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Hello! I have avoided purchasing EWS kits because I have a lot of balsa, film, motors, propellors, etc. I was told I could get cheap capacitors from styrofoam RC planes and remove them for the EWS planes. The only RC planes I can find online charge by plugging into an outlet, not with a battery pack. Do you know were I can get some tiny, light, battery-charged capacitors? Thanks!

Your best bet, honestly, would be to buy a complete power system from J&H, https://jhaerospace.com/product/advance ... er-system/. This gives you a competitive motor, the capacitor, the battery holder, etc. This is an upgraded system with an efficient motor, and has no switch on the charger, which was a rules clarification/violation.

If you take caps from a styrofoam plane, they do not always have the label on the cap. Without a label indicating the capacity and voltage, the cap would not be legal.

While you can buy components cheaper and put it together yourself, most places you would buy components form will charge shipping. If you really want to pursue this, look at Digikey, Arrow. and Mouser for caps (search "super Capacitor). You can get a battery holder from Amazon or form those electronic houses. You will have to figure out what you want for charging leads/connections (we use "mini grabber hooks", and a switch on the plane. We make our own switch. J&H system uses a jack/switch combination.

The caps should be 5F, either 3.0V or 2.7V.

If you have everything except the cap, you can find some on Amazon (Search for "Super Capacitor 5F"), but I do not know the quality of those caps.

Coach Chuck

Our team got a power system from Indoor Free Flight Supply. It looks like it is the same motor set that is coming with most of the kits. https://www.indoorffsupply.com/shop/ele ... t-2-motors

I forgot about IFS and their new line of cap-motor combos.

Keep in mind, "looks like" means nothing this year. Caps, maybe, but motors differ greatly in the windings, and can be very "hot", turning too many RPM for EWS. This results in a very rapid climb, and then using up the energy too quickly. The motors are sometimes rated by no-load RPM, or by resistance. Higher resistance correlates to lower no-load RPM.

Be especially wary about procuring motors on Amazon or Ali, as many of these are very high RPM, designed for quadcopters, where power is everything. Most of these do not have specs that would indicate the winding type. Procuring motors form an indoor supplier like IFS and J&H, as well as others, hopefully means some testing ahs been done to select the appropriate motor for this application.

Want to learn more about these motors to help in selection? See https://www.didel.com/microkit/moteurs/Motors.html

While in some ways EWS is simplified, with fewer variables than winding a rubber motor, there is a lot more technology in selecting motors and propellers.

Coach Chuck

I've been using the capacitors from digikey.com, a large and longtime electronics component distributor in Minnesota. Mostly I've been using the AVX Kyocera capacitors, blue in color, that are marked 5F 3V, they work pretty well.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/fil ... 0ArADEWioA