RC Lander thrust test stand initial impressions

Hi Everyone -

Miraculously, in less than three weeks (fastest shipping time I've ever had from Banggood), my RC Lander Outer Rotor Motor Thrust Stand Measuring Table Tester arrived in the mail today.  Good grief, where do they come up with these long complicated names for things?!😕 😵😲

Of note, compared to what is shown on the Banggood website when you click on the link above, in the "instructions" that came with my stand and the video I link below, how my motor will mount on the stand is completely different.  As you can see in this closeup of part of the instructions, it shows "Turnigy" on the thrust stand in the picture and the motor mount is above the plate that connects to the bearings that help measure the thrust.

Although as I will describe later this will make it a bit more of a pain to mount motors on the stand for testing, perhaps having the shaft of the motor better centered with this top plate will make for better results?  Not sure, but I'm hopeful😉  Some pictures of the inside of the "brain" where the batteries go (requires 2 AA batteries).

 

You need to use a 1.5 mm hex driver to undo the four small bolts to take the cover off the battery/brain compartment.  Bolts are small, so be careful not to misplace them😳  The stand comes with no hardware for mounting the motor to the stand.  Fortunately, I still had lots of mounting bolts from all the quad racing motors I have purchased.  The plate is 5 mm thick, I used 7 mm bolts and it seems secure enough, but I might try to find some 8 mm bolts just to be safe.  Here is what I mean about needing to remove the plate to secure the four bolts on the motors.  The motor plate is held on by two bolts (you need a 2 mm hex driver to remove this plate).

So this might become a bit of a pain over time and I will have to be careful with the two bolts as they are the only thing holding the mounting plate to the thrust stand.  The "instruction" sheet is nothing more than a description of the stand, so off to YouTube to get some good info.  I find many of Bruce Simpson's reviews at RC Model Reviews to be very helpful, so I watched this one.  The pictures in the "instructions" almost looked more like the motor was mounted in a pusher configuration, whereas it needs to be in a puller or tractor setup.  I suppose I should do a little more research to see if there is another way to mount my motors on this stand since it is slightly different than the Turnigy stand in the video (just the mounting plate, everything else is identical pretty much).

Due to how my table is setup in my work area, I will have to mount the stand on some pieces of wood not only to add some more weight, but to give it clearance to swing a 6" prop.  Sitting flat on the table, a 6" prop does not have sufficient clearance.  If I bolted the stand to my table so the prop hung over the edge, not only would the numbers be facing away from me on the meter, the prop wash would blow everything around on the left side of my table 😨  So a little work before it will be up and running, but I have some scrap wood in my shed that will do the trick😊.

Thrust can be measured in either grams or oz, I will probably go with grams and then convert later for my spreadsheet.

So I'm not sure how big a difference there will be between testing in tractor versus pusher (pusher being what I use in my park jets), but I think anything has to be better than the crude set up I was using before😉😲

Weather is better for bench testing than flying, so I hope to have some data gathered soon😃

Park Jet noise...the "other" sound of freedom😎

Cheers,

Scott