Sounds like you’ve made good progress on making everything neater and safer for your RC club 👍🏻
Comment on Free Talk Friday - December 5th, 2025
walden@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
Me and another guy made some good progress on updating the charging panel at our RC airplane flying field.
RC battery chargers work off 12 volts, and over time the solar panels and batteries have been upgraded. As more people are flying electric airplanes, the old charging station would get a little crowded sometimes… not to mention it used small gauge wire and the wiring looked like a rats nest. It had questionable solder joints everywhere, and generally was not up to the task of handling multiple people charging at once.
The new panel about triples the number of charger hookups, and is also about 3 times larger. Lots more room to spread out.
The wiring in the background is much larger. We used 6 gauge wire (~4.1mm) for the rails, and 12 gauge (~2mm) from the rail to each port. Each binding post can handle 30 amps. The combined load for the whole panel could probably go as high as 100 amps… though I doubt it’ll ever see anything close to that.
I also installed a display that shows voltage and total current.
We still have some finishing touches to do, but it’s already a huge improvement!
There’s another member who is more knowledgeable and equipped to handle the rest of the finishing touches. Much larger wires are needed from the batteries so we can have a larger inverter to run laptop computers and monitors during events. He has a big crimping tool to handle the large lugs. He’ll come later and install DC circuit breakers, tie everything in to nice bus bars, etc.
DaveWave94@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
snooting@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
Do you have pictures of before/after? Sounds like an awesome project.
I don’t think I realized that you fly RC planes. That’s awesome! What sort of planes do you fly?
walden@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
Oh, and for airplanes right now I have an E-flite Ultimate 3D and a Sig Kadet LT-40 to teach people with (plus it’s fun to fly).
Until recently I had a 74” Extreme Flight Laser EXP with a 35cc gas engine. It’s in multiple pieces now because I crashed it!
gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social 1 week ago
I thought I would go down the 3D route, but for excitement, I still prefer screaming FPV quadcopters. The only problem with these is that I live next door to the most restricted air space in the world, and none of the local AMA clubs like people to fly quads.
walden@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
I think we allow quads and helicopters, but I’ve only seen a quadcopter flown to record fixed wings :-)
A helicopter guy showed up one day when I was there and at first I thought “hey cool”, but then I realized when they’re flying you can’t take off or land… they block the whole runway!
snooting@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
Very cool!
walden@wetshav.ing 1 week ago
I don’t have a “before” picture, but here’s the current state. We still have some final touches, like building a table to put chargers/batteries on. But this gives a good idea of what the final product will be like.
t2lBj2wqHnXYTrf.jpg
The old panel was located under the “Safety First” sign in between the studs.
gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social 1 week ago
This is nice. We do most of our flying at a sod farm in eastern PA. All battery charging comes from car batteries or from one of those portable chargers. A nice thing with gliders is that as you get better, there’s less time used on the electric motor which is the big current draw on an electric glider, and therefore fewer batteries to charge.