Seeing we had a spare Alpha trainer floating around and we busy dabling in larger electrics we thought this will be perfect airframe to test with. We have lots of hours on it flying nitro, so have good base line to compare electric with.

Took about 4 hrs to do full conversion (after few mishaps doing things a 1 am).

Current setup:

Hangar 9 Alpha Trainer, With jr 821 servo's(3) and 1100mah 4.8v nicd.

Motor: NNB u3520/6 840KV

Battery: A123 5s2p.

ESC: Dynam 70A esc.

Prop: APC 11x5.5

AUW: 3.1kg

Current draw: 51A for 11800 rpm .

Not much to say about the actual conversion, simply removed part of the 1 former where the tank use to be and made access hatch behind the firewall. The 2 packs of a123 fits like glove.

Used some old helicopter parts to make nice aluminium mount up front. Should have made longer one as the CG still not right and had to leave about 100g of lead up front to have safe CG for trainer style flying.

The maiden was done on the 20 Sept and almost did not make the first flight. The esc timing settings was wrong and could not power beyond 50% throttle (tested fine on the ground). Got her around for nice landing and changed the timing to outrunner setting. Worked perfect and had 6 min flight.

Had total of 4 flight and last flight was done with the eagle tree.. noticed the amp draw shot up to 58 amps and it explained the short flying time (15 min). Reprogrammed the esc using the programming card and got the amps down to 51 amps and about 600 more rpm.  Something must have gone funny when I did it at the field using radio.

The big issue currentley is charging at field. We using a 26Ah sealed lead acid and was only good for 3 chargers. The first charge we could do at max 8 amps into the packs. second charge 5 amps and last 0.5 amps. Simply not enough power from the PB battery. Think a 50 - 80 Ah will give nice 5 flights / day and about 20 min charging time on ave.

All and all very nice conversion, not the lightest airplane but fly's exact same as old setup in the air, but the takeoff was reduced to about 4 m. Electric is insane acceleration.

Some pics:

Mount made from Frame brackets off a old helicopter

Tight Fit

She Fly's!!