| Gear them though.
Absolutely.
| The DD prop on 3s LIPO is impossibly small
A 2s LiPo would probably work better for direct drive, since these
motors are generally designed for 6 cell NiCd packs. Yes, they're
more efficient at 3s, but then you need to shrink the prop so much
that it's only really appropriate for a pylon racer.
In any event, there's a large number of planes out there, usually
gliders, with direct drive speed 540 and 600 motors in them, and 6-7
cell NiCd sub-C car packs. They generally perform poorly, because the
motor has too high of a Kv rating and so they have to use a little
prop and so performance suffers. To improve performance, they use a
slightly bigger prop, but then they're pushing the motor and batteries
too hard and neither lasts long.
Adding a gearbox allows you to use a larger prop (so the pitch speed
is closer to the cruising speed of the plane) and more cells in your
battery pack and not push the motor so hard, so everything works
better.
Of course, gearboxes are often expensive, and tend to be hard to find
room for. Often you can buy a low Kv brushless motor for about the
same amount of money as a gearbox will cost you.

Signature
Doug McLaren, dougmc@frenzied.us
`Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him "Be fruitful
and multiply". But not in those words ...' -Woody Allen
The Natural Philosopher - 29 Mar 2007 17:05 GMT
> | Gear them though.
>
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
> room for. Often you can buy a low Kv brushless motor for about the
> same amount of money as a gearbox will cost you.
You can indeed. I tend to use gearboxes more because the outrunners will
not reliably deliver power at very low RPM. For flying scale subjects
with scale diameter propellors, its seldom more than 3000 RPM.
Terence Lynock (MSW) - 29 Mar 2007 18:48 GMT
The message <1175184323.3074.2@damia.uk.clara.net>
from The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> contains these words:
> You can indeed. I tend to use gearboxes more because the outrunners will
> not reliably deliver power at very low RPM. For flying scale subjects
> with scale diameter propellors, its seldom more than 3000 RPM.
If I can find suitable gear sets for the job I can build my own boxes
from PCB board and polycarbonate sheet, small sub-miniature bearings are
easy to find on eBay and I have a couple of dozen 3mm bore in my box for
later on when I have a play with building my own motors but they are
just as usable for gearboxes and much cheaper than buying ready built
boxes.
I recently found a set of plans for Tupolev Tu095/142 Bear on eBay for
pennies printed on three sheets/ five sides and on the sixth side
unknown to me was a nice plan for the Global Flyer, problem is the G.F
has such a slim fuse it would need to have the motors set well back with
long shafts so I have been looking at a way around it by constructing a
long very lightweight alloy frame with one double ended motor in the
centre and long shafts in bronze bearings driving both props then wrap a
fuselage around it, little engineering jobs like that interest me as I
have the workshop for it,
regards, Terry
The Natural Philosopher - 30 Mar 2007 01:54 GMT
> The message <1175184323.3074.2@damia.uk.clara.net>
> from The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> contains these words:
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>
> regards, Terry
You are a lucky man..