AXN Floater Jet (aka Clouds Fly) Build Guide

Posted by Patrick in Uncategorized on March 16, 2011

I wanted to get started flying RC airplanes. I went down to the local RC club and flew a 3 channel plane. Even for a newbie like me it seemed a little too easy, I could fly and land it with no problem. So for my first plane I looked around for a plane with ailerons for a little more challenge. I found out about the AXN Floater jet which is available for purchase online at HobbyKing.com. As far as I’m aware the AXN is not available from any US or European retailers. HobbyKing orders take a couple of weeks to ship because they are located in Hong Kong, but they are a respected and reliable retailer in the RC community.

Once I got the plane setup it flies very nice and smooth. But as a newbie it took me a while to get it put together. I’m including some tips here to help other people get the AXN Floater built and flying.

Here are the items I bought from HobbyKing:

Plane

There are three different versions of the AXN Floater Jet:

  1. AXN including motor, ESC, servos
  2. AXN including motor
  3. Airframe only

When I purchased my plane the only version that was available was the one that included everything. The ESC and motor that come with it aren’t the best and people say that they will break eventually. But so far mine have worked fine. It saves time to have everything installed so I recommend getting the version that includes servos, motor, and ESC.

Battery and Charger

The plane flies best with a 2200mah 3 cell battery. This is the battery that I have that works very well and is cheap: Zippy Flightmax

I recommend this charger: Accucell 6 . There are cheaper chargers, but this one is very good. It charges batteries very fast, has a nice readout, and will charge a lot of different battery types.

The charger doesn’t come with a power supply. If you have an old laptop computer you may be able to use that AC adapter with the charger. I didn’t have one so I just but this power supply that works very well: AC power supply

Radio

There are a couple of ways you can go on the radio. If you want to go as cheap as possible you can pick up a Hobby King radio that includes the transmitter and receiver here . Or the same radio from the USA warehouse . This radio will work fine for the AXN Floater.

But personally I wanted something a little nicer that can be used with multiple models that I might get in the future. So I went with the Spektrum DX6i. This is a very popular radio that is used by many people. Hobby King doesn’t sell it, you’ll have to buy it at another retailer or the local hobby store. Buy the version that is a transmitter only (no receiver). Then you can buy the Hobby King clone receivers that work with this radio but are a lot cheaper than the Spektrum receivers. Just get one of these receivers, they both work the same but come with a different case:

Receiver 1

Receiver 2

Spare Parts

The ESC and motor that come with the plane aren’t the best quality. I wanted to pick up spares just in case the originals broke. Or buy these if you bought the AXN without motor or ESC:

Motor

ESC

The servos that come with the plane are decent. But in case one of them breaks it is nice to have backups. Plus they are pretty cheap: Servos

Optional Items

The ESC might not come with the correct connector to work with the battery. You can buy extra connectors and solder it onto the wire yourself: XT60  Connectors . You could also go to the local hobby store and they can make an adapter for you.

This battery monitor is optional but nice to have. It tells you how much power is remaining in your battery. It comes with everything but you need to solder the connector yourself: Battery Monitor

If I left anything off please let me know in the comments. Thanks.

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Add Amazon Suggestions To Search Box With OpenSearch Plugin

Posted by Patrick in Internet on September 23, 2010

I created a plugin to add Amazon search suggestions to the browser search bar. This allows you to search Amazon directly from your browser and get suggestions in real time as you type. To install the plugin click the button below:

The plugin works in all modern browsers including Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8, Safari, and Chrome. Once you click the plugin it will then show up in your search bar as “Amazon Suggestions”. Select it and then start typing your search.

The cool thing about this plugin is that newer browsers such as Firefox 3 and IE 8 support a suggestion feature that shows suggestions as you type. In Firefox a dropdown will suggest search terms that you might want to use. Internet Explorer 8 supports a cool feature called Visual Search Suggestions. The visual suggestions actually show the products you might be searching for along with a picture. It is like a real time mini-search in the dropdown.

The same plugin is compatible with all browsers using the OpenSearch specification. This makes it handy to add custom searches for frequently used sites such as Amazon.

To try out my Amazon search plugin just click the link below. A dialog will popup confirming that you want to add the “Amazon Suggestions” plugin. Once you do that you can now select the “Amazon Suggestions” icon from your search box and have suggestions appear while you type.

www.opensearch.org/

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Rockslide RS10 Rock Crawler Review

Posted by Patrick in Review on August 7, 2010

I wanted to buy a RC car for my son. After looking around it seemed like the Rockslide RS10 from Redcat Racing was a good choice. There are a lot of expensive rock crawlers out there, but I didn’t want to spend too much. There is no reason to spend a bunch of money on high performance competition parts when the crawler is just going to be used in the backyard.

This looked like a good RC car for my son because:

They go slow so he doesn’t need a lot of room.
They can drive in a lot of places that other RC cars can’t
Batteries last a long time per charge
We can build obstacles together that he can drive over

In looking around the Rockslide RS10 seemed to be a recommended crawler. It is relatively cheap and had decent performance. I couldn’t find any better ones so I went ahead and bought the RS10.

I received the rock crawler within the week. The crawler is very impressive out of the box. It is big and it looks very tough and well made. The crawler comes with almost everything you need. The only thing it doesn’t come with are 8 AA batteries for the transmitter.

After charging up the battery we took it out to try it out. The truck is very impressive. It can climb things that you would not be able to expect it to do. To give you an idea of what it can climb: A standard curb on a road is a little too high to climb if you drive straight on, but if you drive in at an angle you can climb the curb. The people who have seen the truck are very impressed at the ease that the truck can climb obstacles.

The transmitter that comes with the truck is nice for a bundled transmitter. It has an LCD screen on it where you can make adjustments. There is a button on it that allows you to control which steering mode the truck is in: front, rear, or two all wheel steering modes. The only thing I don’t like about the transmitter is the limited range, it only works to about 20 feet. With a rock crawler you’re usually going to be close to the truck anyway so it isn’t a big deal, but it would be nice to have a little more range sometime. I wish that Redcat could have included a 2.4ghz transmitter instead even if it cost a little more.

I had a few problems with the truck. The servos that control both the front and rear steering wore out. They started making a clicking sound when steering and eventually stopped working. Redcat Racing repaired the servos for free under warranty, but from what I have read the stock servos are of low quality so I’d expect the replacements to break too. So instead I replaced them with these metal gear servos that people online seem to like. The new servos were easy to replace and worked without any configuration. So far they have worked great with no evidence of them wearing out.

The screws that hold the struts onto the wing fell out after a few uses. I recommend using Loctite on these screws so they don’t come out. I wish Redcat would warn people about this in their manual because once the screws fall out they are impossible to find.

Overall I really like the Rockslide RS10. The performance is very impressive for a good price. It is one of those things that both the adults and the kids can have a lot of fun with. If you are looking for a good RC vehicle without spending too much I recommend getting the Rockslide RS10.

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