"Table Talk" - downsizing my recievers

Hi Everyone -

As I have mentioned in several of my videos and blog posts, I am constantly striving to set my planes up to have as much of the weight (i.e. components) concentrated close to the CG for best balance and maneuverability in my planes.  As such, this can make things a little "cramped", something which I have really been noticing with my RC Powers T50 V5.

I shot this video discussing how I have managed to downsize and lighten my receivers, primarily to save space and prevent the receiver from getting pushed or bumped too many times and perhaps cause servo or worse yet ESC leads to come disconnected.

I won't bother putting the links to all my transmitter and receiver gear as that isn't really important to the discussion, mostly I just wanted to pass this along if you were looking for ways to make more space in your electronics bay or even lighten things up by a gram or two😊

Here is a picture showing one receiver still intact, then the shell removed and the bare receiver board.  The screws are pretty tiny, I had to use a micro screwdriver like you would use on the screws on eye glasses.😎

Before applying the heat shrink, I put a tiny dab of hot glue to help prevent the antenna wire being pulled off the receiver board as it would be a delicate job soldering it back on if it survived the crash should it come off in the air!😱  Where the screwdriver is pointing in the next two pictures is essentially where I put the hot glue.

Here is the heat shrink before heating, as I mention in the video, it is 41mm wide, the receiver board is about 21 mm long.  Hobby King sells the heat shrink I bought as being 25 mm heat shrink with a 2:1 shrink rate. 

Finished product top and bottom, you can see where I cut out a bit of a relief to allow the pins to be open where all the servo and ESC plugs attach.  Depending on how hot your heat gun is, it might be prudent to either hold the gun away from the receiver a bit or only heat for short periods at a time so as not to overheat the receiver board and cause it to be damaged.  My heat gun isn't too hot, I only kept it on for a few seconds at a time until the heat shrink tightened up sufficiently.

So by removing the case, I saved myself 2 gr in weight, my current receiver is 4 mm thinner that it was with the case, 3mm narrower and 3mm shorter.  I know this doesn't seem like a lot, but when things are tight inside the electronics bay of my park jet, every little bit helps😀

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

Cheers,

Scott