To celebrate the relaunch, I’m making my advanced model airplane design calculator completely free to use by all registered members of this website. What are the implications?
Was 80% Free
About 80% of the calculator was always free to use. In fact, I always had a simple philosophy. I wanted to have the best free calculator available and the best paid calculator available. I believe I achieved that goal a long time ago. 10,000 model airplane pilots signed up to use the free calculator, so I know it wasn’t a bad deal.
All Premium Features Now Free
Despite its very friendly appearance and easy learning curve, the calculator has enormous power in the right hands. I should know, since I’m a regular user of the calculator myself! But to really unleash the power of the calculator, you needed to have a premium calculator subscription. No more.
The power system optimizers, component filters, and advanced charts were designed to work together from the start. The online interactive tutorials do a great job of explaining how they work together. These advanced features, available only to paid subscribers in the past, are now freely available to all website registered users. As always, registering on the website is free and very easy.
Calculator Update
To coincide with the website relaunch, I’ve updated the calculator and component database. The calculator now requires Adobe Flash version 11.1 to run. I had to make many internal changes to the source code so that it would work with this new version of Flash. I wanted to maintain the same look for the calculator, and it’ll take a very keen eye to notice any differences from the old version.
Component Database Update
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I had not updated the component database for almost two years. This database is created from the components (motors, batteries, etc.) that the calculator users enter as they work with the calculator. It’s the database of components that is preloaded when you run the calculator as a registered user.
I’ve always filtered out “bad” components. These are components that, for one reason or another, are of little value to anyone but the person that originally entered the data. For this database update, I’ve significantly strengthened this filter. Many more “bad” components got filtered out before the database was put together. Despite the new filter, there are still over 7,000 preloaded components.
Calculator Subscribers
There are quite a few current paid calculator subscribers. What to do about them? I’ve given this a lot of thought since I wanted to be fair and I wanted to come up with a simple plan. Here it is:
- First are those that got a free premium calculator subscription from buying one of my books. The calculator subscription was a bonus, and now you get to use the premium features indefinitely. Thank you for the book order, and enjoy the 100% free calculator.
- If you paid for a calculator subscription before July 1, 2011, I feel that you’ve already gotten good value out of your money. Many website members told me that I wasn’t charging enough for the calculator. As before, thank you for paying for the calculator subscription, and enjoy the completely free calculator.
- The trickier case are those that paid for a calculator subscription on or after July 1, 2011. In the next few days I will be sending you a coupon code for the RCadvisor Store good for 50% of what you paid. If you paid regular price on the premium subscription, the coupon code will be good for $10 off one of my books. If you got a discounted subscription and only paid $9.95, then the coupon will be good for $5. All coupon codes will expire on December 31, 2012.
Keep in mind that I have plans to write two new books in the coming months, so even if you already bought the two books I wrote a couple of years ago, these coupon codes will be coming in handy very soon.
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Welcome to the Relaunch!
I’m looking forward to joining your group.
Carlos, I like the new website.
john
Hello!!! I’ve been meaning to email you. Is that your new email address?
how do you download the program?
The calculator runs in your web browser by using Adobe Flash. There’s nothing to download or install. To run it, just click on the “Free Design Calculator” box on the left side of the web pages.
Count me as “registerd”
Looking forward to seeing your calculator
WHERE in here is the calculator?
The calculator is on the left hand side of the screen. It’s the box labelled “Free Design Calculator”. Just click on it. Right below the calculator are the tutorials. Right below the tutorials is the website registration form.
I’m feelin pretty stupid that I didn’t see that! Thanks.
There’s absolutely no reason to feel bad about it. In fact, you are not even the first person to ask the question. And if nobody asks, I won’t know to answer it or do something about it!
Along the same lines, if you want a good scare, you can also click on the picture of me on the right side of the screen…
I just added a “(click on image)” label to the calculator. That should take care of the confusion.
I received a mail from you. That’s how I learned about your site.
Thanks for the feedback.
Months ago I decided I wanted to change the primary focus of the website. The focus used to be the calculator. Now I’m more focused on the articles. With the relaunch, I’ve completely changed the look of the website. It used to look a bit different than it does now.
Why am I telling you this? Because the only people that get emails from me are those that have signed up on my website. But since the website looks so different now, I reckon many don’t remember signing up in the first place.
Interested in your calculator.
New to electric RC and have questions for example when
dc current is specified how is it measured?
Hi, and welcome. We tend to use devices called “watt meters” to measure the current and voltage in our power systems.
The calculator is free. Take a look at the tutorials first, since there is a lot to it.