Hi Guy, Don Barker came up with the carbon fuse nose cone Spektrum install, and his results as shown by his Flight Logger show that it is consistently as good an install system as is possible....but I needed to try the more 'technical' way of doing it. I got some 2.4 router antenna wire, its specifically suited for the use and runs from the board to the little antenna that stick out of routers. Unlike Don, who simply used shrink wrap to bind some servo wire to the existing whiskers on the RX's, then ran the wires thru the firewall of his Carbon fused Supra then out of the fuse sides at 10, 2, 5,7 or about that spacing on the circumference of the pod just behind the nose cone joint....letting only the sacred 31mm exposed to the air. I on the other hand removed the original whiskers, soldered the inner wire of the special shielded 2.4 wire to the antenna spots, and soldered the shielding to ground on the board (same as the negative battery pins of the RX).
The I removed 31mm of outer insulation, and shielding to leave only the inner wire exposed to the air. My RX layout is as follows....close to the firewall I have a Volz Micro Maxx XP laying on its side, so the side of the case is flat and the arm off to one side. I taped the remote RX on top of it. Just behind it is the other servo laying the same way, I velcroed the main RX on top of that servo, both RXs virtually butted up against each other. The remote's two extended antenna were routed thru the lower firewall, one on each side and as mentioned one at 5 oclock and one at 7. The main RX's two extended antennae were routed out the top of the firewall, exiting at 2 and 10. All about 1" behind the nose cone joint. It was terrible. One hold per flight but lots of lost control...as experienced at the Orlando Buzzard's contest this past Sunday. Having proved that what should have been the 'best' possible option was the worst and took some special wire, expertise and mods to the RX's...now it was time to try Don's simple system of no mods, no special wire and no expertise. I removed the special wires and re-soldered in the original whiskers. Then using shrink wrap, installed some servo wire extensions to each whisker. I routed the extension wires slightly differently than Don's as just one more experiment.... this time, RX's in the exact same mounting locations, I decided to run one of the remote wires up to the 10oclock exit hole, the other down to the 5oclock position. The Main's antenna were then routed one out at the 2 oclock position and one at the 7oclock position. My reasoning was just a hunch that isn't that important at this point to describe....I will tell you that ground range tests showed that this was worse than the previous wire system I'd used. Numbers went crazy and holds happened at about 30'... So I decided it was time to do it Don's way. I routed the remotes two antenna out the bottom 5&7 oclock, and the mains out the top 10 and 2. All four have a short piece of shrink tube to hold the exposed wires at the sacred 31mm each. This time ground range tests seem to go on forever with no numbers higher than a 40 (keep in mind the previous tests..all were hitting 400+'s ...with holds. I flew it about 10 flights, off a bungee and I doubt that I had it higher than about 700' but did cover a lot of sky, and managed times of 6min + each flight (cold and overcast with no wind today, hard rain yesterday). I never saw a number close to 100 in any category...Fades were often under 10. So Don Barker's Sputnik super simple system is officially "NO MYTH". I'd suggest to anyone who has a carbon nose cone fuse ship. That wraps it...Catfish (canopy install) and Sputnik (nose cone install) done with no special tools, materials or mods. Gordy **************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)
