{"id":42,"date":"2007-02-27T15:14:11","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T22:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/27\/super-cub-upgrade-to-spektrum-dx6\/"},"modified":"2019-08-12T07:16:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T13:16:23","slug":"super-cub-upgrade-to-spektrum-dx6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/27\/super-cub-upgrade-to-spektrum-dx6\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Cub Upgrade to Spektrum DX6"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend I upgraded my HobbyZone Super Cub R\/C plane to use the Spektrum DX6 radio. I started by tearing out all the proprietary HobbyZone electronics. This includes the big black box (which is a receiver and speed controller), and the slow, huge ParkZone servos. To replace them, I used two of the four servos that came with my DX6 radio, the AR6000 receiver that also came with the radio, and an Electrifly C-7 speed control.<\/p>\n

I mounted the AR6000 receiver on the side of the cockpit with a bit of velcro, like this:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Read on for details…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two cool things to note about the new Spektrum receiver:<\/p>\n

1. It is super small. Compared to the HobbyZone proprietary receiver, it is a feather weight.<\/p>\n

2. Its antennae is only a couple inches long. There are two antennae, but they are both so small that they can live entirely inside the cockpit.<\/p>\n

The Electrifly speed control is also very small. So small, in fact, that you almost don’t even notice it. I didn’t need to fasten it to anything, so it just floats like a piece of wire. The battery is connected directly to the speed control, and the speed control connects to both the motor and the Spektrum receiver. Here’s a shot from the top of the cockpit to show you:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In that picture, you can also see the two sub-micro servos. These servos are smaller than the HobbyZone servos, so I glued two pieces of cardboard behind them in the hole. That made a nice, snug fit for the servos. With a little bit of epoxy, they are nice and secure. The other cool thing about these servos is that they have quite a bit more travel than the HobbyZone servos. This means my tail and rudder get to move a lot further than before. This should make for better aerobatics (though I haven’t gotten it in the air with all the snow yet).<\/p>\n

I ran the servo cables along the other side of the cock-pit and taped them to the wall with a bit of duct-tape to make sure they don’t get in the way of anything. Here’s a shot of the cabling:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The last thing I did was cut off the battery connectors and change them to Deans Ultra Plugs. These are pretty awesome connectors according to the internet at large, but don’t make the mistake I did by leaving the male and female plugs connected while soldering. I did this with my first one, and I could never get them separated again. Here’s a picture of the battery box without the battery. You can see the Deans connector in this shot:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

All told, I am very impressed with the Spektrum DX6 so far. I’ve been fiddling with the programmable features, like servo travel, and it’s really cool. I even hooked it up to my computer’s sound card and I can fly planes in FMS with it. It’s pretty awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend I upgraded my HobbyZone Super Cub R\/C plane to use the Spektrum DX6 radio. I started by tearing out all the proprietary HobbyZone electronics. This includes the big black box (which is a receiver and speed controller), and the slow, huge ParkZone servos. To replace them, I used two of the four servos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rc-planes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1600,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}