Rcadvisor’s model airplane design contest is over. I’ve locked away the contest forum for now. I declare the winner to be community member “ggtronic” with his APstick design. It’s a fascinating-looking camera plane, and a very worthy winner.

Having said that, I’m disappointed that more RCadvisor members did not choose to participate in the contest. Did ggtronic’s contest entry scare everyone else away? I’d like to run the contest again. Please use the contact form to let me know how I can change the rules or the format so that it works better for you.

UPDATE: Our winner has stepped forward to claim his prize. He is Yves Auger from Boucherville, Quebec, Canada. Again, congratulations!

One of our goals has always been to have the best free model airplane calculator and the best subscriber-only calculator. We’ve always expected to have many more free registered users than paid subscribers. Although there are close to 2,500 registered users, only a handful have chosen to become subscribers. I hate having to do this, but clearly an adjustment was called for.

Effective immediately, most of the interactive charts in the calculator are now only accessible by the paid subscribers. There are no free calculators that come even close to having nice charts like these, so we feel justified (though reluctantly) in making this change.

RCadvisor’s model airplane design contest ends in one week. $175 in R/C goodies or $75 in cash is not too shabby, so get busy and enter your best designs! More information is in the forums.

From what I’ve seen in other contests, I expect most entries to come in five minutes before midnight on the day of the deadline. I’m okay with that. The downside of that strategy is that you won’t have much time to receive feedback and make revisions.

New Mexico is considered a swing in the upcoming presidential election. This means that both candidates feel they have a chance of winning our electoral votes. We are getting a lot of attention! In fact, both McCain and Obama will be here in Albuquerque tomorrow. During the last few months, it seems like every couple of weeks a VIP comes through town to drum up support. Exciting times!

I just restored the site survey that some of you may remember from a few months ago. I think I took it down when I released the tutorials, since I felt that the menu was getting crowded. On hindsight, that was a bad idea. I did some editing of the questions, but they are just as relevant today as they were before.

Why is that? Well, I don’t bother asking questions about the new features I’m already working on. I also don’t ask about high priority work that is already on the schedule. But it is hard for me to gauge the level of interest in adding calculator support for helicopters or gas engines, for example.

It only takes about a minute to fill out. The answers will help me prioritize my to-do list. So take a look and let me know what you think!

Thanks, Bob! The surge in new registrations from AMA members easily pushed us over the “two-oh-oh-oh” mark. Welcome!

The latest issue of Model Aviation magazine, October 2008, mentions us on pages 79-80:

 “The site includes a free calculator that does many things… Check this out!”

This is Bob Aberle’s Frequently Asked Questions, number 372. Very nice!

I’ve been busy!

I completely overhauled the tutorials. No screen was left untouched. The biggest new addition is a detailed step-by-step example of optimizing a power system. This tutorial is almost as long as all the other tutorials combined, and it doubled the size of the tutorial flash file to 2MB. My goal was to answer every question that might come up during the optimization process. Check it out and let me know what you think.

All the work on the tutorials really helped me step back and think about how the PowerEnergy per unit of time. Common units include the watt and horsepower. System Optimizer is typically used. The result is a brand new feature, the EZ Optimizer, which dramatically simplifies the process of optimizing a power system. There are only two questions to answer: maximum propeller diameter and maximum number of series battery cells. Every other input to the optimizer is completely automated but still fully customizable.

There are several other new features, too many to list all of them here:

• An exciting new feature is the ability to compare two components side-by-side in a single graph. Not sure which of two motors to buy? Compare them on the same graph. The differences can be very dramatic.
• While writing the tutorials, it became obvious that more complex scenarios required an “or” capability between filter conditions. Done.
• You can now have multiple motors within the same power system. This is fully supported by the optimizers.
• To make it easy to work with another website member, I added the ability to load another user’s components (this is easier to do than to explain).
• In the process, I added the account names to the component names (i.e., “Sig Kadet Senior [mike]”). It is now much easier to find a component.
• The database has grown to 6,395 components with 4,112 of those preloaded by me. There are now 1,236 model airplanes and 1,383 motors.

Do you run a website? The calculator is now an easily installable web widget. Grab it and put it on one of your web pages at no charge. If you sell R/C products, I’d be happy to put together a custom component database just for you.

Wanna know more about me and the calculator? Listen to my interview by the guys over at All Things That Fly (http://www.allthingsthatfly.com/). I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on this one.

Help!

It seems like almost every day we get a new website member that emails me something along the lines of “This is great! I wish I had known about it earlier!” If you like the calculator, please help me get the word out. I don’t have a very big advertising budget, so every little bit helps.

Design Contest Update

Just hours after the model airplane design contest announcement, we got our first entry. And it’s a good one! But c’mon folks. With almost 2,000 registered members, I know there are a lot of other great designs out there. You’ve got through the end of October to enter your design. For more information, go to the forum.

To sweeten the pot, I’m adding a bunch of stuff to the prize. The complete list is now:

• Blue Wonder outrunner 1700Kv, 24gr
• Speed control 10amp, 9gr
• LiPo battery pack 500mAh 2S1P, 20C, 34gr
• Micro servos 11 inch-oz, 5gr (2x)
• 1 year subscription to RCadvisor.com
• #1 aluminum Knife Handle with #11 blade
• Excel #11 blades (100x)
• Excel Retractable Utility Knife
• Slow Flyer 8x3.8 propeller
• Extra motor shaft
• Radial motor mount
• Prop saver
• 2mm gold connectors for motor (3x pairs)
• Deans connectors for battery (1 pair)
• Nitrile disposable gloves, large (100x)
• 28 compartment organizer
• Stainless steel shop scissors
• #1 comfort-grip knife handle, 5x #11 blades
• Single edge razor blades (100x)
• Disposable epoxy brushes (36x)
• Free shipping (at least $15 value)

This brings the retail value to over $175. If you prefer cash, you can now hope to score $75. To be honest, I paid more than $75 for the stuff. But if you’d really prefer the cash, that’s fine.

Vote in the contest! All it takes is about a minute of your time. If you have more to say, please feel free to add a comment to the corresponding airplane design thread.

Sometimes it takes a while after I implement a new feature before I fully understand how to use it. That has definitely been the case with the PowerEnergy per unit of time. Common units include the watt and horsepower. System Optimizer. After I finished writing the optimizer example tutorial, I thought hard about what it really meant. It became obvious to me that, for most calculator users, a lot of assumptions could be made about what they were trying to do.

The result is the new EZ Optimizer. It dramatically simplifies the process of optimizing a power system. It’s this simple:

1. select the airplane
2. bring up the EZ Optimizer
3. set the propeller maximum diameter that will fit
4. set the maximum number of cells to try
5. run the EZ Optimizer

That’s it! It’ll find the best LiPo pack and outrunner motor for your airplane. The best news is that, if you are not happy with the results, you can manually edit the filters and run the full optimizer directly. The filters give you about a million combinations, so running the optimizer is pretty quick.

The latest component database release contains:

• 4,112 components preloaded by me
• 2,283 components entered by other web site members
• 6,395 total airplanes, motors, etc

There’s now 1,236 preloaded airplanes and 1,383 motors.