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For all the years I’ve been flying RC my method for making sure my batteries are charged is to put em on the charger overnight before I go flying the next morning. Touchwood this has served me well and I don’t believe I’ve ever lost a plan to flat batteries. I’ve never monitored the state of my receiver batteries throughout the day though. How many flights are they good for? 5, 10, 15? For me, I never seem to get a full day of flying, maybe 5 or 6 flights at the most and the receiver packs hold up fine but it still left me wondering, how many electrons are left in the tank after those flights.
I saw some cheapy battery monitors on ebay and thought I’d try one out. The two I bought didn’t actually state the current draw but identical looking versions were touting 5 mA. I was keen to put them to the test.

Test 1: Current draw of just the battery monitor. 10mA.

A 4.8 volt, 1100mA NiCd battery is connected directly to the battery monitor with a multimeter in line. The monitor shows a reading second from the top in the “Perfect” range.

Test 2: A JR RS70 36Mhz synthesised receiver. 24.7mA.

Test 3: Futaba 36MHz crystal Receiver. 15.2mA.

Test 4: JR Rx & Voltage monitor. 40.1mA.

I expected a little lower at 10 + 24.7 = 34.7mA.

Test 5: JR Rx, Voltage Monitor & 1 micro servo. 45.2mA

Test 6: JR Rx, Voltage Monitor & 2 micro servos. 52.2mA

Test 7: JR Rx, Voltage Monitor & 3 micro servos. 57.8mA

Test 8: JR Rx, Voltage Monitor & 4 micro servos. 63mA

Well that’s pretty much the end of the holiday road trip. A minor delay with a truck rollover on the Hume highway just south of Hollbrook. A one night stop at Tat to pick up the dogs and it’s back to Melbourne.

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Todays drive was perhaps the most remarkable of the trip for the change in scenery. We’ve driven from sea level, up over 1490 metres above sea level on the Great Dividing range into the Town of Tumut. The secenery really was spectacular driving through barren valleys where you can see the road winding all the way to the other side of the valley. Then through burnt out bush where normally you would expect regrowth to have covered the trees in greenery like we saw when we drove through the areas devastated by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Up here though all the trees were dead and white. All the re-growth was from the ground up.

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Didn’t get away from Wollongong till about 2pm today. A quick trip down to Batehaven near Batemans Bay and staying in a 1 bedroom cabin at Clyde View Holiday park.

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Ok so I don’t need Wordpress to update my status and have two entries on Facebook for the one blog post.
For some reason, the Fbook app simplaris blogcast decided to get off it’s lazy ass and work for once. Too late.

I’ve been trying to use Simplaris blogcast to get my Wordpress posts to automatically update my Facebook but the bloody automated updated just won’t stick in the applications settings page. So I’m going to the other end, my WP blog and trying out the Wordbooker plugin. This post is the first test.
Interested to hear if anyone has a reccomendation.

Ella woke up early this morning at about 6am so we decided it was a perfect oppurtunity to get out of our dodgy accommodation in Newcastle asap. We had a Best Western to get to in Wollongong!

I like Wollongong. We went for a walk along the beach to the lighthouse of Flaghill point. If you look out over the water to the right you see the industrial part of W’gong, classic chimneys, factories, steam belching forth. Then you look to your left and an ideallic beach with cafe, kids playground and a small harbour filled with boats.

We discovered Ella’s ‘fascination’ for seagulls today. Absolutely riveted by them. When she dropped her biscuit and the seagulls flocked, it almost became all to much for her.

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A lazy drive from Coffs to Newcastle.

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Test blog from iPhone

Ella driving a tractor at Coonabarrabran, originally uploaded by mattmc.

She just can’t get enough of tractors and planes. Maybe Dad and Pa have something to do with that…