Assembly Part-5

Wing wiring organization

As you can see from Figure 13, I ended up organizing the wires a little better.  I also added 6" servo extension wires to the receiver to avoid the stress of disconnecting the receiver connectors when I remove the wing.  I also labeled where the connectors come together so I'll remember which pairs go with which connectors.

Figure 13:

Electrifly Ultra E-tote and a custom Lipo charging box

In Figure 14 you can see images of the tote I decided to go with.  This unit will hold two chargers.  Its designed for the TritonJR, but I am using a CellPro 4s with a 3foot extension cable for charging in a box outside of the tote.  I simply velcroed the CellPro onto the box.  It will hold two batteries, possibly one large one and maybe one small 7amp hour battery and a power supply unit as well.  It has easy connectors which take banana plugs for charging.  Keep in mind if you are using a standard 600mah charger from Tower, this can eventually ruin the battery (many seem to think its fine to leave continuously charging but this isnt the case).  Instead I went with the Harbor Freight float charger, which shuts off when fully charged.  It supports batteries ranging from 5amp hour to 125 amp hours.  I also used the drawer as a charging drawer, by adding 600 degree furnace tape ($7).  I had to make a custom fit lid for the box out of a piece of balsa (also added some 3M spray to harden it up a bit).  With the box, I also cut another hole on the other side to make it easy to route the charging cable through the box to the outside and allow more ventilation. 

I should also mention that you will probably only get one good charge from the battery (if using a standard lead calcium battery) at the field.  You would be much better off with something 3x the capacity to get at least 3 or more charges in at the field (and it would not fit in the tote and be about 25 lbs too).  At home I acquired a 19amp PSU from online for a reasonable price of $43 shipped (from someone in one of the forums).  You can also make your own PSU from an old PSU from a computer, but there is some work involved.  You could also just directly connect your charger to the car battery, but be careful and let the car run between charges.  Another option is to get a cigarette lighter adapter to bare wires type setup, where you can run extra feet of wire using say 14 or 16 gauge wire, on the other end you would put connectors to attach to the banana leads coming off your charger on the tote.  Note: this method probably only provides about 10-15 amp ability, still more than enough for even 2 or 3 chargers at once, if you want to go that far. 

Figure 14:

Final Pre-Paint Photo:

Next... Painting and transport tips   Assembly Part-6