RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Wow I didn't know they were selling the proportional hardware units equipped with the non-proportional boards ...
Anyway ; my offer still stands if you want to go to a proportional unit ....I have the parts ...

Ok cheers, I will pm you next week once I have had a fiddle with it when I get home, I will see if I can get it working better.
My tank has 2008 stamped in a few places, I had about 5 tanks that broke quickly before I got a working one and they all had the same smoke boards.
Thanks,
Dave

Hi Dave ....Here's a pic to show you where to weld those 4 diodes on the rx-18 board ...

My proportional smoker stopped working and upon inspection I found the element had burntafter only a few moments of use. I then proceeded to use a peice of nichrome wire I had on hand and the end result was the pump stopped working as did the led for the machine gun. after reading this thread I thing that I have possibly trashed the trasistor the supplies the power. I thought i would try the mod you have posted here so I found a 15ohm 1W wire wound res which is as close as I could get but I was unable to identify which diodes those are in the pics so I could find something suitable for mine. Can I get those specs?

Those are 1N4007 ...They have a forward current of 1 Amp. and most important the Peak Repetitive Reverse Voltage is 1000 Volts ...
You can check the data sheet here : http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/1N/1N4007.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ...
I use them because I don't trust the ones used by H.L. which have a lower Reverse Voltage ...
Also ; by welding the diodes on the RX-18 board ; You only have to send 1 wire to the smoke unit board instead of 4 ....

I can vouch for strmnd54, his set up works brilliantly!
I was just wondering what battery you use Norm? Also what is your smoke oil mixture?
I am running low on the stock stuff that was with tank but I keep having to empty the tubes of residue
Cheers,
Dave

Liquid residue clogging the pipes is a major problem with the smoke units ...I am now using a mixture of Isopropyl Alcohol 99 % and vegetable Glycerin in a 2:1 ratio ( 500 ml alcohol in 250 ml glycerin ) ....I still have residue ; but only half of that produced with water based smoke fluid ....
As for the battery pack ; I'm using 2 Matorro Nimh 2000 mAH monted in serial ....
The main pack is powering the Rx-18 board and the motors in a standard manner ; and the second pack is powering the 14 Ohms resistor element of the smoke unit ; providing a constant smoke output level for the 1 hour running time of my Panzer IV ...
Putting 2 battery packs in a H.L. Panzer IV requires some serious " dremmel " work ...
I am now experimenting with a battery pack made of 6 AA Nimh 2500 mAH batteries to power the heater element in order to gain some space in my tank ...So far so good ...

Thanks for the info, looked up the IsoPropyl Alcohol and its less than £5 for a 500ml, but the Vegitable Glycerin is more like £9 for 250ml? How much do you pay/where do you get it from? And how long do you reckon you get out of that?
Thanks bud

I got them from the drugstore across the street ...I paid around $10.00 CAD ( 7.04 EUR ) for the glycerin ....I got 700 ml of fluid once mixed ( enough to fill a 710 ml bottle of pop ...
Right now I"m testing a smoke unit ( with 2 levels of smoke output ) so I'm consuming more than normal ....My unit is running an average of 4 hours a day ....
The normal consumption should be similar to the H.L. original smoke fluid ...
I know from experience that the consumption depends of the level of smoke ( similar to fuel consumption in a car engine ) ...The more smoke you have ; the more fluid you consume ....
In any case ; that mix is a lot more expensive than the commercially sold fog fluid ...
For example I paid $35.00 CAD for 4 litres of commercial fog juice ; which breaks down to $35.00/4 L = $8.75 per litres ...Compare to $17.00/0.700 L = $24.28 per litres for the alcohol based mix ....So my cocktail is roughly 3 times more expensive than the commercial fog juice ...
So It might be worthed for me to develop some king of drain system for my smoke units ....

OOPS Made a mistake with my numbers ...Got 750 ml of fluid instead of 700ml ( don't know how to add ) which bring the price to $22.66 per L. : Still expensive