one of these shinies.

[00:34:01] If you can't find a shiny, maybe you can find an old Electrostreak kit or plans for an Electrostreak and install lights in it yourself, and you would have pretty much the same thing. And you would also have some opportunity to maybe lighten it up and put your own specialized power system in it. Anyway, the Electrostreak is generally regarded as a very good flying airplane, especially back in the day when it was designed around ICADs and CAM motors.

[00:34:27] So anyway, I just wanted to weigh on in that and give you guys my background of that airplane. So I hope you have fun with yours, and let me know if there's any information you think I can provide for you. Talk to you later.

[00:34:39] Well, thank you very much, Terry, for the voicemail. And thank you for listening, by the way. I love when other podcasters reach out to us, and it actually feels like we're talking to people when we have feedback and stuff. But the Shiny is a cool airplane with, albeit a not-so-cool name. We said that before. I'm not a huge fan of what they call it. But it makes…

[00:35:01] Yeah, Electrostreak sounds a lot better.

[00:35:03] Sounds awesome.

[00:35:03] So I'm thinking, yeah, I may just try to find a set of plans.

[00:35:07] I found the plans, by the way. I'm sure you do. It's on the outer zone.

[00:35:10] I'm sure.

[00:35:11] So it would not be difficult.

[00:35:12] So we'll print the set, and maybe that'll be my next plans build.

[00:35:15] A winter build, or something like that coming up. But yeah.

[00:35:18] Maybe I'll go Nitro.

[00:35:20] No, it's an…

[00:35:21] Oh, God.

[00:35:22] I fell for it. I don't know why I fell for it. I sure did.

[00:35:26] What I would call it, then? The Nitro Streak. The Nitro Streak. Of course you would. Oh, man. I'm teasing.

[00:35:32] I would hope so.

[00:35:33] Of course I would go electric. And I would probably go with the APC propeller as well.

[00:35:37] If you didn't, and you put Nitro on it, I would just take a hammer to it the first time until you try and fly it. What's this called? Yeah, boink.

[00:35:46] The Hammer Streak.

[00:35:47] Oh, there we go.

[00:35:48] So there you go. Anyway, thanks, Terry. I appreciate the… I appreciate the info. Yeah, I do. Yeah, because I have been unable to find one. A shiny, that is. But yeah, an Electro Streak, yeah, that should be easy peasy.

[00:36:02] And there's not much to them. I mean, if you look at it. The only thing that's going to have to be changed… Like, and it took me a minute. we talked about the rudder, or the horizontal… There's no rudder. The horizontal stab on this one. No, I'm sorry. The vertical stab on this one is actually… Airfoiled. Airfoiled. Mm-hmm. To give room for the lights.

[00:36:23] Oh, that makes sense. Mm-hmm.

[00:36:25] That's easy. So, yeah. But we'll have to do that on whatever you build to. But yeah, that will be a fun, fun thing. Yeah, I think so. So,…

[00:36:32] Maybe I will add a rudder to mine.

[00:36:34] You should, actually. And actually, I think the Electro Streak has one. Oh, does it? Okay. Perfect. You should, because… Cool. That's one thing I wish this had. It saddens me that it doesn't. It's a weird three-channel setup, but… Yeah, well.

[00:36:47] Anyway, thanks again, Terry.

[00:36:48] Yeah, appreciate it.

[00:36:49] I appreciate the voicemail.

[00:36:50] And if you don't mind, let me know what size prop you had. I would be happy to try that out and see what happens. One more voicemail I want to get to before we move on. Hold on.

[00:37:02] Hey, Ron. Hey, Tom. It's Jeff Reese. I'm actually calling you in response to episode 92. I know. Don't judge me. I'm a little bit behind, but…

[00:37:10] That's okay. At least you lose him.

[00:37:13] Yes. The question you had from someone about getting their kids involved and whatnot, and I think a little bit about my situation, but I've… My son, we've had just this opportunity for him to become an aviation mechanic. Cool. And he loves airplanes. But every time… I've recently gotten into aviation, RC aviation, right? And, man, he does not want to be involved with that at all. He's like, what? That really doesn't excite me.

[00:37:49] He'll go out to the airfield with me and watch. I try to hand him the controls, and he just refuses. And he's 22, 23 years old.

[00:38:00] Yep.

[00:38:01] And he has just refused to do that. But he loves airplanes. We go to Oshkosh. Oh, that'd be fun. And watch the air shows out there and locally and whatnot. And now he's going to be fixing them. He's at a test right now, in fact, to get his final certification. Nice. But he loves that part of it. But he just refuses to get behind the stick. I've tried to get him to get his pilot's license and things like that. And he just won't. So, every kid's a little bit different.

[00:38:30] Yep. And you just got to go with what they like and just keep trying new things and new opportunities for them. And eventually something will click. Maybe it won't be airplanes. Maybe it'll be cars. Maybe it'll be bikes. Maybe it'll be video games. Whatever it might be. Just keep introducing them to new things, right?

[00:38:51] So, anyways, that's just me.

[00:38:53] Thanks, guys. Talk to you later. Bye.

[00:38:57] Okay. So, in response to that, I want to clarify some stuff. When I was talking about, like, getting kids into the hobby and stuff, I'm not saying I don't do anything at all with my kids if they don't do stuff. I just want to make sure that's not the takeaway from that.

[00:39:11] I don't think anybody went there. But, no, you do plenty with your kids.

[00:39:15] But I'm just saying, like, it would be so nice to be able to get our kids into it, to have more, time together in the hobby. But we have both so far failed at that, which seems to be a very common thing.

[00:39:32] And it's not that our kids don't do other things, just like you said.

[00:39:35] It's just they don't do things or don't do things with us. I mean, yeah.

[00:39:39] They're just not flying airplanes with us.

[00:39:40] It's not a hobby, but it's okay. Yeah.

[00:39:44] So, did you want to talk about the Red Bull plane swap before we get into the battery?

[00:39:48] Oh, I forgot about that. I don't care.

[00:39:50] What a disappointment.

[00:39:52] Well, was it a disappointment?

[00:39:54] Well, I mean, I guess it was exciting because the plane crashed.

[00:39:57] Yeah. Okay. I'll be honest. I completely forgot about it until the day after. It's hard to find actual video.

[00:40:04] Yeah. I still haven't seen it.

[00:40:06] Okay. So, I saw just a little clip. I think it was Twitter. They might have posted a video. I think. I don't remember what it was on. But anyway, it was like a two-minute clip of what happened. And then it showed, like, the aftermath of the airplane crash. So, long story short, it was supposed to be two pilots jump out of, two different airplanes.

[00:40:23] Separate airplanes, yeah.

[00:40:24] Switch what airplane they were going to. Or switch what airplane. I'm sorry. Jump. I always have a problem with this. Jump out of an airplane, go to another airplane, and land it.

[00:40:35] Yeah.

[00:40:36] Did not happen. One guy did it. One guy didn't. When they jumped out, something happened to the airplane. It started twirling around. It was too dangerous to try and go there. So, long story short, he, parachuted down. It was fine. The airplane parachuted at the last minute, I think. Oh, I didn't know the plane's had parachutes. I think that was the one I saw that had the parachute on it. But it still crashed. It's still a bad thing that didn't work right.

[00:41:00] Right.

[00:41:01] Whatever. They said they're going to try it again. We'll see how it goes.

[00:41:06] Yeah. And, of course, the FAA is investigating because, the FAA didn't give them permission to do that. So.

[00:41:14] Bureaucratic nightmare.

[00:41:15] So, hopefully, hopefully they figure out what happened. And hopefully the FAA doesn't slow them down too much on a second attempt. That's my fear.

[00:41:23] Is it better to ask permission or forgiveness?

[00:41:25] Well, I don't know. How many airplanes do we have?

[00:41:30] One. I don't know why that reminds me. So, my foot has been acting up again. It's been kind of painful. And I, so we went to the swap meet Saturday and it was, or on Sunday and it was kind of hurting. I actually had to have my wife carry in my purchases when I got home.

[00:41:47] So, there was no hiding them.

[00:41:48] Absolutely not. And I didn't even try to say they were yours. I was just like, yeah, this is what I got. I felt like I just, it's a party foul. I know. You're supposed to bring them in, hide them, say they're your friends, your buddies, whatever.

[00:42:00] But, no. Well, I mean, to be fair, I don't, I don't have to do that. Lori is so accommodating that she lets me.

[00:42:08] No, to be fair, I don't have to do that.

[00:42:10] I've never had to hide my purchases from her. Actually, I don't either.

[00:42:13] I mean, honestly, Crystal's always been cool about stuff. She knows what I buy. She knows what's in it. I mean, you can't look around and miss it. Yeah. So, it's not like I'm hiding anything from her. But, sometimes it's easier just to not show off new purchases,? I mean, what I mean.

[00:42:30] Especially not to have them carry your new purchases in for you. Because you're…

[00:42:36] Actually, I got it inside the house, just not down the stairs. So, any whoozle, shall we go on to… Yeah, let's talk about this. Our main topic that we'll talk about for five minutes before we end the…

[00:42:46] Well, we've talked about a lot of other stuff, and…

[00:42:49] This has been a lot of… Yeah. Okay, so get to it….stuff covered. Wow, the pressure. I mean… I know. Okay. So, we have talked in the past about battery management spreadsheets and all that kind of stuff. Yes. How I number my batteries to try and keep them separate and kind of know when I bought them and all that kind of stuff.

[00:43:10] It's good to know. Like, it's good to know how old your battery is because, they do have a lifespan. Well… Kind of.

[00:43:18] Well, they do. But, okay, well, anyway, I don't want to get off track here. Sorry. Because that would be bad. So, somebody on our Discord server, if you want to be part of the Discord, yada, yada, yada, rcplanelab.com slash Discord, I think. I don't know. Go to rcplanelab.com and you'll figure it out. Anyway. Well, you got to plug it or else nobody's going to know about it. But then it gets boring to plug it all the time. And then I forget what I actually named the links.

[00:43:44] Just go to rcplanelab.com. All the information you need is right there.

[00:43:48] Everything you need. The hub for rcplanelab everything. I like that.

[00:43:53] The rcplanelab hub. I like it. Sorry.

[00:43:58] We've gone off the rails. Anyway, somebody posted on there a link to what is called the ISDT Air 8 charger and their Bat Air smart battery plug-ins. Yeah, I don't know why, but I went ahead and bought some. Like, I don't need them, but I thought it sounded like a cool thing to test out. So, these are little plug-ins.

[00:44:27] Adapters? They look like an adapter.

[00:44:29] But they really don't adapt anything. No, but I mean, that's what they remind me of.

[00:44:32] They plug into your balance lead.

[00:44:35] The balance lead, yeah. And it's just like a bigger balance lead that has a light on it.

[00:44:39] They're really not very big at all. And they're very light.

[00:44:42] They are. So, anyway, it's $5 per battery for these things. And these live on your battery. So, you don't trade them out. Each one lives on the battery. Like we said, plugs into the balance lead. It's available for 2S, 3 to 4S, or 5 to 6S batteries. So, each one of those is different.

[00:44:57] Okay.

[00:44:57] They have different ones. And you cannot, I found out, if you have one that's for a 3 to 4-cell battery, you cannot use it with a 2-cell. So, it has to be in the specified range. I had a couple 2-cells I was going to try and use it on. It would not work. Then I figured out that's why. So, once you plug it in, you connect it to your phone, and it connects via Bluetooth. And you open up the app.

[00:45:19] So, the first time you connect it to the phone, you tell it what the charge rate, capacity, and brand of the battery that it's plugged into.

[00:45:27] Okay.

[00:45:28] So, you define all of that in the app. You set the parameters in the app. Okay. And then it knows it, because it's smart at remembering things.

[00:45:37] Okay.

[00:45:38] So, you can name each battery a different name. But I chose to name it a different number, because I already have my batteries numbered. Yes. So, it's a little bit easier just to have, like, 36, or a 34, or 22, whatever is the actual battery name. So, when you open the app, it brings up a list of the batteries that are around you.

[00:45:59] So, it scans the Bluetooth for all the different things, or all the different bat air connectors that are around you, and then brings it up on the list. And then it shows on that screen what the percentage charge is for each battery. Hold on.

[00:46:11] Hold on. It, like, if you're in the basement, and you happen to have five or six batteries within Bluetooth distance.

[00:46:19] Which is about 30 feet, by the way. Give or take.

[00:46:21] It'll display them, like, as if.

[00:46:23] It takes a few seconds, but yes.

[00:46:25] That's amazing.

[00:46:26] Mm-hmm. Like I said, I really like this thing so far.

[00:46:30] Where I'm going with this. Like, if you crash your airplane, like, into a cornfield, and you can't, like, find it. I mean, if you're within 30 feet of it, you'll know, right?

[00:46:41] I mean, I guess you would know if it actually connects to it, that, yeah, you're…

[00:46:44] As long as it hasn't, like, come unplugged or whatever.

[00:46:47] Yeah. I never thought about it that way. See? But you're right. That might help.

[00:46:52] Well, I mean, it couldn't hurt.

[00:46:55] Well, because I'm just thinking, like, Bluetooth, obviously, if you have things in between you and the Bluetooth thing that you're connected to, you're not going to have as good a signal. So, it might not be a full 30 feet. So, if there's a bunch of corn, I don't know how much that would block signal.

[00:47:09] But that's not a bad idea.

[00:47:12] And like I said, so, when you open the app, it shows the percentage charge, which is kind of cool, too.

[00:47:17] Yeah, that's handy.

[00:47:18] And then, what I think is neat, if you click on the battery, like, on the screen, if you click on the battery you want, so, if you have a lot of batteries in a box, and you click on the one you're looking for, like, I know I need battery 26, here it is, click on it, the light on the bat air terminal thing that you have on that battery starts flashing.

[00:47:36] Oh, so you can find it.

[00:47:37] So, you can easily find the battery you're looking for.

[00:47:39] That's pretty cool.

[00:47:41] Which I, yeah, like I said, I think that's kind of cool. And then, oppositely, oppositely, on the flip side, if…

[00:47:49] Oppositely? I'm writing that down.

[00:47:51] It's been a long night. On the flip side, if you push the button on the bat air thing, it brings it up on the screen. It moves that all the way up to the top, and then beeps and flashes, so, that's the battery on the screen that you're working with. Does that make sense? Yeah. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I think it's very handy. So, when you click on the battery on the app, or in the app, it shows all the information for that battery.

[00:48:18] So, all the information that you put in there, and then it lists its current charge percent, total voltage of the battery, voltage for each cell, and lists how many charge-discharge cycles it's gone through. Interesting. I like that, too, that it keeps track of how many times you've charged it or how many times you've used it.

[00:48:37] So, at a glance, you can quickly tell the current state of that battery, which, that's pretty slick.

[00:48:43] And the neat thing is, too, the higher charge percentages, it changes the color of the background of it. So, it goes from red all the way up to green with yellow in between and different colors, in that spectrum. So, you can see pretty much how fully charged it is when you're working with it.

[00:48:58] That's pretty sweet.

[00:48:59] I think it's neat. And my favorite thing that this battery bat air thing does, it will automatically discharge your battery to storage voltage after a set time, and you tell it that time. So, you can completely turn the feature off or set it from anywhere from 12 to 240 hours in 12-hour increments after the battery was charged.

[00:49:26] Yeah, so, like, if you charge the batteries in anticipation for going flying, and something happens, like, maybe you crash your plane and you don't get to fly the rest of the batteries or the weather is crappy, whatever, and you go home and you forget about it, this thing will automatically take it down to the storage charge for you.

[00:49:42] And I have done that already?

[00:49:44] That is amazing.

[00:49:44] And it works well.

[00:49:45] That is really, really, really cool.

[00:49:47] So, that is, okay, so it's $5 for each one of these.

[00:49:51] Yeah, but the potential savings of not destroying your battery.

[00:49:56] That's what I was going to say. It's going to pay for itself. I think so, too. If this continues to work as well as it has so far for me, like, I don't want to spend a bunch of money and buy a bunch more of these yet. Right. Until I know how, like, the six that I have now end up working for a few months.

[00:50:11] Sure.

[00:50:13] But I think that's a no-brainer for every battery I own to have one of those on it.

[00:50:18] Yeah.

[00:50:18] It just seems to make the most sense for keeping things organized.

[00:50:23] Yeah.

[00:50:23] And so far, I'm happy with it.

[00:50:26] Will the app, will you be able to, like, somehow assign a particular battery to, like, an airplane? Like, for instance, let's say, hey, I'm going to fly the Shiny tomorrow. What batteries do I need?

[00:50:40] No.

[00:50:40] And you just cross-reference Shiny to which batteries. So you still have to have it.

[00:50:43] Not that I've seen.

[00:50:43] You still have to have your spreadsheet.

[00:50:45] Yeah. So that.

[00:50:47] Still, though. I mean, still pretty cool.

[00:50:49] The app is basic in its functionality. Let's just say it's not very polished yet. I'm sorry. I mean, the information is there, but it's not very pretty. It's still missing a few things that I would like to see. Like, these only came out from what I found. I think they only came out, like, six months ago. It was late 2021. When this whole fast air thing came out. So these things are, like, brand new. Yeah. I think the, I thought, or I saw, like, November or something.

[00:51:14] October or November of last year is when they came out.

[00:51:16] I would anticipate lots of development and additional features. I would hope so.

[00:51:20] Yeah. I really would. Because this idea, if you could take it and you knew what you were doing with electronics and all that kind of stuff, you could really run with this very, very well. To where you could even log, like, flight times. You could log how much power you pulled out of each battery. You could log a lot of things.

[00:51:40] You could probably log discharge curve or how, you could probably track performance so that you notice when, performance is degrading, like, well, that flight didn't feel as peppy as the one before. And you'll be able to see a graph. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that's batteries.

[00:51:56] Or compare cell discharge rates to see if you're pulling too much out of one cell versus the other ones if you have one. Yeah.

[00:52:03] There's a lot of potential for a lot of information there. Yeah. That's really cool.

[00:52:06] So I'm hoping, I'm hoping that they build off of what they have now.

[00:52:11] Yeah.

[00:52:11] And make it better over time.

[00:52:13] Yeah. So these little, the plug-ins or whatever you want to call them.

[00:52:19] I wish they had a better name. The Bat Airs. Yeah.

[00:52:22] Obviously, they use battery power for the Bluetooth and all that stuff. I wonder what the draw is there.

[00:52:29] That's the other reason I haven't bought a bunch of them yet. Yeah. Because I'm wanting to wait and see. I've got one battery that I have.

[00:52:37] Like, I wonder if it's capable, since when you're charging it, it can tell you on your phone, the state of the charge. I wonder if it's capable of telling you, hey, you better put some charge in this battery. It's dangerously close to a, a dangerous state of discharge. Do what I mean?

[00:52:56] Well, what I would hope is that if it gets to that point where it's at its bottom limit on where that battery should be, that it will not turn on, that it just disconnects, doesn't drain anything, doesn't use any, or doesn't use the Bluetooth, doesn't use anything, and just shuts off. Because I don't know what the current draw is on those. Yeah. So I've got one battery that's been sitting for two weeks now. And I haven't checked it recently to see how much draw is on there.

[00:53:22] But I did check it about a week, and there was no difference. I mean, it was negligible. It was like a hundredth of a volt or something like that, which I think those are going to give, that much just sitting no matter what, even with nothing plugged into it.

[00:53:41] It's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.

[00:53:43] Yeah. So we'll see.

[00:53:45] A really cool idea, though. I mean— More on that to come. Yeah. The only—well, not the only, but a potential downside is the cost, especially if you're—this is coming from a nitro guy. But if you have, like, a lot of, electric airplanes and a lot of batteries, it could get, it could get pretty pricey.

[00:54:03] It could, but they're reusable for other batteries.

[00:54:06] Well, right.

[00:54:06] So, I mean, like, if this battery goes bad, no big deal. I just reset this thing and tell it all the new information from the other battery. And the nice thing, too, about the app, you can do all the firmware updates and stuff for the Bat Air thing through the app. You just push a button, and then it—because every one I had had to be updated. It took 30 seconds or so for each one after I plugged it in and got it initialized, and it was easy.

[00:54:30] That's pretty cool.

[00:54:31] So that's the other thing, too. Like, if there's already updates for firmware and stuff, that's telling me they're working on it.

[00:54:37] Yeah.

[00:54:37] So, I'm happy to say that there's some things at least changing.

[00:54:41] Pretty slick little device with a lot more potential ahead of it, I'd say.

[00:54:47] Yeah. Really neat. Then the other thing I got with it was the Air 8 charger.

[00:54:53] Oh, yeah.

[00:54:53] Because it's supposed to work in tandem with these things. I don't know how excited I am about this, though. I mean, there's got some good points or some bad points. So it's a DC charger with no option to plug it into the wall. Like, most of the chargers I have that I like to use are AC-DC. Yeah. I have a four-port DC charger that I do not use at all except for at the field because of the whole trying to plug it in a home thing gets to be a pain.

[00:55:23] But, like I said, for this one, if you have an adapter, you can use it or power it off of a bigger battery to charge smaller ones. What's neat, though, is it's small. It's only about three inch by three inch by maybe an inch to inch and a quarter tall. So it's a tiny, tiny little charger. Yeah, it's pretty small. Input, 10 to 34 volts and will handle 20 amps in and out. Oh, wow. So it's a pretty, pretty capable charger.

[00:55:49] Yeah.

[00:55:50] And the input and output. 20 amps?

[00:55:52] That's, yeah, I'd say that's pretty capable.

[00:55:56] And then the input and output that's kind of neat are XT60 connectors that are built into the side of it. So most, if not, okay, most of my stuff is XT60, so it plugs right into it and I don't have to worry about adapters. I like that, personally.

[00:56:13] Yeah.

[00:56:15] But we'll see. So the Bat Air thing plugs right into the balance port on the side of it. And what I like about it is it actually uses, like it connects to the Bat Air thing. I still don't even know what to call it, like what actually I should be calling it.

[00:56:32] Dongle.

[00:56:33] Oh, that sounds not nice to say. But, I mean, I guess that's close to an actual dongle. So the Bat Air dongle plugs into the side.

[00:56:41] Sorry. Stop it. I'm 12 years old. I can't help it.

[00:56:43] As the dongle plugs into the side, it communicates with the charger and it knows what battery is on there. So it knows how to charge it. It knows what current to use. How many cells. And all that kind of stuff, which is cool.

[00:56:56] It is cool.

[00:56:57] And then while it's charging, the charger, okay, so you actually, you hook it up to your phone with an app. The ISD app. The ISD link app. Excuse me. And when you are looking at that, the charger gives you all the info on your phone, obviously, that it does on the screen. But it also shows you the resistance or the resistance of each cell in the battery.

[00:57:17] Ooh. Handy.

[00:57:18] Which is kind of cool. So you can see how closely your cells are matched. Yeah. Because, obviously, a matched cell with the resistance is going to be better than one that's way off. So that's that for now. I mean, that's kind of all the farther I've gotten down into it. One of the features that has on it, though, that none of my other chargers have that I kind of like, is it has the destroy feature for your battery.

[00:57:43] So if you have a battery that's bad and you're going to take it down to nothing, you can use the destroy setting on this to drain the battery all the way down.

[00:57:52] Really? Mm-hmm. Well, that's clever.

[00:57:54] So there's a couple things that are neat. Yeah. That I like. That's really clever.

[00:57:57] Makes them safe to dispose of. Yeah.

[00:58:00] Who knows? I might do, like, a YouTube video or something on it once I get a little bit more into learning how it works and stuff because there's not a lot of good information out there I've found. But we'll see.

[00:58:10] Yeah.

[00:58:10] I'm excited. I mean, it's something new. Yeah.

[00:58:12] I'm not an electric guy, and I'm excited. So there you go.

[00:58:15] Well, you still have batteries.

[00:58:17] Well, I do. It's true. I have four.

[00:58:20] No, I guess I have, like, six now. Well, and this will charge other batteries, too. I mean, it's not just LiPo. So there's a bunch of different things it'll do that I'm just kind of scratching the surface on.

[00:58:29] Yeah.

[00:58:29] And same with the charger. You use your app to connect to it to update firmware and all that kind of stuff. Pretty slick. They're actually doing things with that, too, to kind of update.

[00:58:39] That's pretty slick.

[00:58:40] I thought it was kind of neat. Yeah. So we'll see how it goes. And how much was the charger? Charger, I think, was $60. Oh, that's not bad. $70. No, $60. $59. Yeah.

[00:58:49] Yeah.

[00:58:49] That's not so bad. Depends where you buy it. It's $59 or $69. Okay.

[00:58:53] You buy it direct from the website?

[00:58:55] No, I end up going through BuddyRC. Okay, BuddyRC. They actually had it there cheaper than most of the other places I found. So I did that. And then, like, Amazon, I think, has it for $69. But they don't have any of the Bat Air connector things for some reason. Dongles. Dongles. There we go. They don't have any dongles. Amazon, dongle-less. So I had to find somebody. I had to find somebody that had dongles.

[00:59:20] Yep. Cool.

[00:59:21] All right. Anything else you want to talk about or should we get off of this? Because it's late and you are yawning.

[00:59:26] Well, I've been yawning since the start for some reason. I don't know why. Because you're tired. Because I guess I'm tired. I don't know. Do I look tired?

[00:59:32] Bored, maybe? I don't know.

[00:59:33] Definitely not bored. Cool. So, no, that's all I had.

[00:59:37] Cool. Well, everybody, thanks for having me.

[00:59:39] If you want to be a guest, get on rcplanelab.com and forward slash guest, be a guest, something

[00:59:44] Like that. Don't say that because I don't remember what it is. Just say click on the guest link on the top.

[00:59:48] Click on the be a guest link.

[00:59:49] I don't even know if it says be a guest. It might just say guest.

[00:59:52] Oh, my gosh.

[00:59:53] Have you ever been to it? No. See? So you can't. Granted, I did it, so I should remember.

[00:59:58] Well, anyway, go to the hub of all things RC Planelab, and that is rcplanelab.com. If you want to be a guest, we will make it happen. We'd love to have you. There we go. It's a lot of fun.

[01:00:09] Okay. Until next time, I'm Ron. I'm Tom. Good night. Good night.

[01:00:12] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Planelab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.