I am finishing up a Chrysalis 2M Electric. This is my first electric sailplane with spoilers. My Chrysalis Electric is RES with a traditional tail. Spoilers are actuated by two separate servos connected with a Y-connector.

My transmitters include the Hitec Flash 5 SX, and the Hitec Optic 6. My available receivers include the Hitec 555 and the FMA M5.

I want to do one of the two following setups, both having rudder and elevator on the right stick:

1. Throttle on left stick, spoilers on a 2 or 3-position switch.

2. Spoilers on left stick, throttle on a 2 or 3-position switch.

It is not clear to me which of these options is better.

From : Don Stackhouse

Which setup you use on the electric version depends on how you want to fly. The key deciding factor is whether the spoilers or the throttle are your primary glide path control on landing, as well as whether or not you need to use partial throttle at any time during the flight.

For sport flying, I prefer to put the throttle on the left stick and the spoilers on the retract switch, just two positions, open or closed. In sport flying you tend to use a variety of partial throttle settings a lot, so it needs to be on a stick or slider. Sport fliers often use very low throttle settings for sustained level flight, such as for motoring back home after getting way downwind in a thermal. On landing, you can use partial throttle as a glide path control. Just remember to kill the power completely before touchdown!

If you have the high-powered outrunner version, putting the throttle on the left stick is also a good idea for first flights with a new model. The power to weight ratio with the outrunner setup is pretty ferocious, and I find it's better to do the hand launch with about half throttle into a shallow, stable, get my right hand back on the transmitter, then open the throttle the rest of the way and rotate smoothly to a vertical or near-vertical climb.

For contest flying, such as LMR, it makes more sense to put the spoilers on the throttle stick, and the motor on the retract switch. By the time you are ready to fly it in that sort of situation, you will have already dialed in the trim, and practiced launching directly into a max-performance climb. You will want to get the most possible altitude within the number of seconds allowed, then shut the motor down for the rest of the flight including landing. The spoilers will be your primary glide path control, so they should be on the throttle stick. There will never be any need for the throttle to be anything other than full or off, so the retract switch works fine for that requirement.

However, even if you plan to do contest work with that setup, I'd still recommend using throttle on the left stick and spoilers on the switch for your initial flights, so you can use partial throttle on launch until you get all the trims and adjustments dialed in. Once that's done, practice launching with gradually increasing initial throttle settings, until you're launching consistently with full throttle. At that point you can move the throttle to the switch and the spoilers to the left stick.

On the pure sailplane version, there obviously is no throttle, and the spoilers are the primary glide path control. The custom there is to put them on the left stick and use them on final approach the same way a throttle is used on powered aircraft or spoilers are used on full-scale sailplanes. The convention is for the spoilers to be closed (and therefore lowest sink rate and flattest glide) with the stick all the way forwards, and full spoiler (and therefore the steepest glide) with the stick pulled back.

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech