Rants = on

I am a dad… I am a currently out of work dad… Being such, I have a limited budget for gizmos and gadgets. I also have a 13 year old boy with and unlimited desire for every new R/C vehicle ever made…

Of course, what with the latest and greatest R/C vehicle be without a lipo upgrade? When I was starting out, I rapidly became aware of the tendencies for lipo batteries to explode like miniature hand grenades (thank you youtube!) which is usually an undesired occurrence in the typical garage or workshop. I have also learned that every lipo batteries I purchase seems to have a different balancing connector.

After purchasing a state of the art battery charger and balancer, I have noticed that the balancer does not necessarily work with all the different connectors… buying additional balancers and/or adapters, which means spending additional money…

Let's revisit the "I am looking for job" dad part of this rant. It irritates me to no end to spend money so uselessly. It occurs to me that the industry should adopt a standard type of connector to balance all common lipo batteries.

While we're at it, how about the battery connectors themselves… Anybody that has used a decent R/C vehicle knows (in the case of cars and trucks) the standard connectors simply do not cut the mustard. Standard connectors have a nasty tendency to overheat and weld themselves together… Traxxas makes great connectors, but I somehow think their competitors may have an issue with adopting that standard. Which brings us to Deans; if you have soldered a Dean's connector and a Traxxas connector at the same time you may have noticed that the actual contacts are very similar. Therefore it would be exceedingly nice if the industry would adopt Deans connectors as the standard.

The same holds true for planes… Of course as weight is a huge concern perhaps the Mini Dean would be the better choice.

I am a network engineer by trade. The only way networks can work is if all of the different companies involved work together and adopt standards. Standard connectors, cables and other components ensure that it all works together. When you don't have the standards you end up with different systems that are incompatible and the whole thing gets messy very quickly…

Rants = off

Oh yeah; my name is Marc Everlove and this is my first post, I am a webmaster/network engineer/R/C enthusiast and I hope to contribute a lot to this forum.

See Ya Online!